The birds (film)

Movie
German title	The birds
Original title	The Birds
Country of production	United States
original language	English
Publishing year	1963
length	119 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	Alfred Hitchcock
script	Evan Hunter
production	Alfred Hitchcock
music	Bernard Herrmann (advice) Oskar Sala (sound effects birdsong)
camera	Robert Burks
cut	George Tomasini
occupation
Tippi Hedren : Melanie Daniels Rod Taylor : Mitchell "Mitch" Brenner Jessica Tandy : Lydia Brenner Suzanne Pleshette : Annie Hayworth Veronica Cartwright : Cathy Brenner Ethel Griffies : Mrs. Bundy, ornithologist Charles McGraw : Sholes, fisherman Lonny Chapman : Deke Carter, host Doreen Lang : Hysterical mother Karl Swenson : Drunken "Prophet" Joe Mantell : traveling salesman Ruth McDevitt : Mrs. MacGruder John McGovern : Postal Clerk Malcolm Atterbury : Sheriff Al Malone Elizabeth Wilson : Mrs. Carter, landlady Richard Deacon : Mitch's neighbor in town
synchronization

The birds (original title: The Birds ) is a feature film by Alfred Hitchcock from 1963, which is based on the short story of the same name by the English writer Daphne du Maurier from 1952. The film is considered a classic of horror films . It was released in US cinemas on March 28, 1963 and in German cinemas on September 20, 1963. After The Invisible Third (1959) and Psycho (1960), the film marks another high point in Hitchcock's late work.

action

In Mrs. MacGruder's pet shop in San Francisco, attorney Mitchell “Mitch” Brenner meets the attractive Melanie Daniels. The spoiled millionaire's daughter has drawn attention to herself in the past with piquant headlines in tabloids . In search of " love birds " ( parrots ) as a birthday present for his sister Cathy, who will soon be eleven, Mitch plays a prank on the self-confident young lady. Challenged by his sarcastic demeanor, Melanie procures a pair of the birds he wants and surprises Mitch with a spontaneous visit to his parents' house in Bodega Bay . Shortly afterwards, she is attacked by a seagull and injured in the head. She decides to stay and is accommodated in the guest room of the teacher Annie Hayworth. She is Mitch's former lover and explains to Melanie about his distant mother Lydia: The dominant behavior of the widow is based on the fear that her son could leave her forever because of a woman.

At Cathy's birthday party, there is another attack by seagulls, which deliberately fall on the children. They get to safety in the house, but in the evening flocks of sparrows enter through the chimney and cause devastation. When Lydia wants to visit a neighboring farmer the next morning, she discovers broken window panes in the bedroom and the corpse of the man with pierced eyes. Worried about Cathy, the disturbed Lydia asks Melanie to see that the school is all right. While Melanie waits in front of the building for the end of class, a large number of crows collects behind her back unnoticed , whereupon Annie has the school house evacuated. As they flee, the children are attacked by the birds and some are seriously injured. Melanie wins Mitch's affection and Lydia's respect through her courage.

Meanwhile, a discussion between residents and guests about the assessment of the incidents ensues in the local restaurant. Among other things, a stubborn Hobby are in the war of words ornithologist (which is a planned attack by birds ridiculous) and one of end-time fantasies obsessive drinkers involved. During the debate, a gas station across the street went up in flames as a result of another bird attack. Shortly afterwards, a large flock of seagulls attacked the place. Mitch and Melanie are able to get to safety in the restaurant, where an angry woman accuses Melanie of being the trigger for the dramatic events, since it all began with their arrival in Bodega Bay. When Mitch and Melanie drive to Annie's apartment to pick up Cathy, they find Annie dead on the steps of her porch. Cathy, waiting in the house, frightened, reports that Annie was killed by birds after they brought her to safety.

Together with Melanie the Brenners barricade themselves in their house, but the boarded-up doors and windows are overcome by the birds. After a painstakingly fended off attack, the family remains exhausted in the living room. Alarmed by a noise, Melanie inspects the bedroom on the upper floor and finds a large hole in the roof. The birds sitting in the room attack them. Melanie is rescued by Mitch and barely escapes death. In her state of shock , she urgently needs medical attention. Since the situation in the house has become hopeless, the family decides to flee to San Francisco in Melanie's car.

