Alfred Hitchcock's Crowning Achievement

Rating: 10/10 (21 August 2005)

Dazed and confused by the pure brilliance of Hitchcock's greatest film, many critics sank to the cheap shot evaluation "It's for the birds," and thus undercut the initial box office for this picture. The laugh would come later as THE BIRDS scored whammy ratings over and over, every time it was played on TV, for decades. Based on a razor thin short story, Hitchcock elaborated into a multi-teared suspense drama juxtaposed with the strongly drawn romantic relationship between Tippi Hedrin and Rod Taylor. Hitchcock was the "master of suspense" but how many other of his films can match the raw suspense, hitting the viewer over and over, of this masterpiece. The answer is zero. PSYCHO's asset was shock; THE BIRDS was suspense. From the initial single bird attack at the docks of Bodega Bay, to the brilliant scenes at the schoolyard, to the unparalleled fear inside the boarded-up house, no other Hitchcock film even came close regarding suspense. The scene censored from early TV screenings, running 1.5 seconds, where Jessica Tandy enters her neighbor's farmhouse and finds him dead --- the fact that they'd cut 1.5 seconds says it all. The romance has real magic to it, and Hitchcock succeeds with this despite the absence of his trademark heavy-necking scene. Finally, the suspense factor obviously is gone after the first viewing; nonetheless this film stands up tall for multiple replays. An absolute classic.