A short story turned into a two-hour movie.

Rating: 9/10 (2 August 2001)

Daphné Du Maurier's work is a short story,which characters are not those depicted in the movie.But Hitchcock did not betray the writer.His ending is as open as that of Du Maurier.It's one of the very rare Hitch movie that does not feature the de rigueur happy end,although some other finals are dark (see "shadow of a doubt","psycho","the rope") Only the material for a short,hence the necessity to develop the plot,to replace the initial family of farmers,complete with children ,by thoroughly new characters:this is the main flaw of this movie:Annie (Pleshette) seems reduced to a walk-on:it seems that her relations with Mitch's mother are the cause for their breaking off.The mother has almost always been part of the Hitchcock 's universe (check "psycho","strangers on a train" "Marnie"- on a tragic mode-,and "north by norwest" , "to catch a thief"-on a comic one-)Jessica Tandy is a remote mother,but overpossessive.Tippi Hedren's character is a banal one:a spoiled rich kid ,who encounters another stereotype:the strong and surly
big-hearted he-man (Rod Taylor). Hitchcock's genius shines in his direction:the scene that shows Hedren sitting on a bench near the school,while one by one the birds are arriving is an absolute classic,plundered by too many directors.In the indispensable Truffaut book,we discover that the master used to draw his scenes before filming them;the drawings from the scene I talk about above are downright fascinating.All the scenes which feature the birds are extraordinary and a lot of disaster films with bigger budgets cannot hold a candle to them. And did you notice that in Perkins's office ("Psycho",the precedent movie),stuffed birds were waiting???..