Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" is considered an classic of the horror-thriller genre.
Inspired by bird attacks in coastal towns the movie became an blockbuster. However
also off-camera the horror continued.
It must have been an moment of inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock as he went through an newspaper report in 1961, reporting about several bird attacks in the coastal town of
Pleasure Point. At around two o'clock in the morning, the inhabitants were torn from their sleep by screams and blows against the walls of their houses, it was said. According to
the report, the residents had stepped outside the door with flashlights, and discovered
their village was full of birds. Some of the animals that had crashed into cars and walls
were lying injured on the ground. Many others gave the impression of panicking – they injured the inhabitants with their beaks and claws.
Crows are now not the most terrifying animals, we are pretty used to them in our daily life.
But some has to imagine how terrifying it has to be seeing dozens then not hundreds of crows attacking you and your neighbors. Something Alfred Hitchcock definitely seemed
to imagine clearly in his head, as he probably figured out the scenes for one of his most
popular movies.
As the ideas probably filled the notebooks, Hitchcock personally called the Santa Cruz Sentinel for get further details. Hitchcock always had an eye for making all kind of
scenarios to horrific entertainers. Even better, he made those things horrific we usually
see as normal. Crows became better monsters then anything else, because Hitchcock had the idea.
After successful projects of the 50s such as "Vertigo" or "Over the Rooftops of Nice", the Briton had achieved an artistic and commercial mega-success with "Psycho" in 1960. It had finally catapulted him to the top of Hollywood, but as is the case with such things –
Hitchcock also found it difficult to build on this. However now, all of a sudden, it seemed possible to him. And so he quickly set about implementing his idea of the wild animals that make people's lives hell, without anyone knowing why. The result was released in American cinemas in March 1963 and in German cinemas on 20 September of that year.
Hitchcock remained an Californian coastal town as the setting for the action, but moved the action to Bodega Bay. In addition to the true story, the plot was inspired by the story "The Birds" by the English author Daphne du Maurier from 1952. The script mixed a story about
a spoiled billionaire's daughter Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) who visits lawyer Mitchell Brenner (Rod Taylor) in the Californian town after he teases her in a store in San Francisco. Brenner tried in vain to buy "Love Birds" as a birthday present for his eleven-year-old sister Cathy – and Daniels gets them for him.
The rest of the plot is relatively straightforward, because it's all about the fact that strange things are going on in Bodega Bay with birds, and here especially with crows. They enter
the house through the chimney, slowly gather on scaffolding, and then attack children on their way home – an truly iconic scene. Above all, however, hovers the aggression of the people, who despair of not being able to interpret the behavior of the birds. Of course, this raged much more than a beast like Tarantula, which mutated into oversize after a nuclear catastrophe, because there was at least an explanation for the monster spider.
But Hitchcock wanted no explanation, but rather he wanted full horror by leaving any explanation open for the viewer. The moment in which a local resident yells at Melanie Daniels that only since she has been here has the animals behaved badly: "They are evil!" Alfred Hitchcock had once again succeeded in deep-frying the nerve endings of his
viewers – and even without a body count. Of course, the thrill came at a price for
moviegoers: the set was anything but comfortable. It all started when Grace Kelly, as –
let's say it – the director's favourite blonde, had opted for a moderately pleasant existence
as a princess in Monaco.
コメント