[YT Edit] The Birds (1963)

B-b-b-birds birds birds, birds are the words.

Happy Hanukkah

@warcrimes "To Serve Birds" IS A COOKBOOK!!!!

Bill W

Different endings don't bother me especially if we want stories that we make sense. Life doesn't always make sense and for sure is not scripted in three acts. Audiences demand three acts because we feel life can go on and make sense. The ending of the Birds is perfect. It's perfectly consistent with the rest of the film. Everything in the movie is off kilter. We never feel content with the way people meet or with first impressions or the way the birds somehow decide when to attack. Even when Jessica Tandy's character accepts Tippi Hedren's character. It's almost like saying 'thanks' to a heart felt "I love you ". The Birds is consistent across the board and in that regard it's oddly satisfying. The Birds has a high degree of influence by the "theater of the absurd". Life doesn't make a lot of sense.

Christopher Carr

I totally agree, Steve. I think the first half of "The Birds" is an especially good example of how Hitchcock can take the mundane and make it oddly eerie and foreboding.

David Woodbridge

I had never thought about it, but you’re right, Hitchcock’s endings are a bit weak at times. I love his happily-ever-after endings, though. North by Northwest has a delightful, if abrupt, ending.

No way!

Dooly

Yeah, it really comes out of nowhere, and not in a good way.

Dave Sees Movies

I've always loved the way Hitchcock could take seemingly normal, mundane people and situations and bring the stories he did from them.

Steve Colletti

To me, Vertigo is the worst Hitchcock film (but there are some that either haven't seen or don't remember). There's just almost nothing plausible about it. I recently gave it another chance and my 2022 reaction was probably worse than my original 1970s reaction. I have no idea why it is now considered being one of the best films ever after decades of it being considered a flop.

Steve Colletti

We were the Birds the whole time!

warcrimes

It’s quite shocking that in a movie titled The Birds that the birds would end up being the villains. Something you just don’t see coming.

Dooly

According to Alfred Hitchcock, the birds attack in The Birds because they resent humans for mistreating them and want to stand up for themselves.

Joe Lazarus

Some find this heretical but I think the ending of Vertigo is particularly ridiculous. The average Italian opera ending is less risible, and it's a better movie if you kind of forget the last minute or two

Henry Fitzgerald

Alfred Hitchcock was actually inspired to make this movie from an actual real life true event of a mass bird attack on the seaside town of Capitola in California on August 18, 1961, didn't know if yaw were told or not, they found out it was due to toxic algae but during that time it was not known.

Sol-Edge

I'm not always a fan of ambiguous movies, but in the case of "The Birds", I think the inexplicableness of the bird attacks is a source of the film's lasting power. It reminds us that there's so much in life that we don't understand and cannot control. COVID-19 is an example of how our regular lives can be suddenly interrupted and imperiled by the forces of nature. And when inexplicable calamity strikes, we often seek out scape goats to make sense of it, the way the woman in the diner blames Melanie for the bird attacks.

David Woodbridge

Paging Paul Cox. :-)

Happy Hanukkah

Didn't care for this one at all when I first saw it in my teens, but like it way more now because I've realized it can be fun to drop into a setting with little context, unclear motivations, and then be ripped out of it at a time and place of the director's choosing. Sometimes I resent a movie if it's wrapped up with a bow at the end, but you don't get a lot of that with Hitchcock. Enjoyed your reaction immensely!

Paul Cox

If you like Hitchcock you'd love Mel Brooks' High Anxiety. It's a comedy that spoofs several Hitchcock movies including The Birds. I think you'd like it.

Jack Donner

That's the way most movies and tv shows ended from the 50s to the 70s. You tell your story and get off stage immediately. Also, don't explain much and leave it up to the imagination. The Birds is an adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's short novel. There is no music in the movie. The majority of movies these days explain too much, are too long, and don't end immediately.

Gary Shaw

I saw this as a kid and I was into it the whole time... then the ending came. I appreciate it now but back then I was baffled they would just end it there.

Drew

I’ve always thought endings were never Hitchcock’s strength, but even the greats have blind spots.

Dave Sees Movies