This story seems strange, as we are talking about a world of romance mixed with many scenes of exotic drama. Melanie Daniels meets Mitch Brenner at a San Francisco pet shop, and they may both be in a strong romance and decide to follow him at home, bringing him a gift for that new relationship. Events change completely, with birds of all kinds suddenly starting to attack people strangely.
The true genius of the film, based on a 1952 short story by Daphne du Maurier, is the way Hitchcock makes the malevolent birds seem like manifestations of his characters' mental unease.
Drawing from the relatively invisible literary talents of Daphne DuMaurier and Evan Hunter, Alfred Hitchcock has fashioned a major work of cinematic art, and "cinematic" is the operative term here, not "literary" or "sociological."
In the thick of an impeccable narrative that pays deep attention to all those involved, the great filmmaker manages to reach far inside the psychological chasm and find a rich inspiration.
Hitch's much misappreciated follow-up to Psycho is arguably the greatest of all disaster films -- a triumph of special effects, as well as the fountainhead of what has become known as gross-out horror.
The Birds represents better than any other Hitchcock film the extreme polarities of his universe: vicious unpredictability and moral and emotional disorder on the one hand, and rigorous stylistic control and formal organization, on the other.
The picture pursues these false clues with excessive long-windedness and occasional fatuity. It is a tribute to Hitchcock's mastery of his craft that, even so, he makes overpoweringly real the menace of the birds.
Hitchcock prolongs his prelude to horror for more than half the film, playing with audience suspense with comedy and romance while he sets his stage. The horror when it comes is a hair-raiser ...