Outside, an apocalyptic picture presents itself to them : an incalculable number of birds have settled on the house and in the immediate vicinity, but are currently quiet. The four protagonists get into Melanie's car, an Aston Martin DB2 / 4 , unmolested . Cathy takes the gift birds with her in the cage. The film ends with the departure through the crowd of birds. An explanation for the bird attacks is not offered.

background

Literary template

The film is based on the set in the UK short story The Birds (original title: The Birds ) by Daphne du Maurier from 1952. The story published in the short story volume The Apple Tree in the same year is about the farm worker Nat Hocken, who with his wife and two Children lived on a farm in Cornwall a few years after the end of World War II . After a change in the weather in late autumn, the war invalid finds out firsthand that sea and land birds in the vicinity are behaving aggressively. On the basis of intensive observations, he suspects a kind of collective intelligence behind the apparently disordered swarm formation in the sky and in the nearby bay. In contrast to his fellow men, he draws the right conclusions from the growing danger and begins to fortify his little house. He heard about similar events across the country via radio announcements. After all connections to the outside world were broken and the neighboring farmers perished as a result of the attacks, Nat developed a survival plan for himself and his family. Since the birds are only active at high tide, he uses the quiet hours to prepare for the upcoming attacks. By building up supplies of food and fuel, he hopes to survive the next few days. The story ends openly.

The historical context plays an essential role in interpreting the plot. According to some authors, the birds in the original book symbolize the German air raids on England during the Second World War. Other attempts at interpretation see a connection with the emerging threat from communism. In several passages of the text the “cold east wind” is discussed as the cause of the change in weather and the hostile great power is explicitly mentioned (“It is rumored that the Russians are to blame for poisoning the birds”). Towards the end of the plot, Nat's wife expressed the hope that the allied Americans would support the English in the fight. The reference to the Allies to cope with the hopeless situation draws a link from the previous World War to the new conflict of the Cold War .

For the adaptation of the film, screenwriter Evan Hunter only took on the motif of the attacking birds, while characters, locations and dramaturgy are different. After consultation with Hitchcock, he relocated the south-west English landscape, which is characterized by rural influences, to the California coast in order to emphasize the sophistication of the San Francisco metropolitan area when characterizing the people involved.

“Many filmmakers forget how important geography is to a story. I chose Bodega Bay because I wanted an isolated group of people who lived near an articulate community. Bodega Bay is a place where sophisticated San Franciscans drive to spend the weekend. The location provided the combination we wanted. "

“A lot of filmmakers forget how important geography is in a story. I chose Bodega Bay because I wanted to show an isolated group of people who lived close to an open-minded society. Bodega Bay is a place where educated San Franciscans spend the weekend. The place offered the combination that we wanted. "

- Alfred Hitchcock in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle

Hitchcock developed a taste for this region after he and his wife Alma bought a private estate near Scotts Valley in September 1940 . Beyond The Birds , the previously created thrillers In the Shadow of Doubt and Vertigo - From the Realm of the Dead also play in the San Francisco Bay Area . Other works such as Rebecca , Suspicion , Marnie and Family Grave contain individual scenes recorded there.

True events

In addition to the underlying short novel, Hitchcock was guided by actual incidents that occurred after work on the film project had already started. In the early morning of August 18, 1961, residents of the coastal town of Capitola were woken up by hundreds of birds - most of them dark shearwater - flying against rooftops, breaking windows and cutting power lines. The film dialogue between the ornithologist and a sales representative in the restaurant scene refers to this event. Decades later it turned out that the animals were infected with domoic acid , a neurotoxin produced by diatoms of the genus Pseudo-nitzschia . In September 1991, a similar mass extinction of brown pelicans was observed in Monterey Bay and was attributed to algae toxins that had entered bird stomachs via the food chain. A connection with the event in the same area 30 years ago could only be proven in December 2011 as part of a scientific investigation.

