It’s safe to say that Alfred Hitchcock was a strange man (but so are the majority of geniuses.) He had mommy issues, an almost fetishistic love for cold blonds, and found more humor in murder than any non-institutionalized person should. Yet, the most bizarre aspect of his personality was his irrational fear of birds and eggs. For whatever reason, they made the restrained British gentleman quiver with fear. Hence, The Birds. Loosely adapted from a short story by Daphne Du Maurier, The Birds was Hitchcock’s final masterpiece and, combined with Psycho, helped usher in the modern horror film.
Hitchcock’s most openly nihilistic movie opens rather unassumingly on a busy San Francisco street where Tippi Hendren enters a pet shop. There she meets and flirts with a dapper lawyer (Rod Taylor), whom she follows to a small town in search of a little romantic adventure. For almost an hour Hitchcock builds up social tension between Hendren, Taylor’s overbearing mother (Jessica Tandy) and his former flame (Suzanne Pieshette). There are a few throwaway hints that something’s up with the birds (a small attack here, a reference to chickens turning down seed there) when, all of a sudden, birds start attacking everyone in town. No explanation is given. Hitchcock is relentless in his use of suspense second half, turning a silly concept into a visceral experience that holds up almost 50 years later.
It’s Hitchcock’s refusal to offer any rhyme or reason for the bird attacks that makes his film so frightening. This lack of resolution and explanation prefigured a new form of dark and harsh horror that would emerge in subsequent decades following Night Of Living Dead. Along with Hitchcock’s introduction of a very human monster to the genre in Psycho, The Birds helped kick off the next wave of American horror. The impact of those films cannot be overstated and as a result Hitchcock remains an icon of the genre despite only ever making two horror movies.
On a technical level, The Birds is a remarkable achievement. Hitchcock created incredible images of swarms of birds, hand-painted frame-by-frame over remarkable scenic matte paintings. The visual effects represent the peak of a certain kind of Old Hollywood illusion and craftsmanship, while sonically the movie leans towards the future. There’s no music inThe Birds, Hitchcock’s beloved composer Bernard Hermann created an experimental soundscape of ominous noises, chirps, and carefully controlled silences. The lack of musical manipulation was odd both for Hitchcock and Hollywood films in the 60s, borrowing more from the emerging European art film movement. The effect works brilliantly with the film’s most frightening scenes played to chilly silence (one involving a creepy gathering of crows on a school playground, the other featuring the discovery of a corpse whose eyes proved to be a delicious feast).
The movie represents Hitchcock at his most experimental and at the peak of his career, following up an unbelievable string of consecutive classics in The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North By Northwest, and Psycho, all made while simultaneously hosting and supervising his TV show. Following The Birds, Hitchcock retreated back into the melodramatic thrillers that went out of fashion while he was innovating, making the movie his final masterpiece.
This film is more of sensory experience than anything else. There are certainly mysteries to be picked apart when the story ends, but they just aren’t as compelling as the carnival ride thrills expertly crafted by a master. It’s a shame that Hitchcock never got around to exploiting that fear of eggs before he died. If he could make birds this inexplicably frightening, just imagine what he could have done with their embryos.
The Birds will screen at The Toronto Underground Cinema on Thursday January 26, 2012 at 7 pm.
