The Birds (1963)

The Birds is a film which makes me appreciate Hitchcock's technical ability to construct a tense, slow-burning thriller.

From a purely compositional standpoint, The Birds is very well done, with interesting, sometimes brilliant camerawork: the long, sweeping shots of the bay, as well as the tight, stabbing shots inside the attic, were some of my favourites from any Hitchcock film.

Similarly, The Birds is notable for its nuanced use of colour to promote pathetic fallacy, with the safe, comforting greens and blues of the Bay juxtaposed with the consuming, chilling black mass of the birds. Exquisite use of colour is a staple of Hitchcock's work, and the Birds is a fantastic example of this.

However, to watch this film with only the work behind the camera in mind would be doing it a big favour. The Birds really falls down when it comes to the pacing of its story. It felt as though I was watching a selection of non-sequiturs rammed together, with set piece after set piece served up in an increasingly dramatic fashion. This resulted in a disjointed viewing experience, taking me out of Bodega Bay and back into my classroom chair.

Another issue that I had with The Birds is that it portrayed no truly interesting characters. Melanie (Tippi Hedren) was bland and forgetful, a classic Hitchcockian blonde; Mitch (Rod Taylor) was stone-faced and poorly-realised ; his mother Lydia (Jessica Tandy) was another played-out Hitchcock motif, the overbearing mother; and his sister Annie (Suzanne Pleshette) was pure sugary annoyance throughout. If the film had just fleshed the characters a bit more, The Birds would have received a much higher mark.

Overall, I was rather unimpressed by this film: while, as always, Hitchcock displays his masterful use of framing and colour, the lack of a cohesive story and compelling characters leaves The Birds feeling less like a menacing crow and more like a dead duck.