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March/April 2023: The 60th Anniversary of The Birds

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Among Hitchcock movies, it is "Psycho" that tends to get the most coverage on its decade-markers -- I recall a Newsweek article on Psycho at 50, and plenty of internet articles on Psycho at 60.

I vaguely remember "decade markers" on Vertigo and of all things, Frenzy(because its "closest in time" to today other than Family Plot.)

But...going back to at least the 80's, I have been seeing "decade markers" for The Birds, and they are starting to appear on the internet now.

Psycho opened in June of 1960 on the East Coast of America( NYC, Boston, Philadelphia) and in August of 1960 on the West Coast of America and everywhere else. Imagine: millions of Americans kept their mouths shut about the twist ending of Psycho so that more millions could get the full twist. But ...there was no internet in 1960 and news didn't travel far.

Hitchcock had been putting out one to two movies a year up to Psycho -- North by Northwest opened LESS than a year before Psycho, in July of 1959.

But Hitchcock scholars have noted that Psycho "brought Hitchcock's movie assembly line to a halt." It was SUCH a blockbuster, SUCH a cultural event (discussed as much, one critic noted, as the 1960 Presidential election) that Hitchcock went into some trauma "trying to find a movie to top it."

Project after project was announced and then abandoned. One about a nuclear bomb stuck on a military plane in flight; one about a man who comes home to a wife he doesn't remember; even an early version of Marnie. Crucially, Hitchcock considered science fiction with book called "The Mind Thing" about an alien who attacks people in a house taking on "all sorts of animal shapes" -- "from a bull to a dive-bombing chicken hawk." It was a combination of that chicken hawk and a newspaper article about a "bird attack" on the small California coastal town of Capitola(near Hitchcock's second home in Santa Cruz) that sent Hitchcock's memory banks reaching back for Daphne DuMaurier's The Birds, a short story of the 50's which had NOTHING to do with the movie made from it except the idea of birds attacking.

Psycho screenwriter Joe Stefano turned down adapting The Birds for movies. He said "they said it was a short story. It was short, but there was no story." Stefano also didn't like the idea of nice animals as villains("I hate zoos" he noted.)

So a writer named Evan Hunter(who wrote serious novels like The Blackboard Jungle and cop novels under the name Ed McBain) got the assignment. Hunter and Hitchcock built "The Birds" from the ground up, like an original screenplay. The short story took place in England; the movie was moved to Bodega Bay California, up the coast 150 miles from Santa Cruz, just north of Vertigo's San Francisco.

The short story was about a British farmer and his roughhewn family; the movie gave us a Hitchcock blonde(newbie Tippi Hedren as Melanie Daniels), a son too dominated by his mother(Rod Taylor as Mitch Brenner...more macho than Tony Perkins but...echoes); a lovelorn teacher flame of the son; and a preteen sister more like Mitch's daughter. All sorts of Freudian psychosexual family trauma was the bedrock for The Birds.

And Hitchcock lingered for almost an hour on all that psychodrama before FINALLY bringing the killer birds on, in ever-growing attacks (one bird, a few birds, a lot of birds , a LOT of birds) in a movie which proved to be one of the greatest special effects epics of all time.

And yet, it wasn't ALL effects. Yes, some of the birds were pre-CGI animation, and some were puppets, but Hitchcock "directed" a LOT of real birds and it was an incredible acheivement: he got the birds to dive, to stand still, to attack; to DO exactly what he wanted. It was all so exhausting, said Hitchcock when it was over, "that I shall never make another movie called 'The Birds' again."

There is some real irony of The Birds versus Psycho just before it. On the one hand, The Birds DID top Psycho -- it had about SIX big attack set-pieces versus Psycho's THREE. The Birds, in Technicolor, had a big budget "epic" quality whereas Psycho at times looked rather like one of Hitchcock's black and white TV shows.

Over the years, a few documentaries were made that showed HItchcock clips in chronological order, and the Psycho clips always looked a little bit more "simple and low budget" than The Birds clips that came next.

