The Birds

The birds

This is a thriller what Alfred Hitchcock directed in 1963. The writer of the film is called Daphne Du Maurier and Evan Hunter did the screen play. The stars of the film are called Rod Taylor, Tippi Hendren and Suzanne Pleshette.

Thriller conventions

In birds, instead of having a villain, the external threat is nature what is the birds. In a scene in the film, mitch's mother goes into the farmers house and finds it to be very quiet with cups smashed in the kitchen, then she looks in his room where she finds the room torn apart and smashed windows with birds dead, in the angle of her eye she sees a foot with blood and finds the body without eyes. she leave the house with shock. This builds up tension because she has slowly entered the home and see a shocking event. This then makes the audience thrilled because nature is attacking because ?? no one knows why and it is very unusual. This makes the audience to watch and find out.

In this film, there is always suspense used extensively. An example of this is that in the film there no non-digetic sounding. all the sounds are nature, eg the sound of the birds.

Dramatic irony is used in the film. This is when character does not know what is happening but the audience does. An example of this is when, Tippi Hendren is out side the school on the bench, where she has no clue that the birds are gathering behind her, however we the audience know this.

Hitchcocks technique in the film  is that he uses nature as an external threat. An example of Hitchcocks technique is when at the school yard scene, you can hear the innocent childrens voices sing whilst you can see the nature of the birds gathering to attack. Throughout the whole film theres no non-digetic sound, just digetic sound of the birds its self. The wind and screeching show shock and horror to what the birds are doing.