| |
Delving into the Morbid Fascinations with Hitchcocks The BirdsThe Birds (1963) is a modern Hitchcock thriller/masterpiece, his first film with Universal Studios. It is the apocalyptic story of a northern California coastal town filled with an onslaught of seemingly unexplained, arbitrary and chaotic attacks of ordinary birds - not birds of prey. Ungrammatical advertising campaigns emphasized: "The Birds Is Coming." This Technicolor feature came after Psycho (1960) - another film loaded with 'bird' references.
The film's technical wizardry is extraordinary, especially in the film's closing scene (a complex, trick composite shot) - the special visual effects of Ub Iwerks were nominated for an Academy Award (the film's sole nomination), but the Oscar was lost to Cleopatra. Hundreds of birds (gulls, ravens, and crows) were trained for use in some of the scenes, while mechanical birds and animations were employed for others.
The film's non-existent musical
score is replaced by an electronic soundtrack (including simulated bird cries and wing-flaps), with Hitchcock's favorite composer Bernard Herrmann serving as a sound consultant. It was shot on location in the port town of Bodega Bay (north of San Francisco) and in San Francisco itself. Hitchcock introduced a 'fascinating new personality' for the film - his successor to Grace Kelly - a cool, blonde professional model named 'Tippi' Hedren, in her film debut in a leading role. [Hedren reprised her character in a minor supporting role, in an inferior made-for-TV sequel, The Birds II: Land's End (1994), set in the New England fishing town of Land's End. The director was Rick Rosenthal, although the standard generic pseudonym 'Alan Smithee' is found in the credits. Leads Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren are replaced by Brad Johnson and Chelsea Field.]
Initially, critics were baffled when they attempted to interpret the film on a literal level and measure it against other typical disaster/horror films of its kind. The typical Hitchcock MacGuffin is the question: Why do the strange attacks occur? But the film cannot solely be interpreted that way, because as the actors in the film discover in the long discussion scene in the Tides Restaurant, there is no solid, rational reason why the birds are attacking. They are not seeking revenge for nature's mistreatment, or foreshadowing doomsday, and they don't represent God's punishment for humankind's evil.
When this is understood, the symbolic film's complex fabric makes more sense, especially if interpreted in Freudian terms. It is about three needy women (literally 'birds') - and a fourth from a younger generation - each flocking around and vying for varying degrees of affection and attention from the sole, emotionally-cold male lead, and the fragile tensions, anxieties and unpredictable relations between them. The attacks are mysteriously related to the mother and son relationship in the film - anger (and fears of abandonment or being left lonely) of the jealous, initially hostile mother surface when her bachelor son brings home an attractive young woman. Curiously, the first attack has symbolic phallic undertones - it occurs when the man and woman approach toward each other outside the restaurant in the coastal town.
On an allegorical level, the birds in the film are the physical embodiment and exteriorization of unleashed, disturbing, shattering forces that threaten all of humanity (those threatened in the film include schoolchildren, a defenseless farmer, bystanders, a schoolteacher, etc.) when relationships have become insubstantial, unsupportive, or hurtful. In a broader, more universal sense, the stability of the home and natural world environment, symbolized by broken teacups at the domestic level, is in jeopardy and becoming disordered when people cannot 'see' the dangers gathering nearby, and cannot adequately protect themselves from violence behind transparent windows, telephone booths, eyeglasses, or facades. Numerous allusions to blindness are sprinkled throughout the film (the farmer's eyes are pecked out, the children play blindman's bluff at the birthday party, the broken glasses of the fleeing schoolchild, etc.), giving the hint that the camera's voyeuristic lens (and its screen-viewing audience) is also being subjected to assault.
The film commences on a white background, as dark black, silhouetted bird-shapes rush through and destroy the robin's egg-blue credits as they appear, accompanied by upsetting noises of screeching flapping sounds and bird cries. The action of the film occurs over a five-day period, from a Friday through a Tuesday morning.
Classic Sing and Dance Movies with Gene Kelly
It was the year 1912, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that Eugene Curran Kelly, otherwise known as Gene Kelly, was born. This dynamic and well-known actor was most noticed for his flashy dance moves, more than anything else. Gene Kelly became one of MGM...
Favorite Mobster Movies of Black and White Movies
Now we call them "crime dramas," but once they were just known as good old mobster movies. Sometimes you're in the mood for a good old-fashioned shoot-em-up mobster movie. The truth is, these types of movies are simply not coming out of Hollywood...
Looking into the Eyes of Bette Davis A Leading Lady of the Classic Movie Screen
Often referred to as "The First Lady of the American Screen," Bette Davis created a new kind of screen heroine. She was a liberated woman in an industry dominated by men. She was known as an actress that could play a variety of difficult and...
Top Five Favorite Classic B-Movie Bombshells
When thinking about B-movies, some may consider the B to represent a lesser quality film. Some however, may consider the B to represent Bombshell. There are many actresses to date that have shown that they are not afraid to get their hands dirty...
The Basics of Making a Classic Movie Musical
If you were ever a big time musical movie producer, do you feel that you have the right stuff to get things done? Making a musical is unlike any other form of movie production, without the right guidance it could easily become a very big flop in the...
|
|
|
|
|
