No time for 'Why?' and no time for 'How?' ... only for 'Wow!' ...

Rating: 9/10 (8 February 2012)

Probably Hitchcock's last film to be so deeply rooted in the cultural unconscious, "The Birds" is as traumatically heart-pounding as it was five decades ago, and I even defy the CGI-nourished eyes of the current generation not to be thrilled by this masterpiece of horror.
"The Birds" is one of my favorite films from Hitch for one simple reason; it's straight-forwardly horrific. It's one of the rare occurrences where the Master decides not to embarrass himself with subtleties and innuendos and go directly to the core, which is about a peaceful little town in a California bay, victim of incessant attacks from seagulls, crows, sparrows. Of course, these attacks started with a pivotal event, a newcomer, Melanie Daniels, incarnated by the beautiful Tippi Hedren, coming from San Francisco to meet a potential boyfriend, the hunky Mitch, played by Rod Taylor. During a boat ride, she's savagely attacked by a gull, a sudden event that foreshadows the beginning of a nightmarish journey where the attacks will increase, getting more and more cruel, and coming from all kinds of birds. As a true nightmare, there is no proper answer to all the "why's" and "how's", just a level of nasty viciousness getting more and more disturbing and depriving the film from the sensuality we expect from a Hitch film.
Speaking of sensuality, I'm perfectly aware that the aficionados of the Hitchockian oeuvre would spend hours to identify and analyze all the sexual or sensual aspects of the film, its predominance of women and the significant part they play, from Suzan Pleshette to Jessica Tandy who plays Mitch's skeptical mother, but I have the intimate conviction that Hitchcock wanted to make, though "The Birds" a film that would make people jump off their seat, and the cardiac rhythm to increase rather than the brainy mechanisms to work. This is not an intellectual film, and the romance only works as a starter and never does it serve the film, mostly driven by a heart-pounding urgency. It's a sensational masterpiece of terror in the purest tradition of the genre, with an undeniable entertaining value, illustrating Hitchcock's quote: "The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder." "The Birds" is popular now because it was 'popular' back then.
What makes me so sure that it wasn't intended to be deeper than that? Well, consider all the movies made about attacks from group of evil creatures, or monsters. There are three categories of villains: those who come from a reason and are defeated at the end, like the shark from "Jaws", those who comes from nowhere but are eventually defeated at the end, like the zombies from "The Night of the Living Dead" and those who come from a reason and are not necessarily defeated at the end, leaving a cloud of ambiguity. In the case of "Birds", not only do the attacks seem purely arbitrary, yet the movie ends with one unforgettable interrogation mark, keeping a great mystery for the reasons of their attacks and the way to defeat them. Many essays traced an interesting parallel between the attacks of the girls and the relationship that involves the male character with the women of his life, applying a sort of sexual innuendo in the bird's attack. As much as I was fascinated by these readings, I must admit that it's nothing compared to the film as a visual experience.Hitchcock said it himself: "If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on." From that basis, "The Birds" is his greatest film because the level of horror is transcended by outstanding visual effects and quite groundbreaking for their time.
Who can't be left with a sheer terror when witnessing the scene where the birds ruins a little girl's birthday or attack a group of running and screaming children, when we discover a store owner with plucked eyes, a gutsy shot that probably had the same effect than the decapitated head in "Jaws". Indeed, birds as ruthless and democratic in their targets as the shark from "Jaws", they attack children, women, old people as to sustain the idea of a truly apocalyptic universe where everyone's life is threatened, and the feeling is even scarier because since we don't know where this comes from, we don't know how to end it. If the special effects were mature for their ages, how about the fact that Hitchcock didn't let the birds be defeated. It's such a pervert yet delightful move that couldn't have been more powerful,in the iconic last shot where a literally sea of birds occupy the house and we feel that at any moments, the protagonists would 'get it', nothing happens but we still endure one of the most suspenseful moments in cinema's history.
The attacks where about horror, and terror, but the last scene is all about suspense, because you just don't know if the bomb will explode or not and if it does when, and you can only breath when 'The End' appears, but we're still not sure about the character's fate. Anyone who wants to make a horror thriller should watch "The Birds" because it's landmark for the genre that elevates violence to a level never reached before the 'New Hollywood' wave. Proof that Hitchcock was never an old-school director and remained one of the most influential, and one of the few privileged one, along with Fellini and Bergman, who inspired an adjective.
"The Birds" is a Hitchcockian masterpiece.