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Home Archives for alfred hitchcock

February 29, 2012 By iluvcinema 15 Comments

Revisiting ‘The Birds’

This week I continue to revisit films from the Universal library scheduled to receive the full restoration and Blu-Ray treatment in celebration of the studio’s centenary. Today, I will take a closer look at Alfred Hitchcock’s classic horror film, The Birds.
In his follow to the granddaddy of the modern slasher film, Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock brings terror to the greater San Francisco Bay Area.

Here’s the setup (synopsis courtesy of MUBI.com):

[Hitchcock] couples a tone of rigorous morality with dark humor to create a thriller that begins as a light comedy and ends as an apocalyptic allegory.

Loosely based on a Daphne du Maurier story and a (recent) Santa Monica newspaper account, “Seabird Invasion Hits Coastal Homes,” The Birds [tells the story of] wealthy reformed party girl Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), who enjoys a brief flirtation with lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) in a San Francisco pet shop and decides to follow him to his Bodega Bay home.

Bearing a gift of two lovebirds, Melanie quickly strikes up a romance with Mitch while contending with his possessive mother and boarding at his ex-girlfriend’s house.

And with that, (literally) all hell breaks loose. First, the birds attack a children’s party; while it startled the crowd, they quickly dismiss it as a terrifying, but fluke occurrence. Gradually, the attacks increase in frequency and ferocity.

As mentioned above, for the time, the special effects were groundbreaking. Of course by today’s CGI standards, they look a little dated; but for me this is irrelevant. The terror behind the film is not in the realism or detail of what you are seeing but rather the terror lies in the mere fact that the birds have decided to turn on civilization apparently without any provocation. In a moment of levity, right in the midst of the birds’ reign of terror, patrons of a diner have a debate about the terror WE have unleashed and the possibility that this is nature’s retaliation. And with a sense of wicked irony, we see a patron ordering and eating some chicken.

In her first starring role, Tippi Hedren is the epitome of Hitchcock’s “Icy Blonde”. There is a lot more that can be discussed about the psycho-sexuality of her and the other characters in the story, but I will leave that to more qualified folks who have spoken and written about this subject extensively.

At its best, The Birds is signature Hitchcock with its high level of craft and execution. It is a thrilling and fun piece of film that is bound to entertain you.

A Few Bits of Trivia (Source: IMDb.com)

  • Tippi Hedren was actually cut in the face by a bird in one of the shots.
  • As previously stated, there is no musical score for the film except for the sounds created on the mixtrautonium (photo at right), by Oskar Sala, and the children singing in the school. In spite of this, Hitchcock’s frequent musical collaborator, Bernard Herrmann is credited as a sound consultant.
  • The scene where Tippi Hedren is ravaged by birds near the end of the movie took a week to shoot. The birds were attached to her clothes by long nylon threads so they could not get away.
  • The film does not finish with the usual “THE END” title because Alfred Hitchcock wanted to give the impression of unending terror.
  • A number of endings were being considered for this film. One that was considered would have showed the Golden Gate Bridge completely covered by birds.

Hitchcock’s Cameo

Hitchcock can be seen at the start of the film walking two dogs out of the pet shop Melanie Daniels is entering.

Filed Under: Classics Tagged With: alfred hitchcock, jessica tandy, rod taylor, suzanne pleshette, the birds, tippi hedren

February 23, 2012 By iluvcinema 4 Comments

Hitchcock and His Music

Even if you have not seen Psycho, this music must ring vaguely familiar. For me, this is the ultimate example of the importance of musical scoring in the motion pictures. And no more do I feel the impact of the score then when I watch the films of one of my favorite directors, Sir Alfred Hitchcock.

13 years ago (goodness, me!) I had the pleasure of visiting the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City and going to the Alfred Hitchcock exhibition, its arrival coinciding with the auteur’s centenary.

Among my mementos of the trip were a museum print and a compact disk, Alfred Hitchcock: Music from his Films. All these years later, the music from this CD still gets constant rotation on my iPod.

While the composer most closely aligned with Hitchcock is Bernard Herrmann, over his career he also collaborated with the likes of Miklós Rózsa, Franz Waxman and John Williams. Here is a really cool interview in which Williams talks about his collaboration with Hitchcock:

Although this music is not on the disk, I thought it was just lovely; it is a score by Neil Brand, which he composed to accompany the British Film Institute’s restoration of Hitchcock’s 1929 film Blackmail.

I close with the words of Bernard Herrmann himself, talking about music and its importance in cinema.

[haiku url=”https://iluvcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/23-Bernard-Herrmann-speaks-on-film-music.m4a” defaultpath=disabled]

Share your thoughts below.

Filed Under: Movie Music Tagged With: alfred hitchcock, bernard herrmann, movie music, score, soundtrack

February 13, 2012 By iluvcinema 6 Comments

Rebecca 2.0

EGADS Looks like I will be dreaming of Manderley again!

Joan Fontaine as 'The New Mrs. de Winter" and Dame Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca" (1940)

Imagine my surprise when I found out that one of my favorite books of all time, Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, which in turn became a 1940 film directed by one of my favorite directors, Alfred Hitchcock, was getting a cinematic remake/reboot.

According to Variety Magazine’s Showblitz blog, DreamWorks and Working Title Films are joining forces to bring a fresh vision of this classic tale to the silver screen. The good news: Steven Knight, whose previous work includes Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises and Steven Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things.

In case you have not read the book or seen the 1940 Hitchcock film, here is a very brief synopsis:

A young bride is terrorized by the memories of her husband’s glamorous first wife.

And here is the trailer for that film:

While not considered a quintessential ‘Hitchockian’ thriller, this film marked Mr. Hitchcock’s first Hollywood studio production and went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture of 1940.

Now that you have a little background information, tell me:

Who would you like to see cast in the title roles of the unnamed author, her new husband, Maxim de Winter, and most importantly, the maid Mrs. Danvers?

 

Filed Under: Coming Soon Tagged With: alfred hitchcock, classic, daphne dumaurier, dreamworks, rebecca, working title

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First True Hitchcock

UC Press, January 2022

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