The Birds (1963)

The Birds 1963

119 min  -  Horror | Thriller 
Director:
•Alfred Hitchcock 
Writers:
•Daphne Du Maurier, Evan Hunter 
Stars:
•Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren and Suzanne Pleshette

Melanie is a rich San Francisco socialite, who takes her boyfriend to a town in California. The town slowly becomes bizarre when different types of birds suddenly begin to attack people. Which increases and starts to become more viscous. 


The Birds has many aspects of a typical thriller, for example it has a lot of mystery and a hero.Which a typical thriller would have. 
In The Birds, the external threat actually comes from nature. This puts the audience on edge as this is something they can't control. In a lot in Hitchcock films, he makes it so that there is nowhere for the characters to run. An example of that is shown in the Bodega Bay scene. The hero in The Birds is Melanie's boyfriend Mitch who gets himself, Melanie, his sister and mother away from the birds safely in the ending scene. This ending scene called the unending terror, has a huge cliffhanger as we don't actually know what happens after they leave the house. The name unending terror creates suspense, as the audience begin to feel on edge as the bird mystery hasn't actually been sorted out.

Hitchcock said thrillers allow the audience to "put their toe in the cold water of fear to see what it's like” Which is true.

The trailer of The Birds appeals to the audience, as it grabs their attention because it seems to have really fast action in it. They can tell that it will be very interesting and thrilling.  

Thrillers are characterized by fast pacing and frequent action which does appear in The Birds for example in the eyes pecked out scene. There is a lot of silence throughout the scene. Which builds up tension till the audience is able to see the man with the pecked out eyes, which shocks them completely.  

Another example of fast pacing action is the trapped in a phone booth scene. As we the audience are focused on the action as there is fire all around Melanie and she is trapped in the middle in the phone booth, because she is surrounded by birds. The audience are on edge, they don't know if she will make is out of there alive. The birds smashing into the booth window and cracking it, adds to the past pacing action. 
Dramatic irony is used in The Birds, as in the schoolyard scene Melanie doesn't know the birds have been gathering outside. Although the audience do, which gives them more information than the character.
There is a MacGuffin in The Birds but it is ambiguous meaning we don't quite understand it it. There are different interpretations of it. It creates potential threat and cannot be explained.The MacGuffin is a big part of thrillers.

As when the audiences left the film's UK premiere at the Odeon, Leicester Square, London, they were greeted by the sound of screeching and flapping birds from loudspeakers hidden in the trees to scare them further.