The Birds (1963)

[CandidGamera]

@Ilsa_Lund

Wouldn’t happen to be Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Alternative Top 100 American Movies, would it? The Hustler is on that list. If that isn’t the list you’re talking about, you ought to check it out.

I compiled my own lists… based on the AFI Top 100 lists of various stripes, and the IMDB’s top 250, and decided to watch all of them. I’ve subsequently made a second list with all the AFI nominees and all Oscar winners included. Still working on the first list, as occasionally my attention diverts away from the classics … plus a few of them are hard to locate.

@Ilsa_Lund

That just seems a bit… shortsighted.

Well, see my previous post about it sucking the fun out of the thing for me. It’s just not useful in my mind to analyze a message, when one can derive five different, equally correct interpretations.

[Ilsa_Lund]

@CandidGamera

I compiled my own lists… based on the AFI Top 100 lists of various stripes, and the IMDB’s top 250, and decided to watch all of them. I’ve subsequently made a second list with all the AFI nominees and all Oscar winners included. Still working on the first list, as occasionally my attention diverts away from the classics … plus a few of them are hard to locate.

I’d be interested to see your list; please start a thread about it. But I must implore you to check out Jonathan Rosenbaum’s list. Most of the films on the AFI’s list and the IMDb are lowest common denominator “classics.” The AFI list in particular is just a politically motivated feel-good circle jerk for “film professionals.”

Honestly, Rocky and Tootsie rank in the top 100 greatest American films of all time?

As for the IMDb, Schindler’s List is the seventh best film ever? The Ususal Suspects the seventeenth? Both lists wallow in the ultimate of cinematic mediocrity.

Jonathan Rosenbaum’s List

End of hijack.

[lissener]

FWIW, I tend not to spend much energy finding any messages in Tolkien, largely because of his views on the subject.

But quoting one artist about his artistic intentions are part of the context within which one processes THAT artist’s work, but Tolkien’s quote is, of course, pretty much totally irrelevant to Hitchcock’s work.

There’s really not much doubt that Hitchcock imbued his movies with Freudian layers. Starting from a knowledge base of lots and lots of Hitchcock movies; interviews with many different collaborators, even with Hitchcock himself, etc., it’s unquestionably more useful to approach Hitchcock with a Freudian model than Tolkien.

Hitchcock’s movies work seamlessly on the surface, but the layers are there for anyone interested in digging. (Ditto Sirk, Verhoeven, and others).

[Ilsa_Lund]

@lissener

FWIW, I tend not to spend much energy finding any messages in Tolkien, largely because of his views on the subject.

But quoting one artist about his artistic intentions are part of the context within which one processes THAT artist’s work, but Tolkien’s quote is, of course, pretty much totally irrelevant to Hitchcock’s work.

There’s really not much doubt that Hitchcock imbued his movies with Freudian layers. Starting from a knowledge base of lots and lots of Hitchcock movies; interviews with many different collaborators, even with Hitchcock himself, etc., it’s unquestionably more useful to approach Hitchcock with a Freudian model than Tolkien.

Hitchcock’s movies work seamlessly on the surface, but the layers are there for anyone interested in digging. (Ditto Sirk, Verhoeven, and others).

Have any info on that DVD w/commentary?

[CandidGamera]

@Ilsa_Lund

I’d be interested to see your list; please start a thread about it. But I must implore you to check out Jonathan Rosenbaum’s list. Most of the films on the AFI’s list and the IMDb are lowest common denominator “classics.” The AFI list in particular is just a politically motivated feel-good circle jerk for “film professionals.”

Honestly, Rocky and Tootsie rank in the top 100 greatest American films of all time?

As for the IMDb, Schindler’s List is the seventh best film ever? The Ususal Suspects the seventeenth? Both lists wallow in the ultimate of cinematic mediocrity.

Jonathan Rosenbaum’s List

End of hijack.

I’d be interested to post it, if it were still intact. It basically exists as a text file from which I delete the titles after I watch the film … never suspected my obsessive-compulsive behavior might be of interest to anyone else, y’know? Maybe I can reconstruct it though… the only problem being that the IMDB list is ever-changing.

