xoxoxo e: favorite movie #83 - halloween edition: the birds

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

favorite movie #83 - halloween edition: the birds

Favorite movies that have had an impact on me - #83 - The Birds (1963) - Hitchcock based this innovative film on a short story by Daphne Du Maurier. But apart from the seemingly random and ever-building attacks by birds, which featured in the original story, this film is all Hitch. Screenwriter Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) expanded the story at the director's request, to feature a Hitchcock cool blonde, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), as the heroine of the piece. Hitchcock, as we have learned many years later, crossed all sorts of boundaries with actress Tippi Hedren, but it should be noted that for all of his films featuring enigmatic blondes, they were never in the leading role. They were always the focus of the leading man in the film (North By Northwest, Rear Window, Vertigo, To Catch A Thief, Psycho, etc.) But for this film, and the subsequent film he made with Hedren, Marnie, her character is the protagonist. That is significant. If he hadn't pushed her to a point where she refused to work with him again, one wonders what other female-driven stories he might have told.

But I digress. Back to the film: San Francisco socialite Melanie Daniels decides to pursue Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) from San Francisco where they had a meet-cute in a pet shop, all the way upstate to his Bodega Bay weekend/family home. Her arrival seems to coincide with a series of vicious bird attacks on the town residents. The movie has no musical score, but does include bird sound effects, which add to the terror as the frequency and level of the attacks increase. Mitch is surrounded by women: his mother (Jessica Tandy), who initially resents Melanie's presence, his much younger sister (Veronica Cartwright), who immediately loves Melanie, and an old flame, Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette, in one of the most touching performances in a Hitchcock film), who welcomes Melanie, in a sad, world-weary way. No one in Bodega Bay is safe — from the birds or the director's special effects. Truly one of the all-time great films.