And yet...The Birds really did NOT top Psycho...The Birds(which cost more than Psycho) made LESS THAN HALF of Psycho at the box office.

Its not hard to analyze why. Psycho was simply more SCARY than The Birds. There was wall to wall audience screaming several times from the shower scene on, in Psycho; the knife wielding Monster Mother psychopath simply terrified people more than a flock of attacking birds.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Also, though it took about 47 minutes for Psycho to reach its first big shock(the shower slaughter of Janet Leigh), it took almost an hour for The Birds to reach its first LITTLE shock(Tippi gets pecked on the forehead in a motorboat, surviving).

Hitchcock seems to have been trying to get that ever-elusive Oscar for The Birds, and so it is rife with heavy, shrill, melodrama and "psychological insights" among characters who can't really carry the load. Hitchcock dismissed the Psycho characters (in the second half, Sam and Lila and Arbogast) as "mere figures" and felt The Birds characters were more "deep," but he was wrong. EVERYBODY in Psycho is more interesting than ANYBODY in The Birds.

Still, The Birds technical acheivement remains among the greatest things that Hitchcock ever did, with a small army of helpers giving us such great moments as (1) Birds filing the sky behind a schoolhouse and (2) US high above downtown Bodega Bay watching seagulls gather, fill the screen and dive down to attack and (3) an incredible final shot of hundreds of birds as far as the eye can see, just BARELY allowing the family to drive away to a safety that isn't guaranteed.

Psycho was removed from its September 1966 debut on the CBS Friday Night movie -- "too violent" even if censored. It debuted later on local syndication. The Birds GOT its January 1968 debut on NBC Saturday Night at the Movies -- and became the most watched movie on broadcast TV of ALL TIME, I remember an episode of Hollywood Squares where a contestant was asked "which movie?" and when The Birds was given as the answer, the camera cut to Hollywood Square Suzanne Pleshette(the schoolteacher in The Birds) who made a "champion" gesture with her fists clenched together. The Birds held its record in 1968, 1969, and 1970, before being dethroned by Ben-Hur on CBS in 1971.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I daresay that between the aborted CBS broadcast of Psycho and the historic NBC broadcast of The Birds, plus their box office (better for Psycho, good enough for The Birds) on original release, plus the proliferation of local broadcasts and school screenings in the 70's...Psycho and The Birds became, forever, the two most famous Hitchcock movies. They also "fit" such modern tropes as the slasher movie and the sci fi/fantasy genres(WHY do the birds attack? Never explained.)

And for decades(now abating) every local TV news station in America would have their anchor say "and like a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds..." whenever even a minor overrun of birds would come to a community. Kept The Birds famous.

I was alive when Psycho was released in 1960, but I remember nothing of it. What a difference three years makes at a young age, though: I DO remember 1963, and I DO remember the release of The Birds (TV commercials where the birds smashed the screen; billboards that said "The Birds is Coming!" seeing HItchcock's overlong trailer at a movie theater with my parents...but SCARED when Tippi ran in at the end and yelled "They're coming! They're coming!")

The Birds was released in March and April of 1963 as an Easter attraction with an early NYC screening. It missed a Thanksgiving/Christmas 1962 release, which would have put The Birds in one of the great movie years in history.

Also, I DO remember going with my mother(and family ) to see The Birds in a theater in a Los Angeles suburb in 1963. It had been pretty easy to get to see The Birds, because rather than seeing it as a "forbidden slasher horror" like Psycho, we all saw it as part and parcel of the "monster movies" all over 60's local TV...The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, Them(giant ants) Beginning of the End(giant grasshoppers), and Ray Harryhausen's stuff at the theaters (Sinbad, Mysterious Island, Jason and the Argonauts.) Too bad these were not giant birds.

