The Birds (1963)

The great thing about an Alfred Hitchcock movie is that you can really get lost in its story. That's a function of good writing - intriguing characters and clever dialogue. Unlike a lot of cheap horror films (especially creature features), The Birds is not simply a one trick pony. I was concerned that the movie's novelty - killer birds - wouldn't be able to carry the whole film, but it doesn't have to. And that's good, because its runtime is a robust two hours. But already fifteen minutes in, there hasn't been any threat from the birds yet, and I'm engrossed in the romantic mystery unfolding between a San Francisco socialite (Tippi Hedren) and a coy lawyer (Rod Taylor) who lives in a nearby bay town.

Therefore, when the birds do finally start to attack, we actually care about the characters - they're not just nameless victims caught up in the storm. But making the audience sympathize with the characters in a movie isn't as simple as giving them a back story, or watching them emote (actually, there isn't a lot of either here). It's an art, really, and I'm sure there's a lot of subjectivity involved, but the key, I think, is creating people that are relatable, and putting them in intriguing situations, so that the audience will be invested, and want to find out what happens. In a poorly written movie, you won't care that this woman gets these love birds to the strange man she doesn't know, because the story doesn't engage you. But one thing Hitchcock is a master of is creating mystery and suspense - he leaves out just enough information to keep you wondering, and wanting to find out more.

On the other hand, the argument could be made that all the non-bird related story development takes away from the horror premise of the movie. This could be seen as another example of Hitchcock's bait-and-switch technique - which was evident in Vertigo, and especially in Psycho - but here it doesn't feel so much like clever misdirection as padding to fill out the time. Maybe it's because going into The Birds, you pretty much already know exactly what to expect.

In any case, once all hell breaks loose, the movie switches focus nearly completely. However, it has some issues with pacing, and it still begins to drag as we move from one bird-escaping scene to the next. Individually, though, they're pretty remarkable for their time - Hitchcock must have had an exceptional bird wrangler. The attic scene is particularly horrifying, and must surely have been groundbreaking in its brutality at the time.

The bird attacks are suitably frenzied, but the quiet moments between are chilling in a different sort of way. My favorite scene is the one at the school, as the crows slowly gather on the jungle gym behind the unsuspecting lead (a textbook example of Hitchcock's approach to suspense), until the playground is just swarming with them, waiting to attack. You could cut the tension in that scene with a knife! Not even children are spared in this film.

Towards the end of the movie, the main protagonists hole themselves up in their house, after boarding up the bars and windows, in a sequence that seems eerily foreshadowing of Night of the Living Dead. But despite all the effort that must have gone in to making the birds seem intimidating, there's a limit to how scary you can make a flock of seagulls look, and the effects in some of the scenes are still not entirely convincing. Atmospherically, it's creepy, but it just doesn't have the visceral impact of walking, flesh-eating corpses.

And then we come to the ending, which is pretty open. There's no explanation for the bird attacks, no great resolution. You can argue whether this is an effective approach or not - personally, it left me kind of wanting - but it's certainly in line with Hitchcock's tendency toward abrupt, not entirely satisfying endings. He's a master of developing suspense, not resolving story lines. Which, in a way, kind of reflects my overall impression of the famed director.

Alfred Hitchcock was highly talented, no doubt, and deserves his reputation. But his films are not flawless, nor without peer. They are good enough to be appreciated by cinema buffs even today, but they are rather dated to their era. For all their influence and innovation, filmmaking has advanced by leaps and bounds since Hitchcock's time. And much like how Citizen Kane is revered as a cinematic masterpiece, but is hard for modern audiences to relate to, Alfred Hitchcock's greatest adversary is the unrelenting passage of time (for which we can hardly hold him responsible). So I will gladly rate him as one of the greatest and defining directors in history (particularly in the suspense/thriller/mystery/horror genres), even though his films are not likely to list among my top favorites.

Psycho (1960)

"We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?"

For a long time, having seen little of the rest of his filmography, Psycho was, to me, the typical Alfred Hitchcock picture. Now, viewing it after three of his other, less directly horror-related movies, it has a unique personality. The relatable male lead is replaced with a psychotic villain (Anthony Perkins), and the usual love interest (Janet Leigh) here is a renegade thief who (spoiler, if you've spent the last 50+ years living under a rock) ultimately serves as sheep for the slaughter, at a point that stands barely halfway through the movie.

It's hard to view a movie so innovative and inspirational as Psycho was with fresh eyes. Its beats are hard-coded into popular culture, and what I can imagine must have been terribly shocking in its time, has become trail-worn horror cliché. Not that it doesn't still feel original in Hitchcock's hands - when a thing is done for the first time, it tends to have an authenticity that is lacking long after it's become rote.

