The Birds

The Birds

The Birds (1963) is a thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock starring Tippi Hendren, Rod Taylor and  Jessica Tandy. The screen play was written by Evan Hunter, which is loosely based on the 1952 story 'The Birds' by 'Daphne du Maurier'. The majority of the film is set in Bodega Bay, California where, for an unknown reason, birds have begun to attack to the people residing there.

The plot resolves around Tippi Hendren & Rod Taylor's characters. After a rather weird encounter in a bird shop, Hendren chooses to track down Taylor and lands in Bodega Bay. If somebody did not previously know which genre the film was before watching, they would initially believe it to be a mystery/romance, however, the bird attacks change the mood. The MacGuffin in this film is the question or attempt to discover 'why the birds are attacking'

One element of a thriller in this film is the frequent action. Repeatedly, through out the film, the birds attack the people, and these attacks get more intense each time.

An interesting fact is that during the scene when Tippi Hedren is attacked by the birds in the room, her reaction was real. She was not aware that Hitchcock was actually going to use real birds, she was genuinly frightened. She mentioned, later in her life, that she required therapy to get over the traumatic experience Hitchock had forced her into!