Part of Weekend Classics: Animal Kingdom
Wealthy San Francisco socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) pursues potential boyfriend Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) to a small Northern California town where she finds that it’s winged mayhem for the complacent townsfolk of Bodega Bay. THE BIRDS is often cited as Hitchcock’s most technically innovative film. With Tippi Hedren (a leading fashion model at the time), Hitchcock found the last in a long and distinguished line of blondes to have her cool exterior gradually broken down, both on camera and off.
“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.” —J. Hoberman, Village Voice
“Take in the bird-bath and feeder! Beware the first robin of spring! A threat of unspeakable horror is latent in our feathered friends! At least, that is what Alfred Hitchcock is implying in his new film, THE BIRDS, which is whirring and screeching with deafening uproar at the Palace and Sutton Theaters.” —Bosley Crowther, New York Times (Apr 4, 1963)
“Alfred Hitchcock’s most abstract film and perhaps his subtlest, still yielding new meanings and inflections after a dozen or more viewings. As emblems of sexual tension, divine retribution, meaningless chaos, metaphysical inversion, and aching human guilt, his attacking birds acquire a metaphorical complexity and slipperiness worthy of Melville.” —Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader