One of Hitchcock's most suspenseful

Rating: 10/10 (6 March 2011)

Of all Hitchcock's movies, this horror flick is one of his most suspenseful; the most tension filled. He created this palpable tension by focusing the camera on the person fidgeting, or moving, or just sitting.
The film resembles very much Greek Tragedy: clearly Mitch's mother does not want her son to leave her, she fears profoundly the loneliness of her senior years--isolated without her son. She resents Annie and yet she makes friends with Annie; by the end of the movie she embraces Melanie, clearly an evocation of Mary the Mother of Jesus embracing Jesus in Michael Angelo's PIETA.
Is Melanie the cause of the bird's attack? And what is the specific motivation of her as symbol to the birds to justify attacking humanity? Melanie as symbol to the birds, what does she represent? During many scenes, Melanie incongruously wears a fur coat; crossing Bodega Bay in a skiff, she wears this fur coat. At the end of the movie she, wounded by the birds, wears the fur coat as she is escorted into Mitch's car.
Does she become symbol to the birds by carrying love birds in a cage?
Spring 2010 saw the British Petroleum pipeline explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, spilling millions of gallons of oil into the sea for more than 90 days, devastating the ecology. In one news item, a large oil soaked bird is attacking a small boat with it's beak, as if to say: "You got me into this mess, now get me out." Humanity's predation of planet earth could very well spell the demise of Planet Earth's habitability--a millenia sooner than what might be expected from natural processes; for example, expansion of the sun in a next billion years to that of a red giant first broiling the planet then engulfing the planet. But Humanity's predation could sterilize the oceans of food, sterilize the atmosphere with excessive co2 emissions, sterilize the land with deforestation.
And this is Humanity's legacy to Planet Earth. The birds of the Air, and the Beasts of the Field are victims of this mass extinction brought on by Humanity's predation. Alfred Hitchcock's tale is a Greek tragedy about an unfolding mass extinction brought about by humanity's demonic predation; the birds are simply seeking revenge.
Or is this giving Hitchcock more credit than he deserves? A movie taking on more weight than the artist intended. The artist must always be reminded that he/she is not the final arbitrator of a movie's interpretation. A movie succeeds because it evokes more than it's immediate import. So while Hitchcock did not intend a morality tale on the environment, some fifty years after the movie, it has transcended itself to a morality tale about the environment and ecology.
I saw the movie when it came out in 1962 and then saw it again at Oakland''s art deco Paramount Theatre; it had lost none of its force in those years; if anything, the modern ecology movement and warnings of global warming and a sixth mass extinction brought on by Humanity's predation made the movie even more powerful and moving.