Hitchcock learned of other incidents in California from the newspapers. In an interview with the French filmmaker François Truffaut , he told of ravens that attacked lambs. He learned further details from the affected farmer, which inspired him to the scene with the dead farmer and the pecked out eyes. In addition, there was an incident in La Jolla in 1961 when sparrows broke into a house through the chimney. In the film adaptation there is an analogy with the first dinner together with Melanie in the house of the Brenners.

production

Casting

Tippi Hedren has worked successfully as a model in New York City since 1950 . She was discovered by a Universal Studios producer in October 1961 after she appeared in a drink commercial on The Today Show for several weeks. Through the acting agency MCA , she was referred to Alfred Hitchcock, who was looking for an actress of a similar type after Grace Kelly withdrew from the film business. In December 1962, Look magazine published a cover story under the heading Hitchcock's new Grace Kelly . Hedren completed a three-day screen test at the side of Martin Balsam , in which she played scenes from the earlier Hitchcock films Rebecca , Notorious and Above the Roofs of Nice . She then signed a long-term exclusive contract that guaranteed her a weekly salary of $ 500. With the contract, the director took control of their appearance in public. When choosing clothes, make-up, jewelry and hairstyle, costume designer Edith Head acted as a consultant.

For the male lead initially other candidates were provided, including next to Cary Grant and Farley Granger . Granger had previously appeared in the films Cocktail for a Corpse and The Stranger on the Train . The choice finally fell on Rod Taylor , who a few months earlier had become known to a larger audience through the Oscar- winning literary film The Time Machine .

Hitchcock came into contact with Jessica Tandy through her husband Hume Cronyn , whom he knew as an actor from In the Shadow of Doubt . In addition, as a screenwriter, Cronyn later adapted the literary templates for a slave of the heart and a cocktail for a corpse .

The collaboration between supporting actress Suzanne Pleshette and Hitchcock proved difficult. She was a representative of method acting and often couldn't cope with the director's specifications.

The child actress Veronica Cartwright celebrated her 13th birthday while filming and was two years older than her film role Cathy Brenner.

Locations

Shooting of the film began in 1961, the outdoor shots in northern California were taken in spring and summer 1962. The action took place in several areas around the natural harbor Bodega Harbor about 40 miles northwest of San Francisco , including Bodega Bay with the Tides- Wharf complex on California State Route 1 and the Bodega Head Peninsula . Other settings were on Union Square in San Francisco, located in the inland Bodega and on ranches around Petaluma and Valley Ford in Sonoma County rotated. In addition, backdrops on the Universal Studios site near Los Angeles complemented the selected scenarios. The studios also housed the film sets for the interior shots.

The script takes into account the three Aristotelian units of time, space and plot of a drama. The viewer is suggested that all the districts such as the pier, general store and school belong to a single contiguous small town. In reality, Hitchcock created a fictional Bodega Bay in the film, which is composed of several different locations. The scenes on the shore (jetties, fishery building and restaurant with adjoining parking lot) were filmed at Tides Wharf , which is about 700 meters from the center of Bodega Bay. The post office and the shop ( called Brinkmeyer’s in the film ), the gray-brown fish market building in front of it and the gas station are, however, studio scenes. In turn, the school and the church, directly located next to it represent real buildings that in about eight kilometers eastern town Bodega at the Bodega Lane are inland. Only one scene in which the children flee from the school downhill towards the bay in front of the attacking birds was actually shot at Bodega Bay on Taylor Street .

Bodega Schoolhouse , March 2012

The Potter Schoolhouse ( called Bodega Bay School in the film ) and the neighboring Saint Teresa of Avila Church in Bodega, which was built in 1873, have hardly changed from the outside since the shooting. The school building is privately owned, having been used as a community center, restaurant and guest house. The property of the teacher Annie Hayworth next to the school was designed by the film crew as an incomplete dummy and removed after the filming was finished. There is currently a similar style house there.

On the other side of the bay is the Bodega Head peninsula. All the scenes in the film about the Brenner family's estate take place there. The Brenners' house and the red barn, as well as the landing stage, were temporary backdrops based on the model of a nearby farm owned by Russian settlers from 1849. In reality at that time there were only a few small, dilapidated huts next to the striking cypress trees .

