CUTTING EDGES: 'The Birds' (1963) Film Review

Figure 1- Film poster

The Bird (1963)  was directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock and based on the story by Daphne du Maurier. The film  has a several genres made up of comedy, romance and horror which works alongside the bizarre 'attack the birds' story. The film is about one of the most disturbing sequences in cinematic history a women tiptoes throughout a house in three staccato shots. (Sooke 2015)  She discover the bloody corpse of its occupant on the bed, his eyes sockets two black holes  dripping with gore.

"The scene is just one of several grisly moments in Alfred Hitchcock's peerless horror flick, The Birds, made three years after his scorching success with Psycho." (Sooke 2015)

Figure 2- Bird Horde

They make sound rather than music and the sound effects of the birds 'crashes quite literally into the inhabitants of Bodega Bay' (Scovell 2014). The sound is very important to create atmosphere because it was difficult to film a large number of birds attacking a town. In the scene where birds attack the residents of the town.(Figure3) 'the sound builds and builds again without ever reaching a crescendo in the end it simply dies away leaving unease and expectation in its wake'. (Scovell 2014)

"The Birds is a perfect showcase of this as well as an innovative experiment with new sound technology, more associated with the avant-garde than Hollywood composition." (Scovell 2014)

Figure 3 - Crows Attack the Students

This film is interesting because of the attack at the school that shows all the crows gattered around in the playground area next to the school. It show that how the crows attacks the students while their running away from the crows. It makes the viewer wonder how the shot was made?

Bibliography:

Sooke, A. (2015) The birds, review: ‘Disturbing’. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/11334674/The-Birds-review-disturbing.html (Accessed: 26 January 2016).

Scovell, A. (2014) Sounds of the birds (1963) - Alfred Hitchcock. Available at: http://celluloidwickerman.com/2014/09/04/sounds-of-the-birds-1963-alfred-hitchcock/
(Accessed:26 January 2016)

Matthews, H. (2012) The birds (1963) – movie review. Available at: https://roobla.com/2012/10/30/the-birds-1963-movie-review/ (Accessed: 26 January 2016).

Illustration List:

Figure 1- Film poster
http://hitchcock.tv/mov/birds/images/birds.jpg ( Accessed on 26 January 2016)

Figure 2 - Bird Horde
http://ferdyonfilms.com/birds28.jpg ( Accessed on 26 January 2016)

Figure 3-  Crows Attack the Student
http://cinema-lifestyle.com/cinematography/filminglocation/locations/thebirds/moviepic028.jpg (Accessed on 13 February 2016)