The Birds (1963)

This is a horror film from 1963. It is directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock written by Daphne Du Maurier. The key cast was Tippi Hedren, Suzanne Pleshette and Rod Taylor. The budget of the film $2,500,000 the film made $11,400,000. The film has themes of Love, Family and animals. The only award the film got was a golden globe for best new actress. This is a film where a young wealthy woman pursues another young good looking man to northern California however something strange comes over the birds. One of the most key scenes is the school scene where the school children are attacked by the birds. For this I shall be looking at sound and performance.

In this I will be looking at the sound. In one part Melanie is outside in a school playground and birds start to gather just behind on the playground. In this there is really one thing what can be heard being the school children singing their song. The importance of this song is that it's a looping song which gets longer as it goes on, as the song gets longer more birds appear until the songs ends where the playground is full of birds. The affect it has on the audience is that the tension is slowly but greatly by having silence on screen while having the children perform their song off screen. Having the children sing all positively while off screen is also unsettling as it creates the terrifying feeling that the children maybe also have their eyes ripped out as seen earlier.

For this section I shall be looking at the performance. Later on in the film Melanie is looking in the attic and is then suddenly attacked. When this happens you can see the panic on her face as she has just discovered a large quantity of birds hiding upstairs. Her body language shows how she's feeling as at the start she's standing up showing the audience that she is being resistant to the birds and they won't defeat her. However as the scene progresses she starts to fall and moves allot less showing the audience that she has given up and is lying down and taking it.