Trick technology and special effects

The film contains a total of around 400 trick shots, for which the team led by production designer Robert F. Boyle exhausted the film techniques available in the 1960s. About 15 years before Computer Generated Imagery was first used in film production, one of the key challenges was to select suitable methods for compositing . The composition of background shots as well as the movements of acting actors and flying birds occupied numerous specialists. For this reason, pre- and post-production were of great importance. The processes used in the film include matte painting , rear projection , yellow screen and rotoscopy . Various visual effects were combined with one another several times.

Pre-production tasks included putting together footage of flying seagulls from various perspectives, which could then be integrated into other film sequences during later compositing. In order to obtain the desired close-ups, the animals were attracted with food. The team spent three days at a landfill in San Francisco shooting over 6,000 meters of film. Similar flight scenes were made on the cliffs of Santa Cruz Island . The recordings were used, among other things, for the scenes in Union Square, during the attack on the birthday party and the gas station fire.

The British special effects artist Albert Whitlock was responsible for the alienation or enrichment of real motifs with the help of matte painting . By using painted glass plates or canvases during the filming, for example, landscapes were made more atmospheric and buildings were added. Despite the fact that some of the locations were far apart, the result was a topographically consistent location for the entire duration of the film. When Melanie Daniels crossed the bay with the rented boat, the viewer on the hill above the pier also saw the school and church together with some other buildings. This landscape was greatly altered by Whitlock's artistic interventions, as there was no extensive development in the area of Tides Wharf at the time. The same technique was also used in other scenes, including during the aerial shot of the gas station fire, the view from the Brenner's house into the distant surroundings and as a make-up supplement for the dead farmer's pecked eyes.

In order to create animated masks ( traveling matte ) for the attacking birds, it was decided to use the yellow screen method using sodium vapor lamps. The animation technician Ub Iwerks , who acted as a consultant , contributed significantly to the development of the photochemical process in the Walt Disney Studios . The technique, also known as the sodium vapor process , played a role in the flying sparrows in the Brenners' house and in the attack of the crows on the fleeing schoolchildren. For this purpose, the children were in the studio on a treadmill in front of a screen with the background shots of the sloping road. Although the blue screen technology was already available as an alternative, it did not meet Hitchcock's quality standards in its development stage at that time. At the contours between the foreground and background objects, a blue color fringing sometimes appeared, which was particularly annoying with fine structures and fast movements such as the flapping of birds' wings. Another method used in this context is back projection . Previously filmed footage - often filmed from moving vehicles - is projected onto transparent screens in the studio, while the actors act in the foreground at the same time for better control of the lighting conditions for close-ups. Such a setting was used when Melanie reached Bodega Bay in the car from San Francisco and turned towards Brinkmeyer’s . The art of illusion becomes even clearer after the escape from school. Together with Cathy Brenner and another child, Melanie seeks shelter in a parked car on the side of the road. The subsequent view through the rear window in the studio shows the school in Bodega, while in the other direction the end of Taylor Street in Bodega Bay and the bay behind it can be seen.

Depending on the characteristics of the respective setting, either wild or trained birds as well as immobile or mechanically animated dummies were used. Ray Berwick took on the bird dressage on the set under the supervision of representatives of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals . He mainly worked with ravens and crows , which were particularly suitable for training because of their intelligence. For crowd scenes, real animals were supplemented with replicas or, as in the final scene, technically duplicated. For example, the birds on the jungle gym by the school included only a few live specimens. To ensure the precision of the flight curves, dummies attached to wires were also used, for example when a seagull fell on Melanie in the boat for the first time. To control the actors during the final attack on the Brenners' house, drummers simulated the individual attack waves in the studio, as the bird noises were added later. Hand puppets mimicked the birds' heads when the doors were broken open. The attack on Melanie in the bedroom was filmed over a period of five days and edited as quickly as the shower scene in Psycho three years earlier . Hitchcock decided to use real birds in favor of the realism. Helpers dressed in protective gloves hurled the animals in the direction of the actress and also attached them to her costume with nylon straps. As a result of the exertion and a facial injury, Tippi Hedren suffered a nervous breakdown while filming and had to be under medical supervision for several days. When Melanie is later carried down the stairs by Mitch, a substitute actress was involved.

