About Alfred Hitchcock's "the Birds"

Introduction

The birds was a film directed by the infamous Alfred Hitchcock. Released in the year 1963 it tells the chilling tale of a world where the bird populace has gone crazy. Seen thorough the eyes of rich socialite Melanie Daniels and lawyer Mitch Brenner. we experience their immense surprise and terror of the development of ordinary birds going crazy. In this article we will display the cast and characters and some fun important pieces of trivia.

Cast

Melanie Daniels played by Tippi Hedren. Melanie Daniels is a rich, sophiscated, beautiful woman who is used to getting whatever she desires. She meets the male protagonist ( Mitch) in a pet shop after he mistakes her for a shop assistant. Fascinated by their interaction she acquires his contact details and travels to his weekend home in  Bodega Bay, California, the setting for the upcoming terror. Though she starts off as snobbish and quite cold her character develops into one of courage, friendiness and warmness partly due to her developing feelings towards Mitch.

Mitch Brenner played by Rid Taylor: An intelligent, handsome lawyer who resides with his mother and younger sister in the weekends. Even though he has had a previous love affair with the local school teacher he develops a close and loving relationship with Melanie Daniels.

Lydia Brenner played by Jessica Tandy: A clingy, overprotective mother of Mitch Brenner. She develops a dislike for Melanie Daniels in the beginning but this dissipates as the film goes on.

Cathy Brenner played by Veronica Cartwright: The younger sister of Mitch Brenner. Her birthday party is a setting where a violent bird attack is experienced.

Annie Hayworth played by Suzanne Pleshette: The local school teacher who had a past relationship with Mitch Brenner.

The birds: Possibly the most vital characters of this film as they cause the conflict and terror. The bird attacks start off as minor with Melanie experiencing a seagull attack whilst in her car. But this quickly develops to the entire bird populace becoming extremely violent and terror inducing. Quite possibly the most vicious display of malice by the birds is when they manically attack Mitch Brenner's house, resulting in various injuries to the core characters. The film ends with a radio broadcast depicting how widespread the bird attacks are, being experienced in other communities. 

Trivia

There are numerous interesting and fun tidbits of information pertaining to this film, below we have listed a few of them.

In most of his movies Alfred Hitchcock makes a cameo appearance. In the birds this is early on in the film and he is walking two dogs near the pet shop.

Tippi Hedren who plays the main character of Melanie experienced an actual physical injury on her face. This was inflected by a bird during a filming.

In the end scene, Melanie is ravished by a mob of birds. This particular shot toke a week to films and was executed by tying the birds to Melanie with nylon so that they wouldn't fly away.

 

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