Ahead of its time in more than one way

Rating: 8/10 (12 August 2015)

Leave it up to Hitchcock to find the horror in something ordinary, but he did just that with THE BIRDS. This also happens to be the first Hitchcock film I ever saw. From what I can remember I thought it was fine, but nothing really spectacular. Now having seen it for the second time, with a lot more film-watching under my belt, I feel like I appreciate it more for what it is, what it meant to cinema going forward, and as a part of Hitchcock's oeuvre. Like all of Hitchcock's films, it takes a simple premise, in this case a socialite who follows a potential boyfriend to his family's small hometown, and while there birds start attacking. On the surface, and for most of the people in the audience, this is probably enough and Hitchcock would probably have agreed. However, there is more to the film than the innovative score and still-impressive visual effects. THE BIRDS also works as a metaphor for the (apparently) rising violence in modern society. Along the way, a few themes are recycled from previous efforts such as SABOTEUR and PSYCHO, but the film I feel is the closest kin would be SHADOW OF A DOUBT. In that film, you have menace coming to a small town in the form of a person, and everything turns out alright in the end. Here, we see menace come to a small town again, but something even more innocent on the surface and more pervasive; and, in a rather pessimistic turn, the ending is left ambiguous. I'm not sure if Hitchcock intended the film to be read this way, but in a world where people are afraid of getting shot when out at the theater or, in a more abstract sense, being the victims of terror attacks, THE BIRDS couldn't be more thematically relevant today, perhaps even more so than when it first came out. And really, that's the beauty of Hitchcock. He was able to tap into the human psyche and fear in a way that few others can (or could). From a technical perspective, the film perhaps doesn't hold up as well, but you can hardly hold that against it. Sure, the visual effects aren't as believable as some modern CGI, but they're still rather effective. Yes, Hitchcock's reliance on rear projection can be distracting at times, but that's a feature of his work I've begrudgingly come to accept. What isn't so forgivable is the downgrade in acting talent from his previous pictures. Tippi Hedren is serviceable as Melanie Daniels, and does get a nice character arc, but she's no Grace Kelly or Kim Novak. Rod Taylor (Mitch) is a handsome face, and not a whole lot more; and hopefully I never have to see the child actress who plays his sister Cathy in anything else. By contrast, Jessica Tandy did well in her supporting role as Mitch's mother. What was most impressive to me was the experimental score (supervised by Bernard Herrmann) that was used in lieu of traditional orchestration. Often, some of my favorite moments in other Hitchcock films have been ones with little to no music, and the effect here of having a mixture of simulated and real bird sounds was chilling at times. There was also more ominous moments, like the well-known sequence that shows a children's jungle gym completely overtaken by a murder of crows and, of course, a literal bird's eye view of an explosion that shows the birds moving in for the kill. Overall, I can comfortably say that I liked this film a lot more on second viewing and it definitely ranks up with Hitchcock's best.