The Birds

 A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people there in increasing numbers and with increasingly befuddling viciousness.

This movie was not personally enjoyable for me. I enjoyed the idea of the ambiguous plot and vague reasoning behind the bizarre occurrences, but I felt that it did not reach a concluding zenith and therefore was slightly anticlimactic.

It’s hard to get your head around, and the first time you see that it actually happened, it’s somewhat astounding. Many people claim that The Birds is Hitchcock’s last great film. While it doesn’t reach the same levels of the three films that came before it, it’s still easy to see why it’s regarded as one of the director’s most well known works.

After meeting a man (Rod Taylor) in a pet shop, a San Francisco socialite (Tippi Hedren) travels to his hometown. While there, suspicious events involving birds begin to take place around the town.

Hitchcock’s infatuation with blonde actresses has been well documented, and his relationship with Hedren just as much. He did know how to pick his actresses though, and Hedren, in her first role in any movie, shines here. She’s natural, playful, and somewhat cold. She plays up that socialite aspect of her character really well.

The rest of the supporting cast is equally as impressive, especially Suzanne Pleshette, who plays the woman that’s been interested in Taylor for years. Watching Pleshette and Hedren interact with each other make for some of the most fun parts of the film.

Hitchcock develops Jessica Tandy and Taylor’s relationship nicely, and the little pieces of character backstory that Hitchcock provides the audience with regarding Tandy’s unwillingness to accept any woman as her son’s girlfriend help expand the character even further, rather than just being portrayed as an overprotective mother.

The film isn’t extremely scary, but the shock factor alone make for some nice chills. Hitchcock showed off his ability to scare audiences with Psycho, so to transition back to color for another horror film, and utilizing the bright color of blood, it allows for something extra that wasn’t available to him earlier.

Even though I appreciate these factors of the movie, I cannot find it in me to like it. It's no way akin to Psycho in it's execution and brilliance, even though being directed by Hitchcock.

I am a person who appreciates a good McGuffin - however, I also enjoy it being resolved. This is probably why I disliked North by Northwest as much as I did, it seemed very single-layered and meaningless. The same applies for this film - the McGuffin was shoved in our faces, we became enthralled, we were made to watch as it eviscerated our orbital cavities, and then it simply disappeared into the distance along with the characters among a feathery sea. I don't appreciate that, and frankly, it leaves me feeling rather cheated at the end, and not in a good way.

I generally like an unsatisfying ending: many character deaths, ambiguous futures, indicative looks, subtextual indications etc etc...however, I do want it to mean something, the McGuffin is there  as a Plot B to add to Plot A. Plot A makes you think, while Plot B sits behind an opaque window and hits you with sporadic doses of viscerally occurring feelings. The way the elements of this Thriller played out made me lack any sort of empathy for...anything, really. The hapless hero being a rather fickle, irritating, misogynistically portrayed damsel , and the villain with better means to make the (evil) cause being birds did not make things any better.

Conclusively: It was a technically good example of a thriller, but not my cup of tea as a movie.