I don't know if Psycho was the singular precursor to the slasher trend that exploded out of the '70s and '80s, but I have no doubt that it was a preeminent landmark in the evolution of horror cinema from the days of antiquity to more modern times. It even seems to preempt the exploitation genre with its unflinching depiction of murder from the almost sympathetic perspective of the killer - not as an anonymous, masked figure, but a flawed human being.

And that, I think, is the real innovation behind Psycho. It's not a movie about poor, unlucky innocents who fall afoul of a deranged killer. It's about the deranged killer, and that one poor, unlucky innocent who unexpectedly leads to the killer's downfall. And Anthony Perkins does a fantastic job of inhabiting Norman Bates, the attractive yet awkward, creepy but charismatic taxidermist who runs the family motel, and has serious mommy issues.

But even so, the MacGuffin that gets us to Bates Motel is not a single-minded plot vehicle with one-dimensional characters - as in so many dime-a-dozen slashers to come - but is as intriguingly fleshed out as any situation or set of characters in any one of Hitchcock's films, with genuine mystery and suspense. A lot of slashers have been made over the years by some very forgettable talents; in essence, Psycho is an example of what a slasher can be if it's done by a serious and talented filmmaker.

It's unfortunate, then, that it is no less aged than any of Hitchcock's other films. Its secrets have been uncovered a long time ago, and its shocks pale in comparison to what we've grown accustomed to in the decades since its initial release. However, I can admit that I have a newfound appreciation for it, both as a standalone movie (which is still very watchable), and also as a critical landmark in the history of horror cinema. Plus, it has, by far, the most satisfying ending in a Hitchcock film that I've seen yet.

North By Northwest (1959)

Of the three Alfred Hitchcock movies I've watched in the last couple of weeks, North By Northwest is the most conventional, in a Hollywood blockbuster sense (from a 1950s point of view). This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it means that it is more readily accessible and relatively action-packed (I mean, hell, there's even an explosion!) compared to Rear Window and Vertigo.

Cary Grant stars as Roger Thornhill, an advertising executive in New York City, who is unexpectedly abducted and escorted to a wealthy estate where a suspicious man by the name of Vandamm (played by James Mason) - or is it Townsend? - seems perfectly convinced that Thornhill is a secret agent working against his criminal interests. This unfortunate instance of mistaken identity instantly plunges Thornhill (like an unwitting James Bond) into the middle of an undercover operation involving international espionage, resulting in an extended chase across a portion of the American landscape.

The movie thrives on suspense and mystery, but also action, and not a few clever and daring scenes that are positively thrilling (such as the shocking United Nations setup, the iconic crop duster chase, Thornhill's ingenious and hilarious extrication from an auction house, and a climax set on the face of Mount Rushmore - though the latter drags on a bit, spectacular though it is). The movie slows down a bit when it switches gears to develop an off-the-cuff romance (the love interest played by Eva Marie Saint), but even then the danger is never very far off.

North By Northwest is another long movie, clocking in at just over two hours and fifteen minutes, but it has enough humor and thrills to make the time spent watching it sufficiently enjoyable. As I mentioned, it's more accessible than some of Hitchcock's more "specialized" films, but though it's relatively conventional in comparison, and is no less dated than any other films now over half a century old, it is nonetheless a solid demonstration of intelligent, technically proficient, and entertaining filmmaking, worthy of being called a classic.

Vertigo (1958)

James Stewart (who also starred in Rear Window) returns as a police detective who feels compelled to retire after discovering (in a spectacular twilight chase scene over the rooftops of San Francisco that opens the movie) that he suffers from an acute fear of heights. He is goaded into taking one last assignment, however, to tail an old friend's wife (a haunting, haunted Kim Novak), whose husband believes she has been possessed by the ghost of an old ancestor.

Alfred Hitchcock employs his usual creativity as a filmmaker (limited though the technical effects of the time may have been) to bring to life the theme of acrophobia (fear of heights). But though the movie does involve the main character's battle to overcome his fear of heights, it is less the harrowing gauntlet of acrophobic challenges that it could have been, and more a personal study of one man's romantic obsession with a woman, and what it does to him. In that sense, the fear of falling may be related to falling in love, but as this is a Hitchcock film, it's no budding romance, but a neurotic, spiraling plunge into the depths of madness.

