The Birds

[Dadwasinflame]

See the classic Hitchcock thriller , is on tonight on London itv 1145 , love this film remember watching it when i was about 14 , and being so scared going to bed that i slept with the Curtains open all night, might seem dated now, but still a classic in my book .

[julian_craster]

Your fave British film ?

[GRAEME]

Well - British director and based on a story by a British writer. And Rod Taylor is a subject of Her Maj at the very least...

[faginsgirl]

remember watching it when i was about 14 , and being so scared going to bed that i slept with the Curtains open all night, .

Was that such a good idea? The first thing you would probably see in the morning out of the window would be birds?





xx

[Gerald Lovell]

I always loved the tagline for the posters:-



The Birds Is Coming!

[Steve Crook]

Well - British director and based on a story by a British writer. And Rod Taylor is a subject of Her Maj at the very least...

Based on a story by a British writer, but where did she get the idea from?



The Birds is a remake of I Know Where I'm Going!





A spoilt, rich young woman heads for a rural community and meets a young man. While there, she stays at the house of a second woman who she believes may have been in a relationship with the young man, but it transpires was not. Due to the forces of nature, she is forced to remain in the community long enough to fall in love. Du Maurier and Hitchcock even copied the idea of having killer birds in it - but they couldn't find one as good a Torquil the Golden Eagle (played by Mr Ramshaw)







Steve

[Bernardo]

When The Birds made it's début, I made a point of seeing the film solely on the basis that it was 'Hitchcock' and I was a bit disappointed. Not very pacey, perhaps the build up was a bit too slow for me, I expected pecked out eyes from the title, it was a bit too contrived for me and does not stand with his others.

[TimR]

I would have assumed this was a US film; I suppose it is a co-production.



It has a certain power based on the weird idea of birds running amok but it depends on people behaving like morons and impossible situations to achieve its effects: Tipi enters an attic and even closes the door behind her although the room is full of rage-filled birds; Tipi and her equally stupid teacher colleague decide to send their students out to run home although the jungle gym and playground are jammed with hundreds of birds waiting to attack (school's out - run for your lives!); Tipi emerges from the attic to be tended by Rod with only a few scratches.



It's pathetic stuff but effective. And Tipi looks great.

[vincenzo]

Well - British director and based on a story by a British writer. And Rod Taylor is a subject of Her Maj at the very least...

Plus Jessica Tandy was born in London.

[billy bentley]

I believe the special bird effects were done by Ub Iwerks, the same man who came up with Steam Boat Willie later known as Mickey Mouse !

[Gerald Lovell]

I would have assumed this was a US film; I suppose it is a co-production.

I think it is wholly a US film - Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions, Inc., released by Universal (using a unique logo for this film, I believe).

[julian_craster]

My fave British films include The Magnificent Seven, Gone with the Wind, and Annie Hall - every one a British classic !

[GRAEME]

Based on a story by a British writer, but where did she get the idea from?



The Birds is a remake of I Know Where I'm Going!





A spoilt, rich young woman heads for a rural community and meets a young man. While there, she stays at the house of a second woman who she believes may have been in a relationship with the young man, but it transpires was not. Due to the forces of nature, she is forced to remain in the community long enough to fall in love. Du Maurier and Hitchcock even copied the idea of having killer birds in it - but they couldn't find one as good a Torquil the Golden Eagle (played by Mr Ramshaw)







Steve

To be fair to Daphne du Maurier, the plot of her novelette bears no resemblance to either Hitch's movie or Powell and Pressburger's...

[HitchcockScholar]

Trivia: there's no sign "THE END" .. at the end!

[Steve Crook]

To be fair to Daphne du Maurier, the plot of her novelette bears no resemblance to either Hitch's movie or Powell and Pressburger's...

Ah, so it was Hitch who copied the plot of IKWIG and worked it into the story of The Birds



Powell used to work for Hitch and they remained friends. It was Hitch who pointed them towards Kim Hunter for the role of June in AMOLAD. So this could be a case of the master borrowing an idea from the pupil - just like at the start of The Red Shoes



Steve

[icetorch]

The Birds puzzled me too. Then I read that Hitchcock wanted to make it a kind of Greek myth. You see in the film that Rod Taylor's mother is overaffectionate with him, an affection he returns. Apparently it's meant to suggest a latently incestuous relationship. It becomes apparent that his mother does not want Tipi to take her son away, so there is latent hostility between them. We are meant to believe that, as in Greek myths, the mother's negative feelings are a force of nature that is behind the behaviour of the birds. The birds could be seen as elementals - creatures born of a human's negative feelings. Or it could just be that the mother is a witch. In any case, the mother seems unaware that she is to blame, even if this evil is emanating from her subconscious.

In fact, Tipi suffers the first attack, by a single bird, even before she meets the mother. Now, we've all seen films where a stranger comes into town and is disturbed by the hostile attitude of the resident yokels. There's a good spoof of that sort of situation in the Yorkshire moors pub scene in "An American Werewolf in London". Well, in The Birds, it seems the very locality itself is against Tipi, and it mobilises the forces of nature themselves to tell her she's unwelcome.

As a child, I discovered that my father, mother and sister all shared a fear of the flapping wings of birds. I did not. In the 1980s, when my sister came to visit me in London, we made a visit to St. James Park. While my sister was bending down feeding a duck, I was feeding seagulls. I managed to manouevre myself so that my sister was between a seagull, which she hadn't noticed, and myself. I held up a biscuit just above her head. The seagull saw it and flapped towards her head but flew narrowly over it. My sister screamed and nearly died of fright. How I laughed.

Strangely enough, my sister married Michael, who kept a hawk as a hobby. Occasionally I used to threaten my dad that I would shut the hawk in his bedroom while he was asleep - "just for a laugh". His horrified expression would always crack me up. Some people have NO sense of humour...

[RogerThornhill]

I like the movie but as far as Daphne Du Maurier's story is concerned virtually the only thing that remains is the title.

[icetorch]

Daphne Du Maurier is well worth reading. There's a nicely accessible surreal touch to her stories.