The first hour of The Birds contains so much interesting character drama, I’d be just as happy if the killer crows and gulls never showed up at all. Normally, you wait patiently in a film like this for the robots to reveal themselves, the wife to get kidnapped or (in this case) for the birds to attack. How refreshing that the character-filled opening section is just as exciting as the bird strikes. And how wonderfully suspenseful, because the film is called The Birds and we know where things are headed.
As befits the master of suspense, the first half builds tension brilliantly. Initial encounters between birds and people are brief and strange and easy to dismiss. However, the attacks intensify and soon there are deaths. Eventually, the threat is all too real. While the special effects fall short by today’s standards, they’re very impressive for their time and still emotionally effective. (Rod Taylor fights with a malevolent gull and you fully believe the murderous rage.) Plus, the imagery of birds attacking, preparing to attack or their bloodied bodies after an attack is wonderfully surreal.
There’s a sub-genre of horror films which depict man against nature. Perhaps the most well-known is Jaws. The very idea of birds deciding to take over is absurd, and birds don’t conjure up nightmares by themselves like spiders and snakes, but the viciousness of the later attacks – the sheer number of them – makes for some scary and exciting set pieces. When the camera cuts to an extreme long shot of a gas station on fire and then a gull pops really close up into the frame, my heart went into my throat. Coming after the bird expert’s diatribe of how many tens of billions of birds exist, all I could think was “we’re f**ked!”
It’s incredibly ballsy how open-ended this film is. Hitchcock seems to be building towards a final attack that never comes. Questions unanswered, but the film is as completely satisfying. I like the thought of people boarding themselves up inside their homes. Locked inside cages while the birds roam free outside.
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