The apparent climax to the film seems to come not 3/4 of the way through the movie, followed by a shocking twist that changes the direction of the movie (a technique Hitchcock would perfect in Psycho). Some viewers have criticized the too early placement of a scene that resolves the movie's mystery, but this actually reveals Hitchcock's intention not to tell a conventional murder mystery (instead favoring suspense over surprise), but to focus on the heady effects of obsessive romance on the film's two leads. The denouement following this revelation, however, tends to make the movie feel a bit overlong (with a run time that exceeds the two hour mark), and, like Rear Window, ultimately reaches a conclusion that is startlingly abrupt (if applaudingly stylistic).

Hitchcock's grasp of suspense, characterization, and dialogue is masterful as ever, but he is not without flaw. Vertigo is not an immediately accessible movie, and does not feel altogether satisfying when viewed straight (which probably accounts for its initial panning), although its retroactive reputation as Hitchcock's greatest masterpiece is a testament to the film's intimate personality and ability to inspire obsession in viewers not unlike that the protagonist in the story feels (no less than Martin Scorsese expresses admiration for the film in one of the DVD's bonus features). My own opinion is that this is probably not Hitchcock's best film, and definitely not the greatest movie ever made (not by a long shot), but it demonstrates a talented director's creative attempt at flouting the rules of genre convention, and for that, it earns my respect.

Rear Window (1954)

Right from out of the gate, Rear Window effectively taps in to the audience's voyeuristic impulse. The basic outline of the plot - a journalistic photographer (James Stewart) housebound with a broken leg, bored from six weeks of nothing to do but sit in front of the window - unfolds via a telephone conversation almost in the background, as the camera pans over a fascinating tableau of apartment windows.

The viewer can't help but become absorbed in the curious details of these anonymous people's lives, each one suggesting a different personality, a different lifestyle. The protagonist's simultaneous boredom - and ambivalent fascination - with each of these windows into other people's lives immediately becomes the viewer's. And this is in just the first ten minutes of the movie.

For a time, the protagonist's obsession with voyeurism raises some alarm with his on-call nurse (Thelma Ritter), and glamorous girlfriend (Grace Kelly). But when a few suspicious details linked to a traveling salesman (Raymond Burr) living across the courtyard begin adding up to a picture that looks an awful lot like murder, the desire to look, to pry, to figure out what's going on is downright infectious - the ethics of privacy be damned (much to the chagrin of a skeptical detective played by Wendell Corey).

The movie builds to a fairly tense climax (for its time), even if it takes its merry time getting there. At just barely under two hours, it's pretty long for a movie from the 1950s. However, the characters are likable, even in their imperfections, and their interactions (at times even humorous) are a joy to watch. The ultimate conclusion suits the movie's "murder mystery" atmosphere, although I was hoping for one final plot twist (a la The Simpsons' parody "Bart of Darkness").

But instead of a warning about the ethical concerns of intrusive voyeurism, and how easy it is to jump to conclusions - which could easily become preachy - what we have here is a harrowing glimpse of the horror that occasionally lies just under the surface of everyday life. And that is, perhaps, more suitably frightening. Rear Window is a fantastic movie for its time, and though it has aged a bit in the half century plus since its release, it nevertheless remains compelling, and director Alfred Hitchcock's dedication to the theme of voyeurism is carried through by the filming style in a uniquely effective way.

Alfred Hitchcock's Essentials

I suppose it's high time I familiarize myself with Alfred Hitchcock's oeuvre. In spite of his storied reputation as a director of horror films (or at least the suspense thrillers that passed for horror in those days), I'd only ever watched the obligatory Psycho, and The Birds, which I don't remember being quite as affecting to me personally as the story it was based on.

The golden era of cinema for me was sometime around the seventies and eighties, and I'll readily admit that, although I'm willing to delve back as far as the medium allows, unlike certain modernist snobs - I even voluntarily watched a "hundred movies" pack of "horror" films mostly from the '20s, '30s, and '40s one October before I ever started this blog - I tend to be biased against many of those older movies.

It's not that I can't enjoy them, nor that I don't appreciate them in the context of their time - and there are certainly timeless exceptions that stand out (I was very impressed by the 1956 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, for example) - but those old movies often feel dated, and what might have been novel and groundbreaking at the time often loses its spectacle in the context of a modern perspective.

Still, experiencing the results of a celebrated auteur at work often holds a timeless charm. Psycho was, in many ways, a groundbreaking film, and although I never felt it was as compelling as - to choose another vintage classic - Night of the Living Dead, there may be much in Alfred Hitchcock's cinematic style that I've missed out on previously, as an undiscerning amateur. Perhaps a cursory examination of five of his most memorable films will yet yield some insight into the reason he has become such a historical figure...

Rear Window (1954)
Vertigo (1958)
North By Northwest (1959)
Psycho (1960)
The Birds (1963)