The Birds
Just finished watching Hitchcocks ‘The Birds’. It’s one of those films that I have always been meaning to see and bought the DVD ages ago but never quite got round to watching. Did the same with ‘On The Waterfront’ and when I finally got round to watching that I was damn glad I did as it’s a really good film and at least I’ve now watched the ‘I Coulda Been A Contender’ line.
With ‘The Birds’ though I am thoroughly disappointed, even a little annoyed. Billed as being a great film showing what happens when birds decide to attack, and it was supposed to be quite a scary film and one of Hitchcocks better films.
Well that is a load of bollocks. The film was pretty average and I accept that special effects weren’t amazing at the time the film was made but seriously, the bird attacks were just funny really. There wasn’t that much scary about the film really as it’s just a load of birds flying at people every now and then and people running around like idiots trying to get away from them.
This process of the birds attacking every now and then continued for pretty much the whole movie so you just get treated to about 3/4 attacks by the bird flocks.
The ending though is something that just annoyed me. Now I don’t mind it when films don’t feel the need to explain exactly everything that happened in the film and treat people with a degree of respect in that they don’t need the story explained to them in detail. ‘No Country For Old Men’ finished pretty suddenly, even to the effect that a few of the kids in front of me at the cinema turned around to look at me with shocked looks on their faces, pretty much asking ‘What the fuck? Has the movie really just finished like that?’
‘The Birds’ didn’t even have the decency to explain anything about what was going on, you’re just expected to sit there watching a woman go to Bodega Bay to meet a man she met in a bird shop in San Francisco. Weird stuff starts happening with birds and then we get treated to a few ‘terrifying’ attacks by the birds, people run around, get a few scratches on them and then we get the last act of the film as the main protagonists holed up in their house holding off yet another attack by the birds. The attack then stops, they all get in a car and drive off and the films ends.
No explanation at all as to what the attacks were about, what caused them or what happened after they drove off. Did they get away safely, were they attacked by yet another load of birds, did they get away and then the army come in to blow the shit out of the birds? Who knows, Hitchcock obviously thought he’d live up to being the ‘master of suspense’ and tell you precisely bugger all about what just happened.
So there you go, how easy it is to be a master of suspense if you can get away with having someone from the city go to a small bay, meet a man who will help protect her later on, have some dodgy effects show about 3/4 bird flock attacks, a few people get injured, the odd person dies and then you can end it with the lead characters just driving away and not explain anything at all.
I’ll let Hitchcock off with ‘Psycho’ as that was pretty damn good, and by all acounts ‘Rear Window’ and ‘Vertigo’ are meant to be good too, but for ‘The Birds’ he can shove right off.