Suspense

In an oppressive key scene of the film, Hitchcock's handwriting shows how to build up tension : Melanie Daniels waits in front of the school for the end of the lesson and takes a seat on a bench, behind which there is a playground with a climbing frame. After a short time - unnoticed by Melanie - a crow sits on the scaffolding. The following cuts show Melanie and the climbing frame alternately, on which more crows gradually perch until there are ten birds. Then for a while only the smoking Melanie can be seen and the singing of the school children can be heard. Eventually Melanie becomes aware of a single approaching crow and follows its flight path. When she lands, it turns out to her horror that a huge number of crows are sitting on all the climbing frames of the playground and the surrounding roofs. Two stylistic devices frequently used by Hitchcock complement each other here: on the one hand, it gives the viewers a knowledge advantage over the actors in the film, on the other hand, through the visual and dialog-free narrative style, it strengthens the concentration on the plot.

Film music

Numerous sound effects were created on a Mixtur-Trautonium (a replica in the picture).

The film dispenses with the background music with a musical soundtrack in the conventional sense. Instead, under the supervision of his favorite composer Bernard Herrmann, Hitchcock had the German composers Remi Gassmann and Oskar Sala put him on a Trautonium with artificial bird sounds and other sound effects. Hitchcock had heard the instrument, named after its inventor Friedrich Trautwein and considered the forerunner of the analog synthesizer , on Berlin radio in the late 1920s. The film staff of The Birds came into contact with Gassmann through the ballet Electronics , which premiered in New York City in 1961 by George Balanchine . At his invitation, Hitchcock traveled again to Berlin with Herrmann in December 1962 to find out about the possibilities of electronic sound generation . After a successful test setting of the final scene of the attack, Gassmann and Sala received the complete order. The tension that the film creates without music also makes it a milestone in musicology .

Two passages of the film are accompanied by real music: Melanie Daniels plays the first arabesque from Claude Debussy's work Deux Arabesques on the piano during her evening visit to the Brenners' house. During the climbing frame scene, the school children sing the Americanized version of Risselty Rosselty of the Scottish folk song Wee Cooper O'Fife . To fully cover the length of the plot, screenwriter Evan Hunter wrote some additional stanzas.

Cameo

Alfred Hitchcock's traditional cameo occurs at the beginning of the film: Just before Melanie enters the pet shop, Hitchcock leaves the building with two white dogs, which were his own Sealyham Terriers, Geoffrey and Stanley.

reception

Reviews

“Beyond the theme of Daphne du Maurier's novella, the fable was expanded into an enigmatic vision of a doom and gloom. Alfred Hitchcock translated the story into exciting and oppressive sequences of images. "

- Lexicon of international film

“Birds attack people against their nature. This sinister threat is effectively demonstrated by perfect training. It is doubtful whether a deeper meaning can be interpreted into the film. Considered a pure thriller, it lags behind other Hitchcock films. "

- Protestant film observer , review No. 521/1963

interpretation

Hitchcock gave no explanation as to why the birds attack humans. Nevertheless, the film gives a few clues for an interpretation. For example, a radio report mentions that the bird attacks are concentrated around Bodega Bay. It is also clear that they begin roughly at the same time as Melanie's appearance in Bodega Bay (although birds conspicuously cover the sky in front of the pet shop in San Francisco - also here in the immediate vicinity of Melanie - and similar events from the previous year in the film (albeit elsewhere). Furthermore, at least two cases are known in Bodega Bay, according to which the chickens of the respective family do not eat any food. Mrs. Brenner therefore suspects an epidemic. The film leaves open whether a possible bird disease is the cause of the attacks.

A kind of revenge on humanity is hinted at in the trailer for the film. Hitchcock is giving a lecture on the relationship between humans and birds. In this he explains how good humans are to birds, for example because they choose the most beautiful cages for them. Shortly afterwards, he is bitten by his canary. While he was still wondering about the bite, flocks of birds could be heard over the house.

