Romance/Horror/Comedy/Apocalypse/Thriller...

Rating: Null/10 (10 March 2004)

An enigmatic chiller posing as a romance, Hitchcock and screenwriter Evan Hunter (better known as crime writer Ed McBain) remove the film of context - the puzzling Whyness of what is happening is something that stands over the film with far more anxiety and unease than do any of the individual attacks. The film has a scene where everyone offers up an explanation - they considering the Bomb and pollution - but Hitchcock and Hunter sit neither confirming nor denying. The ending is perhaps one of the most famous anticlimaxes in film history and comes with a baffling perplexity - after the intensively sustained onslaught of the previous night, hundreds of birds allow the humans to leave the farmhouse and simply sit and watch as they drive away. Hitchcock reportedly did film an ending but chose not to leave it in. As a result he has created a film that is not only removed of source and explanation but also of outcome - rather than ending with the birds defeated or triumphant, the film now just fades off on an anxiety-inducing state of ambiguity and unease.
The Birds doesn't quite rank up among the real Hitchcock classics like Saboteur (1942), Lifeboat (1944), Rear Window (1954) or Psycho (1960) - but is no less a great film for such. The bird attacks are mounted with superb artistry in the same clipped, droll and immaculately staged style we have come to know from Hitchcock. There is a terrifying sequence with Tippi Hedren trapped inside a phone-booth where Hitchcock places the camera inside the booth sharing the claustrophobia of the assault. And the climactic siege of the farmhouse (which is the only real connection to the slim Daphne Du Maurier short story that the film is based on) with Rod Taylor fighting off frenzied avian suicide attacks in trying to barricade the house and save a mobbed Hedren from the attic contains some real seat-edge suspense.

Like Psycho the film has a lengthy preamble, where Hitchcock involves one in the unrelated day-to-day happenings of its characters before disorientatingly switching tracks to the main story. One is drawn into the rather silly and petty prank Hedren plays on Taylor and her sudden desire to follow him - another of Hitchcock's characteristic long pursuit sequences - but, as in Psycho and the long preamble involving Janet Leigh's theft of the money and flight to the motel, this is only extended prologue to the main story. Hitchcock was playing with audience's expectation of films and pulling the rug out from under them way before anyone else ever was.

The casting of Hedren and Taylor is an admirable pairing - both play off each other with a sly, mocking charm. Poor optical work on the bird attacks does regrettably lend certain artificiality to the film - and some modern genre purveyors have tended to downplay the rest of the film's excellence as a result. Saul Bass creates the finest of his famed credits sequences for Hitchcock - one with animated black bird shapes frenziedly screeching across a white background while the credits form as piecemeal shapes around them. Despite the listing of Hitchcock's regular composer Bernard Herrmann as sound consultant', the film has no score.
The Birds suffers from unintentional giggles. The sets are hugely unrealistic, and sometimes Taylor and Hedren are quite wooden. However, The Birds remains a hugely influential and extremely sadistic horror film.
Verdict  Dark, and blackly comic, The Birds will peck away at your sanity for its duration, and will have you looking at our feathered friends with suspicion for the rest of your days. ****