"The Birds"

The Birds is a Hitchcock classic that was released in 1963 and it is about crazy, deranged, aggressive birds that attack people.

"A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people there in increasing numbers and with increasing viciousness." - IMDb The Birds (1963)

"The Birds"

"The Birds" contain the key aspects of a thriller film. From just the trailer we can tell that this Hitchcock film is another one of his thrillers because it contains fast pacing action within the scenes. The trailer starts off dramatically with "there is no reason to be afraid" and this then leads on to a short clip from the film. By this stage the audience is already curious of what the film is about then suddenly there is chaos on the screen and a lot of scene switching. There is so much going on within the scenes that the audience want to know what is the cause of the birds going crazy and what happens to the people.

Hitchcock's film used suspense greatly throughout the film to create uncertainty within the audience. At certain stages of the film he used it more than others and kept the audience intact. Also at the same time the suspense used created excitement because we wanted to know how the characters would cope with the evil birds and they would wriggle out of this problem.

During the scene where Melanie and Mitch's family were caved into the house Hitchcock used suspense to build up anxiety within the audience. During this scene the family the family have trapped themselves into Mitch's house to protect themselves from the birds. In the night Melanie decides to go upstairs because she has heard something and wants to investigate. She walks up the stairs slowly and by doing this the audience are on the edge of their seats. When she finally reaches the door there is hardly any noise coming from the room and at this point the audience are a bit uncertain of what is going on, but as soon as Melanie opens the door she is attacked by a mass heard of birds.  



Hitchcock used dramatic irony to draw the attention of the audience. In the schoolyard scene there were happy children singing their songs in contrast to the evil in nature. This engages the audience with the scene because the audience know what is going to happen, but the children in the schoolyard are clueless.