Robin Wood suggests three readings of birds : a " cosmological ", an " ecological " and a "familial":

• In the cosmological reading the birds would be the embodiment of an indissoluble chaotic remnant in the order of the universe, which is inherently precarious and can get out of balance at any time. In this sense, the psychoanalytically oriented Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek also interprets the birds as the embodiment of the Lacanian “ real ”: a traumatic phenomenon that breaks into reality from outside, beyond causality and that which can be understood through thought and language.
• In the ecological reading the birds would stand for the revenge of a nature exploited by humans . This is also indicated by the scene in the pet shop, in which all animals are locked in cages. On the other hand, the two caged breeding birds that Melanie brings to Bodega Bay as a present for Mitch's sister are completely peaceful throughout the film.
• Finally, in the familial reading, the intersubjective relationships of the protagonists are the key to understanding birds. The birds thus embody “the deep discord, the disturbance, the derailment of these relationships.” This interpretation is supported by the oedipal dimension of the relationship between Mitch, his mother and Melanie, which is explicitly discussed psychologically several times in the film , which is also reflected in appropriately staged triangular scenes on End of the film (escape scene) is visualized.

“In the film, the birds are like the plague in Oedipus' Thebes : the incarnation of a deep disturbance in family relationships - the father is absent, the paternal function (the function of the pacifying law, the name-of-the-father ) is suspended . This vacuum fills the 'irrational' maternal superego , which tyrannically and maliciously prevents any 'normal' sexual relationship. "

The end of the film speaks for this interpretation: When Mitch's mother finally accepts her competitor (the scene in the car) and "releases" her son, the birds stop attacking.

Donald Spoto also interprets the bird attacks in connection with the interpersonal problems of the characters in the film:

“The bird attacks appear like symbolic manifestations of these fragile human relationships - or, more precisely, the bird attacks outwardly express the failure of human relationships. Hitchcock had covered the walls of his office with meter-long wrapping paper and graphically displayed the course of the plot with its climaxes and points of rest. If you study the episodes in the order in which they were later included in the film, it turns out that every incident that involves birds always immediately follows a scene that describes how a character is afraid of being alone or to be abandoned. Each character in the story has deliberately chosen a lifestyle that avoids loneliness, while at the same time each involuntarily creates situations of emotional isolation. The two main characters, the man and the woman, the mother, the teacher, the adults in the bar - each of these people is defined by a terrible loneliness, caused at least in part by emotional isolation and fear of the others. "

Slavoj Žižek places the film in a row with two other Hitchcock films that were made shortly afterwards , in which birds also play a threatening role: In The Invisible Third , the protagonist is attacked from the air by an airplane ("Steel Bird"), and in Psycho that is Murderer's room, Norman Bates, filled with stuffed birds. But already in his early film Blackmail Hitchcock sat in 1929 for the first time a bird as a symbol of imminent danger, a well diving birds including in sabotage , The Lady Vanishes , Vertigo - From the realm of the dead (as buttons on Judy's blouse) and in Marnie on . Only in The Birds does this central motif in Hitchcock's work become the main theme of the entire film. When asked by Donald Spoto about the accumulation of the bird motif in his films, Hitchcock is said to have only replied: “Strange, isn't it?” In Topas (1968), two spies in Cuba are exposed by birds.

synchronization

The German version of the film comes from the Berliner Synchron Wenzel Lüdecke and was made in 1963. The dialogue book was written by Fritz A. Koeniger and the direction was in the hands of Klaus von Wahl .

role	actor	Voice actor
Melanie Daniels	Tippi Hedren	Edith Schneider
Mitchell Brenner	Rod Taylor	Gert Günther Hoffmann
Lydia Brenner	Jessica Tandy	Alice Treff
Cathy Brenner	Veronica Cartwright	Marion Hartmann
Annie Hayworth	Suzanne Pleshette	Ruth Scheerbarth
Mrs. Bundy (ornithologist)	Ethel Griffies	Lili Schönborn
Sebastian Sholes (fisherman)	Charles McGraw	Benno Hoffmann
Deke Carter (landlord)	Lonny Chapman	Gerd Duwner
Traveling salesman	Joe Mantell	Kurt Waitzmann
Mrs. McGruder	Ruth McDevitt	Anneliese Würtz
Deputy Al Malone	Malcolm Atterbury	Anton Herbert

Awards

The trick technician Ub Iwerks was nominated for an Oscar in the category Best Visual Effects in 1964 , but lost to Emil Kosa junior in Cleopatra .

Tippi Hedren received the Golden Globe Award for Best Young Actress of 1964 for her acting performance . She shared this award with Ursula Andress and Elke Sommer .

