The Birds - Alfred Hitchcock

The Birds

Today in Media we finished off watching the film the Birds, which i thought was quiet interesting and was good for soemthing of its time. I think that at the time this film was made it would have been quiet terrying for the people who went to watch it, but now as time has gone on the film doesn’t seem to be as scary as it was first made out to be. This could be because we are used to watching scary films/thillers so we have become more desensitised to it.

At the end of the film we wrote down  a few comments and notes about what make the film ‘The Birds’ an archetypal thiller.

·         One point is that in other thillers the threat is normally someone or something else, the threat isnt usually something natural because of this , this doesnt make it a very typical thriller.

·         Another point is that, Thillers are usually characterized by fast pacing frequent actions . An example that could be given is  when i Birds attacked Tippi, there were a lot of jump shots and close ups to emphasis what was happening and to also give more of an effect for the movie.  Another example of when this was done was when The Birds also attacked the school children when they were trying to escape, they used similar effects here to also emphasis what was happening.

·         In Thillers there is also always a resourceful hero who thrawts the plans of the more powerful and better equipped villans. This is true because Mitch is portaryed as a hero but however at the end  of the film it seems as if The Birds had gotten the better of Mitch and his loved ones because instead of fighting The Birds off he simply ran away from them.

·         Thrillers also use devices like Suspence, Red Herrings and Cliffhanger. This was used in The Birds. They used Suspence when Tippi was attacked by The Birds; we were uncertain as to whether Tippi would make it out alive or would die in the room. They didnt use any Red Herrings in the film because what was attcking was from nature (The Birds) and not something that was real e.g a human.

·         As well as that Thillers are also Thiller driven plots which presents obstacles that the hero must over come. The Birds are the driven plot because they are threatening the town. The film also uses a McGaffin. This is when there is a side plot. The side plot in ‘The Birds’ was Mitch and Tippi’s relationship, whether or not their relationship would survive through this unfortunate event.

Hitchcock commented about his own movie and said that ‘people go to the cinemas to get their toes dipped into the cold water of fear.’