The Birds Phenomenon
In 1963, Alfred Hitchcock released a horrifying, bone-chilling thriller called "The Birds." To this day, this indelible classic is watched by people, leaving them shaken and disturbed. "The Birds" was Hitchcock's first film with Universal Studios. The movie won a plethora of awards, including an Oscar at the Academy Awards in 1964 and an Edgar Award at the Edgar Allan Poe Awards in 1964.
The movie takes place in San Francisco and holds a five day period, first day being Friday. The humorous, fun fact about the film is in the beginning of the movie, the protagonist of "The Birds", walks into a Pet Store, Alfred Hitchcock himself is walking out of the doors, being pulled by a two terriers. And the best part about that is those dogs were his own in real life, named Geoffrey and Stanley. The two main characters in the film are Melanie Daniels and Mitch Brenner. Melanie is a very wealthy, spoiled socialite who can get her way in anything. met Brenner, on the other hand, is more low-key and genuine, and is buying love birds for his sister and mother. They meet in the pet shop and Brenner ends up bringing Melanie with him to his home just an hour out from San Francisco. When she gets to his town, she is attacked by a regular bird, not any sort of prey bird, which throws off everyone. However, nobody bothers to ponder on it, for there have been but few occasions where a seagull attacks a human. After that, more and more bird offenses are happening. Birds are crashing into windows, violating people and property, over-crowding on school grounds and lines. Schools are releasing their students so they can be protected at home. Homeowners nail wood boards to their houses so birds cannot get through. The climax of the film is when birds are flooding the town chaotically. People take refuge at any place they can get. Melanie, the star, hides in a phone booth and has to frantically wait for the bird swarm to pass. Annie, Mitch's sister, dies. The famous last scene, Melanie goes to the attic to see what the racket is and opens the door to see dozens of birds have torn through the roof and are flying senselessly in the room. Melanie is badly injured and the family races her to the nearest hospital, ending the movie is a frantic halt.
This movie was such a success, Hitchcock received $3.3 millions dollars. A behind the scenes task the director had to do to attract birds was put meat and anchovies all over the ground and area. A lot of the scenes were done with puppets. However, the final scene was real. It took Hitchcock a week to film right and he insisted on using live, trained gulls to attack Melanie. On the final day of shooting, Melanie got stabbed in the eye and immediately started crying. The craziest thing about this 1950's film, that you do not see in the majority of films, even to this day, is there was no music score; all the background sounds were birdcalls and noises from an electron proto-synthesizer called a trautonium. Overall, Alfred Hitchcock had a huge success with this film, managing to disconcert his viewers timelessly.
Sources
http://news.moviefone.com/2013/03/25/the-birds-alfred-hitchcock-25-things-you-didnt-know/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/awards
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/plotsummary
Movie Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrN_U830_Gc
No comments:
Post a Comment