+++ Opinion +++
Imagine a film with a hair-raising initial idea just before Sharknado level being as gripping as Jaws. Everywhere it would chirp: “The surprise of the year”, “Impossible good!” And “This film should never be that mega!” Miraculously, because Alfred Hitchcock taught us back in 1963 that if you write off a movie based on its premise, you’ve got a bird – namely with the ingenious animal horror “The Birds”.
On the surface, it’s just that all feathered animals are a little more pushy than city pigeons when spotting people biting into a crusty bun. In Hitchcock’s hands, however, it becomes a milestone in goosebump cinema that delights genre fans as much as those who don’t like it. Today, September 18, 2022, arte is showing “The Birds” at 8:15 p.m. Afterwards, from 10.10 p.m., the accompanying documentary “Tippi Hedren and the wild animals” will be shown.
At a pet store, Mitchell “Mitch” Brenner (Rod Taylor) meets Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), a witty millionaire’s daughter. Melanie recently made headlines with her antics, but that doesn’t stop Mitch from teasing her. She loves to play the game, which is why she shows up alone at Mitch’s childhood home in Bodega Bay just for a joke, where she is promptly attacked by an aggressive seagull. Nevertheless, she does not see the point of leaving the coastal town. Without further ado, she rents a guest room from the teacher Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette), with whom Mitch once had an affair.
Annie is overly accommodating to Melanie and comes clean about Mitch’s mother Lydia’s (Jessica Tandy) smothering motherhood. Apparently she doesn’t want any other woman in her son’s life besides herself and Mitch’s sister Cathy (Veronica Cartwright). As if that wasn’t scary enough, the strange encounters with the feathered species are also increasing. Horror arises, which resides in the eternal DashFUN best list of horror cinema at the proud place of accident 13…
“The Birds” nests in a fascinating gray area: On the one hand, it is atypically close to everyday audience life for a Hitchcock film – there are no murderers, no lethal mix-ups and no conspiracies. Just a woman falling for a man with a bossy mother and a bunch of snotty birds. On the other hand, it’s probably Hitchcock’s most unrealistic hit, because in real life there are murderers, lethal mistakes and conspiracies. So far, however, mankind has been spared a bird apocalypse.
This paradoxical fluttering between plausibility and exaggeration is a massive part of The Birds’ universal, timeless appeal. Because it leads to unpredictability, an exciting alternation of fun with a young couple-to-be, psychological shoals and the terrifying unreality of the impossible but conceivable bird attacks. But perhaps the biggest trick behind The Birds is that Evan Hunter’s script doesn’t provide clear answers as to what drives the birds.
Because of the narrative emphasis, there isn’t even room for explanations! Thus, the mystery doesn’t feel like a glaring void. Instead, she takes care of it an underlying, drastic sense of threat. At least for that part of the audience that finds inexplicable danger creepy. However, if you don’t listen to this part, the movie doesn’t falter.
Because Hitchcock and Hunter shaped their template, a short story by Daphné Du Maurier, into an accessible, gripping story that can be accepted as daring flight. Or you take the thematic set pieces and create your own experience of horror. “The Birds” can be understood as symbolizing the constant nuclear threat: On the big screen, animals that are admired and quite useful are suddenly turned into pure terror. Just as “our friend, the atom” suddenly held the world beyond the screen in suspense.
Or one sees the rebellion of the birds as a clarification of the suppressed sexuality of the protagonists fighting for freedom. Be it the grumpy mother. Or Mitch, who is snippy and willing to flirt, but unexpectedly shys away from overly serious advances. Or his ex, who makes Melanie more beautiful eyes than was generally tolerated in 1963.
Whether you want to hatch an interpretation in your own head or not: The natural, witty chemistry between Hedren and Taylor alone gives the film wings. They ensure that you get excited when the screwball romance off the coast of northern California, beautifully filmed by cinematographer Robert Burks, turns into a strange animal horror. It doesn’t matter how you stood at the beginning of the premise. Not to mention the experimental background noise created by electronic music pioneer Oskar Sala and composers Remi Gassmann and Bernard Herrmann.
Therefore, it is not a new insight that hatches from the egg here, but a truth that the sparrows have been whistling from the rooftops for almost 60 years: “The Birds” is goose bumps for everyone who can get involved with this horror. Wonderful horror entry for all genre chicks who are still too fluffy for liters of blood, guts, loud ghosts and real-life psychological terror. And if you think these superficial horrors are only for the nitwitted, pick out the multi-faceted subtext, damn it!