Hitchcock had famously kept people from entering the theater after Psycho started, but we went into The Birds about 30 minutes in...just in time to see Tippi in the motorboat get pecked by the seagull. As I recall, we stayed for the entire second feature and then STAYED SOME MORE to see the first (dull) 30 minutes of The Birds, and then left when Tippi got in the motorboat.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I recall being often bored, but sometimes enthralled, by The Birds...the attacks were great, of course, and did not scare me. I HOPED that birds would come to MY school and chase my friends and me, it looked exciting.

The one scene that DID scare me -- though I actually didn't watch it -- was Mrs. Brenner's discovery of the Dead Farmer with the Pecked Out Eyes. Hitchcock gave us all enough warning that mother called out "cover your eyes until I say so" and I never had to see that horrific face at that young an age(I certainly heard the screams.)

My 1963 memories of seeing The Birds first run are a little hazy, but by the time of the 1968 NBC showing(which I watched the same season that I first saw North by Northwest on CBS and could NOT see Psycho on its local TV debut), I started to learn the movie.

A few years later, I learned that the movie had NO music(though Bernard Herrmann got a rather insultingly small on screen credit as "sound consultant") and that the movie had HISTORIC "electronic bird sounds" which further cemented the status of The Birds as a unique Hitchcock classic. (The screeching notes meant to sound like bird squawks weren't all that removed from the screeching murder violins in Psycho.)

Speaking(again) of Psycho, though some of the set pieces are "big scale" in The Birds(the attack on the fleeing school kids, who run rather like Cary Grant from the crop duster in NXNW; the battle-like attack on Bodega Bay), the final attack is as intimate as the shower scene, and filmed pretty much the same way: Tippi in the upstairs bedroom(attic?). Its the shower scene all over again except "better"(the technicals of all those birds flying in to attack) and "worse"(Tipppi doesn't get killed, so it isn't as scary.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The Birds is pretty much "the end of the run" for Hitchcock. Yes, it is not as well scripted or acted as Psycho, but Hitchcock clearly GAVE of himself(artistically, mentally, PHYSICALLY) to make this "biggest of all his thrillers."

A rather unfairly described "decline" started after The Birds. Having delivered three big entertainments in a row(NXNW, Psycho, The Birds) Hitchcock's attempt to "go serious"(in the Rebecca/Under Capricorn/Spellbound mode) with Marnie met with teenager indifference. The back to back spy movies Torn Curtain and Topaz were panned(though the first one had big stars in Paul Newman and Julie Andrews; and a great murder sequence; and the second one reflected international cinema on several continents.)

A 1972 R-rated comeback called Frenzy actually got BETTER reviews than The Birds(critics felt the acting and writing was better) and offered up a strangling sequence that matches up quite nicely with the shower murder and the attic attack.

And a rather "nice and humorous" swan song called Family Plot rather unevenly closed out the Hitchcock career with his "last movie."

But in many ways, it is The Birds which was Hitchcock's last movie. The end of an incredible run from the 20s and 30s in England, through American studio films on an ever-upwards trajectory(with a hit TV series for ten years, to boot.)

After The Birds, the Hitchcock movies became smaller and less ambitious -- works designed for ease of making by an old man. The TV show went off the air in 1965, even though still successful(perhaps Hitchcock didn't want to make color episodes.)

And maybe this mattered, especially to a Londoner like Hitch: The Birds came out in 1963. The Beatles came to America in 1964 -- a new "British invasion" and suddenly culture got "hipper than Hitch."

In any event, here's to the 60th Anniversary of Hitchcock's The Birds. Its famous. Its historic. Its unique.

It matters.

[–] PaladinNJ (21786) 2 years ago

Happy Birthday.!!! LOL.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

"Squawk! Squawk!"

[–] eastangliauk (403) 2 years ago

this is now very old I have a big 4k copy to so its already in 4k.

[–] christomacin (4730) 2 years ago

Happy Birdday.

[–] PaladinNJ (21786) 2 years ago

That's even better. Wish I had thought of it.

[–] Otter (24464) 2 years ago

I must get out to Bodega Bay and do some birding!

It's a birding hotspot, particularly during spring and fall migration, when the shores are dotted with birders, showing off their exotic plumage and sparkling optics.