Hitchcock faces THE BIRDS

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THE BIRDS. A few observations....

-- I have never been a fan of Hitchcock. I see him as a technician who sometimes focused on superb set-pieces at the expense of the film as a whole (FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT), or as a director who often shied away from the implications of his films and sabotaged their endings (VERTIGO). Something must have changed by the 1960s; I consider PSYCHO and THE BIRDS easily the best of his films, and ones that embrace their implications with courage.

-- THE BIRDS also vindicates the slow and methodical approach of Hitchcock's technique. By the time of the first bird attack at 25 minutes into the film, we have a good preliminary sense of the characters, of their circumstances, of the setting and its layout, of how one place connects (by road or by sea) to another. As the escalation occurs, the film can speed up transitions without our losing any sense of where we stand.

-- Jessica Tandy had the perfect eyes for a horror film. Alert, searching faces and skies, always glistening with anxiety to the point of near panic, they tell us almost everything we need to know about her character. I wish the horror field had recognized this quality and used her more often.