Figure One - Poster
The Birds is a 1963 suspense/horror
film directed by Alfred
Hitchcock, loosely based on the 1952 story "The
Birds" by Daphne
du Maurierries of widespread and violent bird
attacks over the course of a few days.
·
Director:
Alfred Hitchcock
·
Screenplay:
Evan Hunter
·
Genre:
Suspense/Horror
·
Duration:
119 Minutes
The film starts off with a young blond Melanie Daniels,
another blond beauty in Hitchcock’s films not that one is complaining, is at a
pet shop when she bumps into Mitch who’s looking to buy love birds for his
sister and Melanie tries and helps him, this shows that Melanie has feelings
toward Mitch, I guess one could say there’s a link between Mitch searching for love
birds and Melanie stalking Mitch to his house.
The film takes its time to get going but of course having two good looking protagonists keeps most the
audience interested up till when things start to get going. The fact that the
birds attack human is never explained is probably the strongest point for the
film others might say its the weakest but personally the film works well
without explaining why, leaving it up to the viewers to decide for themselves.
"The fact that it is never revealed to the
audience why normally peaceful birds suddenly start attacking humans is a
technique that Hitchcock used frequently in his movies. It is called a
MacGuffin (or McGuffin), which Hitchcock defines as "The plot device, of
little intrinsic interest, such as lost or stolen papers, that triggers the
action.” (Murray: 2011)
Figure Two - Famous Scene
Suspense is built up greatly in “The Birds”, especially the scene where
Melanie is outside the school waiting for Mitch’s sister and sits down and the
camera focusing on her and the background where the school climbing frame is
and then back to her smoking looking around while the children signing is
clearly heard and slowly the crows start to land on the climbing frame, the
scene goes on for a few minutes which builds the suspense up and the children
singing going on for awhile, added to the suspense.
“Genuinely disturbing thriller classic from the
master of suspense.” (Newman 2007)
Karma seems to play a big part in the film, Melanie turns up
at Bodega Bay and is attacked by a seagull as she crosses the lake to get to Mitch’s
home on the first day she’s their and after that things only go downhill. Also throughout
the film she is wearing the unlucky colour green which also implies karma not
being on her side.
Figure Three - Dead Man Scene
The film is an effective horror film for a number of
reasons, first, as one is watching the film, mainly near the end due to the
film slow pace is that this could happen, its very unlikely but it could because
all it is at the end of the day is birds going crazy and attacking. Secondly,
what the film does well is it has great suspense but doesn’t go crazy into gore
aspect, there’s a few gouged out eyes but the film keeps it to the minium which
works better than over indulging in gore.
“The Birds is an effective horror
movie, although in typical Hitchcock style, there is far more scary
anticipation than actual gore.” (Webster 2000)
Illustration –
Bibliography –
Murray, John - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/faq
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