The Birds (1963) Review

Perhaps not everyone’s top choice for the very best from Alfred Hitchcock’s vast filmography, but I’ll fight tooth and nail (beak, perhaps?) to defend my favorite Hitchcock classic, 1963’s The Birds.

Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren in her feature film debut) is a confident and beautiful socialite, living the dream in cosmopolitan San Francisco. While at a local pet store to pick up a Myna bird for her aunt Tessa – she meets Mitch Brenner (The Time Machine’s Rod Taylor) – who is also at the store to pick up some birds (for his younger sister’s birthday). After much flirtation and a mistaken identity, Mitch darts away, leaving Melanie more than a little intrigued. She does a little research and discovers that Mitch lives in Bodega Bay – just a hop, skip and a jump from the city. She packs up for the weekend and takes a chance. Once reunited with Mitch in the small coastal town, the flirtations ramp up into a possible love affair. Mitch lives with his mother (Oscar-winner Jessica Tandy – Driving Miss Daisy) and the aforementioned younger sister Cathy (Alien’s Veronica Cartwright) on their family farm. As the weekend progresses, so then do some strange bird attacks throughout the town. Eventually, the group will be boarded up within the farmhouse, attempting to survive these unexplained avian onslaughts.

Most of The Birds revolves around the blossoming relationship between Mitch and Melanie. The bird attacks are somewhat incidental to the many soap opera antics at the story’s forefront (intrusive mothers, lost loves, flirtations), but when the birds do finally swoop down from the sky – there’s no doubt where the focus lies.

The film has no actual music score, but is accompanied by a terrifying design of bird calls, caws and screeches – designed by long-time Hitchcock composer Bernard Herrmann. Having no score (considering the romance at the film’s center) was perhaps a gamble, but it’s so completely effective – almost without an audience even making note of the music’s absence.

Hedren (mother of actress Melanie Griffith) does a great job in her first role. Sure, she doesn’t quite nail the “emotional” scene atop the sand dune, where she first opens up to Mitch, but I find her performance of this spontaneous socialite – forever engaging. She’s a beauty to be sure, but seeing the character go from “prim and proper” to flirtatious to terrified – makes for an interesting and layered performance. As good as she is in The Birds, her follow-up film (Hitchcock’s wonderful Marnie) allows her to… ahem… spread her wings.

Taylor is at his matinee-idol handsomest, and his chemistry with not only Hedren, but with his on-screen mother (Tandy) and his much-younger on-screen sister (Cartwright) proves that his acting work is nothing short of perfect. He connects with his scene partners as effortlessly as he connects with the audience. Mitch is suave, no-nonsense and a total man’s man and Taylor draws us in almost effortlessly. Mitch is a good guy all around (there could be some debate about his previous love affairs, but…) and an audience will have no trouble falling in love with Mitch (as well as Taylor).

In a supporting role as school-teacher Annie Hayworth – Suzanne Pleshette practically steals the show. All of Annie’s history (revealed to Melanie late one night) gives Pleshette oodles of character flaws, dashed dreams and infatuations with which to play. I generally care a great deal for all of the characters in The Birds – but Annie (and Pleshette) brings with her an extra special sympathy – partly because of her ultimate fate, but also because the character is so lonely and slightly obsessive. Pleshette’s is an underrated performance in the Hitchcock pantheon.

I have always marveled at the many tricks which Hitchcock and cinematographer Robert Burks (who worked with Hitchcock on countless other classics) employ in The Birds. Among the many favorites – the gas station explosion. The perfectly-framed faces of the town restaurant’s horrified on-lookers and the quick (and expertly-cut) edits as the flames travel up the street. It’s a beautiful scene – in a breathtakingly gorgeous film.

And of course, there’s the age-old question of any horror film… Is it scary? By today’s standards, probably not. But that doesn’t mean some of the sequences come up empty-handed, as far as the fear factor. The film’s climax – as Melanie takes a flashlight to the second floor of the Brenner home to investigate some strange noises (how’s that for a horror film cliché?) – is the stuff of nightmares. And Melanie absent-mindedly enjoying a cigarette outside of the school – as well as the subsequent moments – is an absolutely perfect example of creating suspense and dread.

So who wants to take me on? Psycho? Amazing. Strangers on a Train? Delicious. North by Northwest? Breathless.

“A little birdy told me...” that simply, The Birds cannot be beat. It has it all – man vs. nature chills, a bit of gore, melodramatic (but extremely appetizing) character histories and what I would consider one of the bleakest endings in film history.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t nod my head in everlasting appreciation – of the “bird in a cage” symbolism all throughout the film.

The film is loosely based on Daphne du Maurier’s (Rebecca) short story of the same name.

The Birds is currently available on DVD/Bluray and on various VOD outlets.