Clusterflock

The Birds

(1963)

What keeps this from being topnotch Hitch? Well, there's Rod Taylor, of course--a 34-year-old poor man's Cary Grant, who would have been perfect in the day but who had by this time gone and gotten himself 59.

I used to think Tippi Hedren was an impediment, but I've rather come around on her. The hairstyle is awful, of course, but she can't help its having been 1963. And she's no actor, really, but acting isn't called for in the role so much as a wounded hauteur, which she handles nicely.

The real problem is that the story, as genuinely frightening as it is, simply has no momentum: birds attack, they stop; birds attack again, they stop again; birds mass, then attack, then stop. Rinse and repeat. On the other hand, that lack of momentum may be the key to one element that is top notch, the inconclusive conclusion.

One thing I've noticed at least the past couple of times I've seen this is how Blanche DuBois-esque the traumatized Melanie (Hedren) is in the final scene, when being guided past the massing birds to her car. This is particularly poignant in that she's being guided by Jessica Tandy, who created the role on Broadway. And in another small-world touch, do you suppose Hedren, in her first starring role, asked to have the character share a given name with her 6-year-old daughter with Peter Griffith? There's no Melanie in Daphne du Maurier's source story.