Pacific Flyway.

Rating: 7/10 (3 October 2010)

A Hitchcockian epic! It's one of his big movies with sweeping location shooting and a major theme. Bodega Bay never looked so good, despite Susanne Pleshette's calling it a collection of shacks on a hillside. These shacks have character. They're all weathered from the salty fog and winter rain and, inside, you can practically smell the new paint. And the folks are right friendly too, willing to give you directions and make your phone calls for you. Oh, they may not be too sophisticated. Don't try to talk Robert Rauschenberg with them. But they're honest God-fearing sons of the soil and sea, so ordinary, so dull, that one day the tide may go out and never come back.
Well, come to think of it, you might mention some fancy artist's name to Rod Taylor, the guy who spends his weekends with his possessive mother and younger sister on the family chicken farm. He might be able to argue with you about the virtues and weaknesses of Paul De Man, but probably not. He's a successful lawyer who lives two hours south of Bodega Bay in San Francisco. And he's a no-nonsense kind of guy who enjoys roughing it on the chicken ranch. He's a prize hunk, too. I mean, a well-to-do lawyer who is grounded, playful and loving at the same time. Even his work clothes look as if they were designed by some Hollywood wardrobe mistress, which they were.
Tippi Hedren is a self-indulgent blond who takes a shine to Taylor and pursues him to Bodega Bay. In the village, she gets to meet and befriend Pleshette, an ex girl friend of Taylor's who is still hanging around town, working as the school teacher, though she knows it's all over between her and Taylor. Now, the savvy viewer, who knows that this movie is all about birds attacking and killing people, will recognize at once that Pleshette -- the despondent ex, the superfluous school marm -- doesn't have much of a future.
It's a beautiful-looking movie, as I say, exquisitely photographed by Robert Burks. It's classically structured, with increasingly ominous threats followed by increasingly violent attacks. Rod Taylor is a comforting masculine presence. Jessica Tandy, as Taylor's mother, handles a complex role well and still looks gorgeous despite her age.
Tippi Hedren is polished and glossy and clean to the point of sterility, looked at with the care an owner might lavish on his new Lamborghini. That's Hitchcock's doing.
The poor woman was miscast and misdirected. She smirks a good deal and has these slight but noticeable tics that some attractive women use on screen that draws attention to this or that view of her features. All of that is Hitch's doing.
Hitch "discovered" her in a TV commercial, the kind of thing for which she is aptly suited, and treated her as his personal possession, figuring she should be grateful to him for turning her into a major movie star, as his own creation. He even had a legal requirement that quotation marks be put around her Scandinavian nickname, "Tippi". But Hitch's judgment was falling off. (It didn't help that he was pounding a lot of booze by this time.) He was always quietly dominant with his leading ladies but this tendency became excessive with Tippi Hedren, to the point at which his demands became intolerably vulgar. Hedren rejected him and after that Hitch put her through hell. When she is attacked by the birds in the attic, it was deliberate torture.
The problem was all the more marked because, after all, Hedren is the central character and we witness events through her eyes. She has to carry the picture and she can't do it.
Aside from Hedren, Hitch's footing seems uncertain and he falls back on clichés that he probably wouldn't have used ten years earlier. It's bad enough that the birds attack people, but that's what the whole ambiguous story is about. But that they should concentrate their attacks on helpless children? TWICE? And with multiple close ups of birds pecking away at the faces of the screaming kids? Hitch was always fond of shots that were both innovative and graceful -- a camera swooping slowly down a staircase, nudging its way through a partying crowd, and focusing at length on someone's hand half-hiding a critical key. He tries something innovative here -- a series of shock jump cuts bringing us closer and closer to the bloody orbital sockets of a man whose eyes have been pecked out. It doesn't work.
In fact, the birds themselves don't work very well. I know sea gulls can bite. Their upper and lower bills each have two long rows of tiny saw-like teeth, as I know all too well. I don't know about crows. But I'm familiar with finches and sparrows. And they're harmless little seed eaters. When Taylor and his family are attacked by a horde of hundreds of fluttering sparrows and the viewer is supposed to feel the terror of the victims, I felt sorry for the poor birds.
I gave this a reasonably good rating because it evokes small-town atmosphere so well and the photography is luscious. It's exciting on first viewing too. It's only later, when you think about it, that you realize that Hitchcock is losing his touch here -- and that's sadder than anything in the film.