Halloween 2015 #6: The Birds (1963) - Alfred Hitchcock

Now how could I have a Halloween movie-cation without a film by the Master of Suspense?

Based on the short story by Daphne du Maurier, The Birds is Hitchcock’s first film after Psycho (1960). In the small, Northern California town of Bodega Bay, a mysterious force causes birds to be unusually violent towards humans.

The first attack doesn’t happen until 25 minutes until the movie, but the setup is absolutely amazing. Wealthy socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) meets a self-righteous lawyer, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), in a bird shop in San Francisco. He casually mentions wanting to buy lovebirds for his kid-sister’s birthday, but leaves when the store doesn’t have any. Melanie uses the power of her thirst to track him down to the small town of Bodega Bay and flirtatiously breaks into Mitch’s house to plant the lovebirds.

My reaction exactly. And who wouldn’t do that for Rod Taylor? P.S. He’s Australian. 

But since Melanie Daniels is basically the 1963 equivalent of Paris Hilton, repeatedly mentioned in the tabloids for her less-than-ladylike antics, Mitch’s mother does NOT approve.

Which makes Melanie even thirstier, to be honest.

Anyway, Mitch convinces Melanie to come to his sister Cathy’s birthday the next day, where the real horror begins.

A group of seagulls violently attack the children, and things only escalate from there. For some reason the town is super unwilling to believe that the birds are working in groups to attack humans, even after a third attack leaves a man dead with his eyes totally pecked out, and a fourth attack takes place at the elementary school.

This is probably the best scene. One, because crows are scary as hell, and two, because the special effects make it so that you are forced to watch a bunch of child actors cry while fending off what appear to be artificial crows. 

The action subsides in probably what is the most boring scene in the film, where Melanie, Mitch, and several townspeople including an ornithologist debate the validity of the “attacks.” After maybe ten minutes of discussion, the biggest and most violent attack takes place.

There are explosions, there’s death, there’s Tippi Hedren in a phone booth. What’s so great about this scene is that we get the vantage point of someone who is safe yet right in the middle of the action. Melanie hides in the nearest phone booth as she is forced to watch people die all around her. 

It’s very gruesome. She can’t even look away! It’s all around her.

But this isn’t even the climax. Melanie, along with Mitch and his sister and mother, hide out in Mitch’s house for one last final attack. There’s so much suspense in knowing that the birds are going to attack but not knowing when. My heart raced the entire last 20 minutes or so. 

Also Melanie and Mitch do that fun thing where two straight white people hate each other yet they fall in love due to some kind of trauma involving animal attacks. You know? 52 years before Jurassic World came out?

She can’t mean that! He’s a man and she’s a woman! They’ll fall in love, just you wait. 

But joking aside, the movie is awesome. The one thing that left me creeped out was learning that Hitchcock developed an obsession with Tippi Hedren where he essentially ruined her career after she rejected his advances. They would only make one other movie together, Marine (1964), and after that she didn’t work for years because he refused to let her out of her contract. Sad stuff.

The Birds was nominated for an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, and currently has a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

Fall 2014 #12: Manhattan (1979) - Woody Allen

Final stretch! Down to the last five movies on the list. I know this is my Fall 2014 Movie Bucketlist but it’s never too late to immerse yourself in classic cinema!

So I’m starting to learn what makes a good well-rounded Moviecation List. Each one needs a Hitchcock film, a Studio Ghibli film, maybe a Coen brothers or a Tarantino, a silent film, a horror movie, a Best Picture winner. And of course a Woody Allen film. I chose Manhattan because it was on Netflix when I made the list but as fate would have it, it got deleted before I got to it.

Also it has 19 Academy Award Nominee Meryl Fucking Streep!

I actually assumed this movie would be an Annie Hall-style love story with Woody Allen and Meryl Streep. Turns out Meryl plays his bisexual (or possibly lesbian) ex-wife and Manhattan is a love story between Woody Allen and Diane Keaton… or so we think.

Of course it starts with him dating a 17-year-old high schooler so the whole film is shrouded in a kind of uncomfortable feeling, similar to the one you get when you see Woody Allen promoting monogamy.

Anyway so the film has that sort of “Here’s real, complicated people living their real, complicated lives, so screw conventional storytelling” that I actually love and think very few writers are able to pull off. It’s bordering on satire while also portraying authentic situations. The only person I think who is pulling that off today is Lena Dunham.

Feel like a line from Girls? It’s because we’re the protagonists of our own stories! A lot of people hate that “Here are some deeply flawed characters who are aimlessly navigating their sometimes boring lives.” I don’t care, I love it.

So the film is objectively no Annie Hall. It doesn’t have the complicated timeline that makes for one of the coolest love stories in cinema. But Manhattan is full of messed-up people trying to figure out what they want.

One major difference I did notice from Annie Hall is Manhattan’s reliance on music, as well as sequences of driving. I want to say the music made the film a little more sappy, with the repetition of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue elevating the story to capture the majesty of New York City. Even the black and white sort of seemed to be a reference to a period of higher culture, acknowledging a city in decline.

The driving I took to be an understanding of the characters constantly being in motion, sometimes stuck, but always navigating the complicated network of roads in the largest city in America.

The film had its boring moments as well as its poignant moments, about love and growing old, and I definitely enjoyed watching it.

Fall 2014 #10: Dial M For Murder (1954) - Alfred Hitchcock

 Another Hitchcock movie! Following my tradition of including one on every Moviecation list.

This is one of those film titles I had heard tossed around, but obviously after seeing Psycho and Shadow of a Doubt in film classes and then Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Rear Window for Movie Bucketlists, this one was kind of a random choice.

The plot follows a married couple, Tony and Margot Mary Wendace (played by the incomparable Grace Kelly!). Margot is having an affair with a man named Mark Halliday, and Tony constructs an elaborate plot to kill his wife and inherit her wealth. It’s a kind of like a feminist Double Indemnity, since it’s the gold-digging man after his wife’s money? Okay maybe uxoricide and feminism shouldn’t be lumped together that way.

So basically since the perfect murder is possible only on paper (as the film posits), shenanigans ensue and Hitchcock works his suspenseful magic!

Only this time I don’t know if I was as impressed as I normally am. Instead of following a detective solving a case as it is unravels before the audience, we’re watching a detective solve a case we already know the answer to. Will he catch the culprit? Who knows! Do we care…? I’m not so sure.

Grace Kelly is fabulous as always (okay yes the only other movie I’ve seen her in is Rear Window). Like a true future Princess of Monaco. Fun fact, Prince Rainier had to produce an heir or the Principality of Monaco would revert back to France! It was a real Princess Diaries 2 situation! He ended up having two daughters and a son with Grace Kelly, and the son, Prince Albert II, is the current ruler of Monaco and one of the richest rulers in the world with a value of $1 billion.

Anyway the film was interestingly enough shot using 3-D cameras, but was screened in 2-D because interest in 3-D film came and went in just an instant in the early 1950s. The film is also based on a BBC play, and the detective is the same actor from the Broadway run.

The film is currently #163 on the IMDb Top 250 and has an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes.