An exercise in slow-burning terror, iconic imagery and inexplicable dread

Rating: Null/10 (9 June 2008)

Cinema isn't about reality. Hitchcock understood this fact; purposely creating worlds that were there to be controlled and manipulated. Think back to the theatrical nature of the high class apartment building in his earlier film Rope (1948) and how the director managed to skilfully manipulate the physical space so as to literally close in on the characters as their crimes were eventually discovered. Elsewhere, we have the use of obvious forced perspectives in Rear Window (1954) and how the flat, artificial presentation of the world within the film becomes not only a comment on the nature of cinema itself but a veritable dissertation on the relationship between the audience and the characters, and indeed, between the audience and the film. Likewise, the use of colour in Vertigo (1958) was also an abstraction; moving as far away from actuality as you can possibly get in order to underpin the yearnings of fear and desire so central to that writhing, fragmented plot.
If you attempt to convey "realism" on screen you limit yourself both emotionally and creatively. Hitchcock knew this, and The Birds (1963) perhaps illustrates the fact clearer than anything else that he directed. When sitting down to view the film, the trick is to approach it with an open mind; open to the time and the context of the age when it was released and indeed, within the context of the world that Hitchcock is attempting to create. It is important to remember that Hitchcock's background was in silent film. He trained at the UFA film studios in Germany at the height of the expressionist movement and took the various processes and techniques acquired there and applied them to functioning narratives with identifiable characters. The world created in Hitchcock's work is artificial, but self-consciously so. The colours, perspectives, movements, actions, etc are all deliberate; leading the audience constantly towards those iconic set pieces and manipulating both the film and the viewers into engaging with the story on an entirely visceral and immediate level.
Like the previous Psycho (1960), the first thing that strikes us about The Birds is its sheer iconic worth. Whether you're familiar with the film or not, you will have experienced these images referenced, spoofed, regurgitated and ripped-off a number of times in both film and television. Think about that first seagull attack on the lake, or the birds slowly gathering on the playground jungle gym as the children sing obliviously inside. These images have passed into the public consciousness; with Hitchcock taking weighty and important themes and motifs and simplifying them into one single, iconic image. This is where the power of Hitchcock's work really is, with the director taking simple stories and installing them with an element of human interest, an air of subversive humour, a gleeful disregard for convention and the ability to interpret difficult and complicated scenes in such a way as to be comprehendible for any audience, regardless of cultural background.
Another reason why The Birds is still considered an important film is down to the enigmatic, mysterious and all the more frightening nature of the attacks and the complete lack of explanation for why they are taking place. Hitchcock felt that any attempt to give context to the violence of the film would tip the drama into the realms of science fiction. By refusing the audience an explanation the film becomes more terrifying; plunging the characters and the audience into the unknown and creating this abstract, surrealist presentation of man vs. nature that is open to a variety of wider interpretations. You can also view it on a symbolic level, with the whole thing being seen as an nonfigurative romantic comedy, in which the bird attacks central to the plot come to represent the friction in the relationship between these two central characters; forcing them together and then forcing them to remain together when the natural instinct is to simply leave.
In this respect, the film becomes an almost Buñuelian comment on relationships, further complimented by the opening scenes wherein Hitchcock seem to be setting up a frothy, romantic screwball comedy. Again, if you're open to the film and the context of the filmmaker's style of working, the ideas presented by a film can be more interesting than the film itself. By going against convention and leaving the horror of the film unspoken and unexplained the film becomes more motivating. Sadly, many younger audiences demand that a film explain everything lest it be thought a failure. This is backward logic for me. By leaving a sense of mystery to the film, Hitchcock creates something that is more terrifying, as well as being more lingering and vague. Once something is explained it becomes comfortable; it loses its edge because as an audience we're then able to rationalise the horror. With The Birds, Hitchcock creates this sense of escalating dread which builds and builds in way that leads to complete anarchy and then ends on an apocalyptic sense of devastation without ever revealing why.
If you forgive some of the more dated production effects (which, if you truly love cinema, you'll already be accustomed to anyway) then The Birds, as a thriller, is still an interesting and completely entertaining work; establishing a number of themes and characteristics that are still seen in many contemporary films, from the emphasis on a flawed, all-American family, to the small town sense of isolation further developed in films like Jaws (1975) and Arachnophobia (1991), to the idea of a love affair developing amidst the carnage and destruction. However, unlike many other contemporary films, The Birds offers a sense of mystery and the lingering sense of unexplainable dread that is really quite fascinating. It might not be Hitchcock's greatest film, but the sheer iconic weight of the images, the depth of the characters and the performances of the cast mark it out as a real classic of slow-building tension, terror and a surreal depiction of the ultimate ecological nightmare.