In addition, screenwriter Evan Hunter was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award .

Aftermath

In May 2006, a theater adaptation of The Birds was performed on the Shambala reservation (Veronica Cartwright 2nd from left, Tippi Hedren, 2nd from right).

In 1994, the theme of the attacking birds for a US television film with the title The Birds II - The Return was again cinematically implemented. The film takes place 25 to 30 years later on the fictional American east coast island of Gull Island. Tippi Hedren can be seen in a supporting role, which has no relation to the original film. The director took Rick Rosenthal using the pseudonym Alan Smithee .

An adaptation dealing with the same topic was also produced in Germany. The 2006 film The Crows, broadcast by Sat.1 , starring Susanna Simon and Stefan Jürgens was not praised by the critics, but achieved respectable ratings .

In 2007 a remake was released with the title The Birds - Attack From Above . Sheldon Wilson directed and starred Sean Patrick Flanery and Stephen McHattie . With Rod Taylor one of the main characters of the original can be seen in a supporting role.

A remake planned by Universal Studios since 2007 and directed by Martin Campbell with Naomi Watts in the lead role and Michael Bay as producer has not yet been realized.

In 2010 the musical "The Birds of Alfred Hitchcock" with the music by William Ward Murta and directed by Kay Kuntze was premiered at the Bielefeld Theater. It deals with the relationship between Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren during the filming of "The Birds".

See also

Affliction from seagulls

• The birds (Aristophanes)

literature

• Donald Spoto: The Art of Alfred Hitchcock. Hopkinson and Blake, New York 1976, ISBN 0-911974-21-0 , pp. 380-395.
• Donald Spoto: Alfred Hitchcock: The Dark Side of the Genius (Original: The Dark Side of the Genius ). Kabel Verlag, Hamburg 1984, ISBN 3-453-06345-7 .
• Robert A. Harris, Michael S. Lasky, Joe Hembus (Eds.): Alfred Hitchcock and his films (Original: The Films of Alfred Hitchcock ). Goldmann, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-442-10201-4 .
• Robin Wood: Hitchcock's Films Revisited. Faber & Faber, London / Columbia University Press, New York, NY 2000, ISBN 0-571-16226-6 .
• Kyle B. Counts, Steve Rubin: The Making of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. In: Cinefanstastique. Volume 10, No. 2, Fall 1980, Oak Park, Illinois, ISSN  0145-6032 , pp. 14-35 ( hitchcockwiki.com ).
• Daphne du Maurier : The birds. (Original: The Birds ). In: dies .: A borderline case. Stories. Book guild Gutenberg, Frankfurt am Main / Olten / Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-7632-2729-6 .
• Camille Paglia : The birds. The classic film by Alfred Hitchcock (Original: The Birds ). Europa Verlag, Hamburg / Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-203-84107-X .
• Jeff Kraft, Aaron Leventhal: Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco. Santa Monica Press, Santa Monica (California / USA) 2002, ISBN 1-891661-27-2 , pp. 166-221.
• Slavoj Žižek : Why are the birds attacking? In: ders. (Ed.): Everything you always wanted to know about Lacan that Hitchcock never dared to ask. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-518-29180-7 , pp. 181-186.
• François Truffaut : Mr. Hitchcock, how did you do it? (1966). Heyne, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-453-86141-8 , pp. 277-290.

