The Birds is a 1963 suspense horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1952 novella The Birds by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few days.
| The Birds | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Screenplay by | Evan Hunter |
| Story by | Daphne du Maurier |
| Produced by | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Starring | Tippi Hedren Rod Taylor Jessica Tandy Suzanne Pleshette Veronica Cartwright |
| Cinematography | Robert Burks, ASC |
| Edited by | George Tomasini |
| Music by | Oskar Sala Remi Gassmann Bernard Herrmann |
| Distributed by | Universal Studios |
Release date |
|
Running time | 119 minutes |
| Country | Template:Film US |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2.5 million |
| Box office | $11,403,529 |
The screenplay was written by Evan Hunter. Though Hunter read Du Maurier's original novel, Hitchcock told him to forget it as all he wished to use was the title and the idea of birds attacking people.[1]
Plot
Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) is a young wealthy socialite who meets a lawyer, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), in a San Francisco pet shop. Mitch pretends to mistake her for a salesperson, which infuriates Melanie and leads her to inquire as to the reason for his behavior. He mentions a previous encounter that he had with her. Intrigued by Mitch, Melanie finds the address of his home in Bodega Bay, California. She drives there and visits his house by sneaking across the small harbor in a motor boat, leaving a note. As she is heading back across the bay, a seagull swoops down and inflicts a cut on her head.
Over the next few days, the avian attacks continue, as Melanie's relationship with Mitch, his clinging mother, Lydia (Jessica Tandy), his young sister, Cathy (Veronica Cartwright), and Cathy's teacher (who is also Mitch's ex lover) Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette) develops. The second strange bird incident occurs when Melanie stays for the night at Hayworth's house and a gull kills itself upon hitting the front door. The next attack occurs at Cathy's party. Avian violence escalates when Lydia discovers a friend dead in his bedroom.
After another attack by crows at the school, an argument erupts at the local bar. One resident believes the attacks are a sign of the apocalypse, but an out-of-town woman yells at them for scaring her children. An old woman (Ethel Griffies), an amateur ornithologist, insists that calling birds' behavior attacks is an exaggeration, and no bird species flocks and attacks. Despite her words, a motorist is attacked while filling his car with gasoline; he is knocked unconscious, and the gasoline continues to pump out onto the street. An explosion and fire result, and more deaths occur when there's another attack. While hiding inside the bar, the scared mother believes Melanie is the cause of these attacks. After this attack subsides, Melanie and Mitch find Annie dead on her front porch and Cathy crying at the window.
Melanie and Mitch's family take refuge in Mitch's house, boarding up the windows. The house is attacked by the birds and they almost manage to break through the doors. In the evening, when everyone else is asleep, Melanie hears noises from the upper floor and finds that the birds have broken through the roof. They attack her, sealing her in the room until Mitch comes to her rescue. Lydia and Mitch tend to Melanie, but determine she must get to a hospital. A sea of landed birds ripples menacingly around them as they leave the house but do not attack, aside from a few pecks. The radio reports several smaller bird attacks in nearby communities. Mitch drives the car slowly towards the road before picking up speed. The film concludes with the car driving away, down the coast road and out of sight, as thousands of birds watch.
Cast
- Tippi Hedren - Melanie Daniels
- Rod Taylor - Mitch Brenner
- Jessica Tandy - Lydia Brenner
- Veronica Cartwright - Cathy Brenner
- Suzanne Pleshette - Annie Hayworth
Production
Development
On 18 August 1961, residents in the town of Capitola, California, awoke to find sooty shearwaters slamming into their rooftops, and their streets covered with dead birds. News reports suggested domoic acid poisoning (amnesic shellfish poisoning) as the cause. According to a local newspaper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Alfred Hitchcock requested news copy in 1961 to use as "research material for his latest thriller".[2]
Soundtrack
The Birds lacks a conventional incidental score but rather uses sound effects and sparse source music in counterpoint to calculated silences. Oskar Sala and Remi Gassmann[3] are credited with "electronic sound production and composition," and Hitchcock's previous musical collaborator Bernard Herrmann has a credit as "sound consultant." Some of the bird sounds were created by Sala and Gassmann on the Mixtur-Trautonium. Source music includes Claude Debussy's Deux arabesques, which Tippi Hedren's character plays on piano, and "Risseldy Rosseldy", an Americanized version of the Scottish folk song "Wee Cooper O'Fife", which is sung by the schoolchildren.
Premiere and awards
The film debuted at a prestigious invitational showing at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival[4] with Hitchcock and Hedren in attendance. In March 1963, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City also had an invitation-only screening of The Birds as part of a 50-film retrospective of Hitchcock's film work. The MOMA series had a booklet with a monograph on Hitchcock written by Peter Bogdanovich.