I will add the Rosenbaum list to my secondary list … those I haven’t already seen in the course of fulfilling the first.

And while I will agree that some of the cinematic ‘gems’ put forth on the IMDB and in the AFI lists aren’t exactly top-tier material, it gave me an easy place to start. And it has allowed me to see some truly spectacular films that I may never have seen otherwise.

Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last, for instance. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it… the man’s funnier than Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin super-glued together.

Of course, in all fairness, my favorite movie of all time is Raiders of the Lost Ark, so I’m not exactly a highbrow art-film kinda guy.

[Miller]

@Ilsa_Lund

Have any info on that DVD w/commentary?

Maybe it was a laser disc? I understand that’s where the whole commentary track thing got started.

[Ilsa_Lund]

@CandidGamera

Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last, for instance. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it… the man’s funnier than Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin super-glued together.

Of course, in all fairness, my favorite movie of all time is Raiders of the Lost Ark, so I’m not exactly a highbrow art-film kinda guy.

I have it on tape, along with Speedy, Girl Shy, and The Kid Brother. Chaplin and Keaton were rank amteurs compared to the man with glasses.

I can’t stand Raiders.

[CandidGamera]

@Ilsa_Lund

I have it on tape, along with Speedy, Girl Shy, and The Kid Brother. Chaplin and Keaton were rank amteurs compared to the man with glasses.

I can’t stand Raiders.

You must be a very lucky fellow, or were fortunate enough to catch the Harold Lloyd marathon on TCM last April, as most of his films are hard to find.

Can’t stand Raiders? You’re evil, aren’t you? I knew it.

[Ilsa_Lund]

@CandidGamera

You must be a very lucky fellow, or were fortunate enough to catch the Harold Lloyd marathon on TCM last April, as most of his films are hard to find.

Can’t stand Raiders? You’re evil, aren’t you? I knew it.

A friend of mine has ten thousand+ movies on tape.

I have several hundred silents from him. According to my tape, the Lloyd’s are from Cinemax. Raiders isn’t that bad, I guess. I’m not evil, really.

[Ilsa_Lund]

How would you (CandidGamera) have felt about the film if the original ending had been used?
Hitchcock was planning on having the car speeding away around the bend, arousing the birds. Cut to the inside of the car. The birds start tearing through the convertible’s top. They lose the birds eventually, heading to San Francisco. The last shot is of the Golden Gate Bridge completely covered in crows. Fade out.

[Walloon]

Lists? You want lists?! Here’s two that I live and Netflix by

The Sight and Sound Top Ten Poll 2002 (all nominated films)

The Library of Congress National Film Registry

[Ilsa_Lund]

@Walloon

Lists? You want lists?! Here’s two that I live and Netflix by

The Sight and Sound Top Ten Poll 2002 (all nominated films)

The Library of Congress National Film Registry

Sight&Sound is the list to live by for international film. Rosenbaum offers a profound look at American cinema, something the National Registry and the AFI don’t.
Let’s talk about, oh, say The Birds?

[CandidGamera]

@Ilsa_Lund

How would you (CandidGamera) have felt about the film if the original ending had been used?
Hitchcock was planning on having the car speeding away around the bend, arousing the birds. Cut to the inside of the car. The birds start tearing through the convertible’s top. They lose the birds eventually, heading to San Francisco. The last shot is of the Golden Gate Bridge completely covered in crows. Fade out.

Well, it’s a little more ‘end-y’, at least. Sure, it’s a downer, but sometimes movies end that way. Sort of a Planet of the Apes vibe.

Incidentally, Ilsa, you persuaded me to start my own thread, and work on reconstructing that list. You are evil.

[Chefguy]

You people are over-analyzing this film. Read the story by Daphne Du Maurier, in which, by the way the birds win. No metaphors, just a tidy little horror story.

[Ilsa_Lund]

@Chefguy

You people are over-analyzing this film. Read the story by Daphne Du Maurier, in which, by the way the birds win. No metaphors, just a tidy little horror story.

Yeah, the same thing happens with Rear Window. People way over analyze it. They focus on the interpersonal relationships in the film, how the action in the apartment complex mirrors the lives of the protagonists. They try to say that there are actually subtexts, when in the original short story, it’s just a simple murder mystery.

