Tuesday, March 06, 2018
The Birds
- Commentary: Ah! My second chance to use the "horror" label in my catalogue of films!
I came by a circuitous route to owning this film. I did see this movie in the theater when it was initially released. I was 12. I watched the movie at an outdoor theater on Guam, which certainly added to the ambience of the film. I followed the movie with a reading of the short story, which was anti-climactic. Hitchcock used Daphne du Maurier's story as a springboard. However, the film had a huge impact on me. I think it may have been the first bleak film I'd seen. It left me so hungry for an upbeat ending that I spent days after my viewing rearranging my thinking about stories, films and life. Mind you, I was not unused to bleakness in literature. By the time I'd seen this movie I'd already read, and reveled in, Of Mice and Men, Two Years Before the Mast and Moby Dick, as well as a few other bleak classics. No, I never saw filmed versions of those. But, then, The Birds is in an entirely different class of film adaptation for me. It ushered me into an appreciation of the bleak film genre.
One of the treats of this particular press of this movie is all the extras. I haven't gone through all the supplemental material but what I've seen has increased my enjoyment of the movie at least a few-fold. This, however, isn't the reason I purchased the movie. A few months ago I read Camille Paglia's latest book and began catching myself up on interviews with her posted on YouTube. I'd read (and often been provoked by) almost everything she's written and love listening to her; it's like listening to an intelligent machine gun. Anyway, I thought I knew her book literature inside out. In addition, I was an original subscriber to Salon magazine in the old days when it was a startlingly good site and included the forum "The Well". Camille Paglia was an original contributor and I enjoyed her column. It came as a surprise to me, though, that she'd written a book about the movie The Birds. I searched it out. Reading it was a bit of a disappointment, but it heightened my interest in the movie, scenes from which had lodged in my memory long ago, especially since the reviewer of Paglia's book about the movie, in the previous link, included derisive pronouncement on the movie, itself, in contrast to how much it's been lauded over the years since its initial release. So, I checked the movie out of the library.
My memory of the movie had not failed me. There was good reason for it to have branded itself into my memory. I have very few Hitchcock movies in my collection. His movies are only occasionally of interest to me. Psycho, for instance, to me was, to quote out of context Myles Weber, the reviewer who wrote the above mentioned review of Paglia's book on The Birds [link to the Wikipedia write-up of this movie], a "dud"; I've never been interested enough in the film to figure out why it struck me that way. I knew, though, after checking out The Birds, I wanted to add it to my collection. I've watched it once since it arrived. I'll be watching it again.
The review for this specific movie, by the way, can be found in the page linked to the title of this post about halfway down DVD Savant's page. He reviewed all the movies found in "Alfred Hitchcock The Masterpiece Collection", so you'll need to scroll through other material before reaching the review for this movie.
Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Rod Taylor Mitch Brenner Tippi Hedren Melanie Daniels Jessica Tandy Lydia Brenner Veronica Cartwright Cathy Brenner Suzanne Pleshette Annie Hayworth Ethel Griffies Ornithologist Mrs. Bundy Charles McGraw Sebastian Sholes Lonny Chapman Deke Carter Elizabeth Wilson Helen Carter Ruth McDevitt Mrs. MacGruder Malcolm Atterbury Deputy Al Malone Richard Deacon Mitch's S.F. Neighbor
Release Date: 1963
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Labels: alfred-hitchcock, animal, drama4, fantasy1, film-art1, folk-horror, science-fiction1, suspense1, violence2
