In 1952, Daphne du Marier was already a world-famous writer because of the stupendous success of Rebecca, adapted for the cinema by Alfred Hitchcock some 10 years before. Around this time she released a book of short stories – The Apple Tree – where she developed a very impressive image (that of a farmer being attacked by a flock of seagulls while plowing a field) into a horror story. The Birds live in the county where she was born, Cornwall, shortly after the end of the Second World War where the fear of attack (airborne, unchecked) was real. In her story, a farmer, his family, and his community are under lethal attack by flocks of birds for no apparent reason.

On the other side of the ocean, in Hollywood, Hitchcock read the book and bet on repeating Rebecca‘s formula, adapting the story for the cinema in a film that used The Birds‘elements as a basis, coming up with another story altogether. Thus was born one of the greatest horror and director classics, released 60 years ago, in 1963.

Today, The Birds is yet another backdrop for another terrifying story, that of the director’s abusive and criminal relationship with his star, actress Tippi Hedren, but even without knowing the horrors of the shots, it is a tense, claustrophobic, terrifying film. and imitated ever since. The plot focuses on a series of sudden and unexplained violent bird attacks on the people of Bodega Bay, California over the course of a few days. Socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) is caught in the middle of the attack because she was in town looking for lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), with whom she ends up getting involved. When the town is isolated, Mitch and Melanie try to save his family and other innocents, until she herself is the target of an attack by the birds.

Tippi’s ‘visceral’ performance in her debut was contextualized years later when she accused the director of having attacked her with real birds, sexually harassed her, and using pure sadism to carry out the work. The classic attic attack lasted an entire week of shooting, with the actress injured and traumatized (but they would still do Marnie, years later).

With names like Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette, and Veronica Cartwright in the cast, The Birds was nominated for an Oscar for Best Special Effects. The film’s innovative storytelling is regarded as one of the smartest in cinema, with Alfred Hitchcock prolonging the suspense to a maximum by showing “nothing” for more than half the film. Fear gets bigger and bigger with the expectation of what will happen, alternating comedy and romance while building a claustrophobic environment. When the attack finally happens, it is terrifying, even more so because, as they point out, there are no monsters or murderers, it is simply the inversion of “normal” into “abnormal” with a revolt of nature without a specific fact to justify it. Filmed in color, there are still traumatic sequences (children being attacked and injured!) and how we see birds flocking to the background of the scene, in the face of unsuspecting victims.

The Birds premiered on March 28, 1963, in New York and was shown at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, with Hitchcock and Tippi in the audience. Not everyone liked it, not even Daphne DuMarier. But, for neither reason nor for evil, it is considered one of the most inspired in the director’s long and rich filmography. We certainly never look at any bird the same way again. It is not?

Search

Search