24. The Birds

Alfred Hitchcock, 1963

I'd avoided this one for a long time - it's probably the only "major" Hitchcock that I haven't seen. There was never a particular reason for this, it just never seemed to appeal to me. I recently read the short story by Daphne Du Maurier, though, so I decided to give it a shot. The result was about what I figured it would be, and can't begin to compare to the scary and downright apocalyptic story.

Things start off pretty well. The first half of the movie, or so, work pretty well in a romantic comedy sort of way. I was actually enjoying it quite a bit. Then the birds came in, and with them the troubles. The problem is that the bird attacks just don't really work on film. Action scenes aren't really Hitchcock's forte, and that's what these amount to. His rigorously storyboarded and structured style doesn't mesh with the content very well. An animal attack needs an organic ferocity that is anathema to Hitchcock's style. He doesn't embarass himself, and the scenes are never silly or anything like that - they just don't achieve much beyond perfunctory mechanics. Where the movie fares better is in the buildup to the attacks, where the birds are gathering ominously. There are a couple of nice sequences along those lines, like the crows gathering on the playground or the long walk to the car at the end - but even then, it feels kind of like Hitchcock is just doing the Hitchcock thing. There's no spark or life to it, just going through the motions. The ridiculously anticlimactic ending doesn't do much to dispel this impression. Everything about this movie is so very competent, but almost nothing about it is anything more than that.

4/10