The Birds (1963) Review

"I hardly think a few birds are going to bring about the end of the world."

-Mrs. Bundy

Socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) is the victim of a practical joke by defense attorney, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor).  Seeking revenge, and wanting to get to know him better, Melanie follows Mitch to his mother's house in Bodega Bay.  As the two start to fall for each other, the love story is interrupted by flocks of birds attacking any person in sight.  Now Melanie and Mitch have to protect his family and fight off the birds if they want to make it out of Bodega Bay alive.

What Works:

This was the first time I had ever watched the entirety of The Birds.  I had only see one part of it before and that is the scenes at the diner and the attack on the town immediately afterward.  These scenes are really terrific.  The dialogue in the diner is all fantastic and we get some really great characters, plus the town attack is wonderfully chaotic.  It's a classic sequence and a lot of fun.

I also enjoyed the attack on Lydia's (Jessica Tandy) house in the 3rd act of the film.  It's another exciting sequence that reminded me of a zombie film.  I particularly liked the birds pecking through the front door.  It's a terrifying image.

Jessica Tandy is excellent as Mitch's mother, Lydia.  She has by far the best performance of the film and I love when she starts pelting Mitch with ridiculous questions.

Finally, The Birds has excellent cinematography.  There are some really fantastic shots, such as the shot reveling a massive amount of crows behind Melanie and the shot of the crows chasing the kids down the street.  Even some of the less exciting scenes have some interesting shots with great blocking.

What Sucks:

As I mentioned above, I had seen the diner scene and the resulting attack on the town before, but that's it.  I didn't know what else was in this film.  I expected it to be similar to The Mist with a bunch of characters trapped in the diner having to deal with the bird menace.  That's not what this movie is at all and I found what we got instead to be disappointing.  The characters introduced in the diner are all interesting, but we never see any of them again, apart from our two leads.  If there was to be a remake of The Birds, I would like them to go more in the direction of The Mist.  I think that would be a more compelling film.

The biggest problem with this movie is that it's boring.  It's 2 hours long and it simply doesn't need to be.  The first 50 minutes of the film has basically nothing to do with the birds.  It's a dull romance that I had zero interest in.  There are tons of dull stretches where nothing of interest happens and that's extremely disappointing coming from Alfred Hitchcock.

I really didn't care for either of the two leads.  The opening sequence introducing Melanie and Mitch was confusing and made me dislike both characters immediately, and since the next 50 minutes were very dull, my opinion never really changed.  I didn't care about either of them and the film spends way too much time developing there romance.  There was a much more efficient and interesting way to do this.

I realize that for 1963 the special effects are fantastic, but still, the film has not aged well.  Most of the bird attack scenes really took me out of the film.  In the chimney scene, it's very obvious that the actors are flailing at thin air and when the children are attacked as they leave school, I could tell they were basically running in place while they were attacked.  It's very distracting and ruined any immersion I had in the film.

Verdict:

I found The Birds to mostly be tedious and boring.  It's extremely overrated.  There are some great sequences, excellent cinematography, and a fantastic performance from Jessica Tandy, but the lead characters suck, most of the movie is boring, and the special effects are distracting.  If I had seen this in 1963 or when I was younger, I may have liked it more, but I have to say, I did not care for this film and I don't understand the acclaim it has received.

 4/10: Bad