Thorwald did it.

[Walloon]

Du Maurier’s short story, which I’ve read too, has very little to do with the screenplay for The Birds, so it seems pointless to assess subtext, or claim there is no subtext, based on the short story.

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

<< The Birds seem to strike when the ‘victims’ are getting angry at one another, as if they can sense hostility. >>

I profoundly disagree. The children at the birthday party are victims, but there was no anger there – in fact, the opposite. Melanie is telling Mitch about her childhood, and the two are coming CLOSER together when the birds attack the children. She is expressing sadness about her childhood, but not anger.

And the body in the farmhouse – we know nothing about any “anger” there. And the children in the schoolyard? Where’s the anger? In short, I think this explanation is way off base.

I’m paraphrasing from Robin Wood’s wonderful book, HITCHCOCK’S FILMS. Basically, Wood says that the movie takes any possible explanation you can come up with for the bird attacks and disproves or denounces them. Hitchcock makes fun of some (“It’s the end of the world!” is the slogan repeated by the drunk), he shows many counter-examples for others (the repeated attacks on children deny the notion that the birds somehow punish), and he actually slaps the audience in the face for suggestion that Melanie is herself the cause.

The whole point is that there IS no explanation for the birds.

Hitchcock has done things like that elsewhere. Think of the shower-bath murder in PSYCHO. From Marion’s point of view (and the audience’s) at that point, there is no explanation for the murder – she’s decided to return the money and get over her moment of craziness, she’s taking a shower to cleanse herself, and WHAM! The murder comes out of the blue, it’s completely unexpected and inexplicable in terms of her story.

Similarly, the necktie murders in FRENZY. Cary Grant suddenly being kidnapped in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. And on and on. We (the audience) may later learn some explanation for these acts (like murderous psychoses or conniving espionage agencies), but to the characters/victims, these events are the sudden eruption of chaos in their normal lives.

So with the birds (except that the audience never learns any explanation.) The birds are chaos, the destruction of order, the psychotic and unexpected, that shatter complacency and every-day life. If you want a modern metaphor, the birds are like terrorist attacks (although filmed way before political terrorism as we know it.) They erupt upon the scene to cause chaos and destruction, they have no “meaning”, there is nothing rational or explicable about them.

Thus, the ambiguous end of the movie. There is no resolution, there can be no resolution. Life is fragile, and lived on the edge of the abyss, no matter how much we pretend that we have things well-ordered and predictable. Hitchcock reminds us that our lives can be shattered by forces beyond our control, beyond our understanding. The theme of THE BIRDS is even more relevant after the 9/11 attacks.

I find THE BIRDS to be Hitchcock’s most profound philosophical or metaphysical statement.

[Zoe]

Walloon:Also interesting is that there is no music underscoring in the movie, not even during the titles. Just the sounds of the birds, many of them electronically filtered.

Isn’t there a point in the film somewhere where we hear children singing a brief dull little sing-song tune? It could be only two bars long, but reapeated a bit. Maybe we see a playground and hear the song.

[jovan]

@Walloon

Also interesting is that there is no music underscoring in the movie, not even during the titles. Just the sounds of the birds, many of them electronically filtered.

Actually, the bird sounds were created by Oskar Sala using a strange electronic musical instrument called the Trautonium. The fact that Hitchcock used artificial sounds for the birds isn’t entirely surprising in light of standard folleying practices of those days. However, there’s certainly something unsettling about the resolutely fake and somber quality of the sound.

[Ilsa_Lund]

I profoundly disagree. The children at the birthday party are victims, but there was no anger there – in fact, the opposite. Melanie is telling Mitch about her childhood, and the two are coming CLOSER together when the birds attack the children. She is expressing sadness about her childhood, but not anger.

What about what lissener (and myself as of late) have postulated; that the birds attack the main characters whenever they begin to express their true feelings for each other? The hilltop is a perfect example. Even in the schoolhouse; Melanie Daniels is expressing her concern for Cathy and her Loyalty to the Brenner’s. Birds attack.