The Birds was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Special Effects. The effect of the flapping of the birds' wings was done in the Disney Studios by animator Ub Iwerks who used the Disney's sodium vapor process ("yellow screen"). The SV process films the subject against a screen lit with narrow-spectrum sodium vapor lights. Unlike most compositing processes, SVP actually shoots two separate elements of the footage simultaneously using a beam-splitter. One reel is regular film stock and the other a film stock with emulsion sensitive only to the sodium vapor wavelength. This results in very precise matte shots compared to blue screen special effects, necessary due to "fringing" of the image from the birds' rapid wing flapping.[5]
However, the 1963 Special Effects award went to Cleopatra. Tippi Hedren received the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actress in 1964, sharing it with Ursula Andress and Elke Sommer. She also received the Photoplay Award as Most Promising Newcomer. The film ranked number one of the top ten foreign films selected by the Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards. The Association also awarded Alfred Hitchcock the Best Director Award for the film.[6]
Sequel and remake
A sequel, The Birds II: Land's End, was released in 1994 starring a different cast of characters. The movie was a direct-to-television film and was met with very negative reviews. The film's director, Rick Rosenthal, took his name off of it, opting instead to use the infamous Hollywood pseudonym Alan Smithee.[7] It featured co-star Tippi Hedren in a different role from the one in the original film.
In 2007, Variety reported that Naomi Watts would star in Universal's remake of the film. The remake would also star George Clooney and would be directed by Casino Royale director Martin Campbell. The production would be a joint venture by Platinum Dunes and Mandalay Pictures.[8] Later in 2007, original star Tippi Hedren publicly stated her opposition to the remake, saying "Why would you do that? Why? I mean, can’t we find new stories, new things to do?".[9]
Development has been stalled since the original announcement in 2007. On June 16, 2009, Brad Fuller of Dimension Films stated that no further developments had taken place, commenting "We keep trying, but I don't know."[10] Martin Campbell was eventually replaced as director by Platinum Dunes host Dennis Iliades in December 2009.[11][12]
James Nguyen, the director of the B-movie Birdemic: Shock and Terror, said his film was a tribute to Hitchcock's The Birds.[13]
References
- ^ p.201 Gottlieb, Sidney & Brookhouse, Christopher An Interview with Evan Hunter in Framing Hitchcock: Selected Essays from the Hitchcock Annual Wayne State University Press
- ^ Wally Trabing, Santa Cruz Sentinel (August 18, 1961 and August 21, 1961)
- ^ by "Blue" Gene Tyranny. "All Music Guide". Allmusic.com. Retrieved 2010-08-29.
- ^ "Festival de Cannes: The Birds". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-02-27.
- ^ "Top SFX shots No.6: The Birds". Retrieved 2009-01-02.
- ^ "69th & 70th Annual Hero Honda Bengal Film Journalists' Association (B.F.J.A.) Awards 2007-Past Winners List 1964". Archived from the original on 2008-02-21. Retrieved 2008-03-10.
- ^ Reviewed by Ken Tucker (1994-03-18). "Entertainment Weekly Review". Ew.com. Retrieved 2010-08-29.
{{cite web}}: Text "Mar 18, 1994" ignored (help) - ^ Marc Graser, Tatiana Siegel (October 18, 2007). "Naomi Watts set for 'Birds' remake". Variety. Retrieved June 21, 2009.
- ^ Shawn Adler (October 16, 2007). "Original Scream Queen Decries 'Birds' Remake As Foul". MTV. Retrieved June 21, 2009.
- ^ Worst Previews.com "The Birds" Remake May Not Happen
- ^ "'The Birds' Remake Gets A New Director?". Screenrant.com. 2009-12-03. Retrieved 2010-08-29.
- ^ "Rumor Control: 'The Birds' Remake Begins at the 'Last House on the Left'?". Bloody-disgusting.com. Retrieved 2010-08-29.
- ^ "Is Birdemic worst film ever made?". BBC News. 2010-04-06. Retrieved 2010-08-29.
External links
- The Birds at IMDb
- The Birds at the TCM Movie Database
- "The Day of the Claw" (monograph on The Birds) at Senses of Cinema
- Template:Amg movie
- The Birds at Box Office Mojo
- The Birds at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Birds Screenshot Gallery at Alfred Hitchcock Fans Online
- Excellent analytical summary by Tim Dirks at AMC Filmsite
- Complete script of the film
- Video Essay on "Why Do the Birds Attack?"
Audio
- Radio Memories : The Birds with Herbert Marshall (July 20, 1953)
- Radio Nostalgia Network: Escape: "The Birds" (July 10, 1954)