1963 thriller/horror, dir. Alfred Hitchcock, Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor:
IMDb /
allmovie. The spoiled
socialite goes to the small seaside town to track down her latest
potential conquest…
Well, yes, because there are at least two separate stories going
on here. On one level, Melanie chases down Mitch, and meets Annie who
previously had a relationship with him but was chased away by Mitch's
mother Lydia. (And, this being my third Hitchcock, I worked out at
this point who would live or die among the female cast purely on the
basis of their hairstyles.) Will Melanie manage to persuade Lydia that
she can safely pass on the guardianship of Mitch to her, in a reversal
of the traditional Western movement of a woman from father to husband?
Given that this is after Psycho(1960), will Lydia turn out to be a
killer? Or Annie? Will Melanie turn out to be not so spoiled after
all?
Or will that plot come to a halt because, for no reason anyone cares
to explore, the birds are attacking? Although it's not wildly
impressive now, the part of the film that took most effort was the
visual effects, particularly the attack at the garage and Melanie
stuck in a phone box; Hitchcock was pushing the limits of what the
technology of the day could manage.
The odd thing for me is that, while this plot takes on the clothing of
a 1950s "animals attack" film like Them!, it doesn't do it
whole-heartedly. We know how this goes: there are minor attacks, then
big attacks that kill people, the military (if available) tries a
head-on attack and fails, the scientists work out the cause and come
up with the solution. The diner scene is definitely a nod to that, and
doesn't otherwise advance things at all with its one-note characters
we'll never meet again. But the second half is simply missing;
eventually, the few people who really matter get away at night, and
that's The End, not even caring about anyone else alive in the town,
never mind whether the birds' homcidal mania is going to stop,
continue, or spread.
Meanwhile Melanie and Lydia have managed to find compatible
brokennesses so Melanie can have Mitch, yay. It's an interesting scene
in which Lydia is humanised: it's a lovely soliloquy delivered by
Jessica Tandy, but it really ought to be a conversation, at least
with Melanie making sympathetic noises rather than just sitting there
as a silent audience.
It has some very enjoyable moments, but I can't love it. Also, a
puddle of petrol doesn't go up with a bang like that, it's more of a
whoomph.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.
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