Web links

Commons : The Birds (film)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• The birds in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• The birds atRotten Tomatoes(English)
• The birds in the German synchronous file
• Review by Ulrich Behrens at filmzentrale.com
• Review at filmsite.org (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Release certificate for the birds . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , December 2008 (PDF; test number: 30 179 DVD).
2. ^ François Bondy (ed.): Harenbergs Lexikon der Weltliteratur. Authors - works - terms . tape 2 . Harenberg Verlag, Dortmund 1994, ISBN 3-611-00338-7 , p. 800 .
3. ^ Mary Ellen Snodgrass: Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature: The Essential Guide to the Lives and Works of Gothic Writers . Facts on File, 2004, ISBN 0-8160-5528-9 , pp. 29 (English).
4. ↑ Daphne du Maurier: The birds . 2005, p. 16, 28 .
5. ^ Allen A. Debus: Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction: A Thematic Survey . McFarland & Company, 2006, ISBN 0-7864-2672-1 , pp. 81 (English).
6. ^ Jeff Kraft, Aaron Leventhal: Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco . 2002, p. 181 .
7. ^ Jeff Kraft, Aaron Leventhal: Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco . 2002, p. 262 ff .
8. ^ Jeff Kraft, Aaron Leventhal: Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco . 2002, p. 214 f .
9. ↑ Jeanne Rubner : What made Hitchcock's birds wild. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 4, 2012.
10. ^ ^{A b} François Truffaut: Mr. Hitchcock, how did you do that? 2003, p. 279 .
11. ↑ Kyle B. Counts, Steve Rubin: The Making of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. The story . In: Cinefanstastique . 1980.
12. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Laurent Bouzereau: Documentation All About 'The Birds' , 2000
13. ↑ Michael Thornton: Hitchcock the Psycho: As Birds star Tippi Hedren reveals he tried to destroy her when she spurned his advances, how all his blondes lived in fear of the sadistic director. In: Daily Mail , March 22, 2012 (English).
14. ^ Anita Gates: Suzanne Pleshette, Actress, Dies at 70. In: The New York Times , January 21, 2008 (English).
15. ^ Jeff Kraft, Aaron Leventhal: Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco . 2002, p. 168 .
16. ^ Jeff Kraft, Aaron Leventhal: Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco . 2002, p. 170 .
17. ↑ François Truffaut: Mr. Hitchcock, how did you do it? 2003, p. 281 .
18. ^ Jeff Kraft, Aaron Leventhal: Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco . 2002, p. 188 ff .
19. ^ Jeff Kraft, Aaron Leventhal: Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco . 2002, p. 194 .
20. ^ ^{A b} Jeff Kraft, Aaron Leventhal: Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco . 2002, p. 206 .
21. ^ Jeff Kraft, Aaron Leventhal: Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco . 2002, p. 196 f .
22. ^ Jeff Kraft, Aaron Leventhal: Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco . 2002, p. 213 .
23. ↑ Patrick McGilligan: Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light . 2004.
24. ^ Oscar Sala Fund at the Deutsches Museum: Films. Deutsches Museum, accessed on August 1, 2013 . 
25. ↑ Frank Hentschel: Tones of fear: The music in horror films . Bertz + Fischer, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86505-313-8 , pp. 74 f .
26. ^ Michael McCarthy: Final cut for Hollywood's favorite dog. In: The Independent . February 5, 2009.
27. ^ The birds in the lexicon of international films
28. ↑ Robin Wood. Hitchcock's Films , A. Zwemmer, London 1965, p. 116.
29. ↑ Slavoj Žižek: Love your symptom like yourself! Jacques Lacan's Psychoanalysis and the Media (= International Merve Discourse, Volume 161). Merve, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-88396-081-0 , p. 57.
30. ↑ Slavoy Žižek: Why are the birds attacking? In: the same: In: Everything you always wanted to know about Lacan and Hitchcock never dared to ask . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-518-29180-7 , p. 182 f.
31. ↑ In: Slavoj Žižek et al: Everything you always wanted to know about Lacan and Hitchcock never dared to ask. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt / M 2002, ISBN 3-518-29180-7 , p. 183 f.
32. ↑ Donald Spoto: Alfred Hitchcock. The dark side of genius . Heyne, Munich 1986 p. 539.
33. ↑ Slavoy Žižek: Why are the birds attacking? In: the same: In: Everything you always wanted to know about Lacan and Hitchcock never dared to ask . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-518-29180-7 , p. 183.
34. ↑ "Strange, isn't it?" Donald Spoto: Alfred Hitchcock. The dark side of genius . Heyne, Munich 1986 p. 386.
35. ↑ Variety : Naomi Watts Set for 'Birds' Remake , October 18, 2007 (English)
36. ↑ The Birds. IMDb.com, accessed November 4, 2012 . 
37. ↑ "The Birds" Remake May Not Happen. WorstPreviews.com, June 16, 2009, accessed November 4, 2012 . 
38. ↑ BY ANKE GROENEWOLD: musical "The Birds of Alfred Hitchcock" in Bielefeld premiered. Retrieved December 27, 2019 .