Arte is currently broadcasting The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock (1963). It\u2019s striking how this great cinema classic resonates with our present day. A master of suspense, Hitchcock takes his time setting up the plot, almost to the point of boredom. Nothing truly dramatic happens during the first hour of the film. Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), a beautiful, wealthy, and independent young woman\u2014very much of her time, the sixties\u2014with her almost metallic platinum-blonde hair, is intrigued by a man, Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor), who teases her in a San Francisco bird shop. She pursues him in her convertible Aston Martin along the Californian coast all the way to Bodega Bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is there that the film slowly begins to echo our present: when peaceful everyday life darkens under an uncontrollable threat. When birds, usually harmless, start attacking humans for no apparent reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cscientific\u201d voice, embodied by a disbelieving elderly lady, Mrs. Bundy (Ethel Griffies), protests:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 Birds are not aggressive, miss; they bring beauty into this world. It is rather the human species that strives and even takes pleasure in making life difficult on this planet\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mitch Brenner tries to secure the house before the birds attack, but there are breaches in the defenses\u2026 Seagulls and crows turned belligerent break through like (re)programmed drones\u2026 Today: the surprise attacks of a neighboring country that no one believed possible, still ongoing and multiplying; former allies suddenly turning against those who thought them friendly; barbaric tyrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arte is currently broadcasting The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock (1963). It\u2019s striking how this great cinema classic resonates with our present day. A master of suspense, Hitchcock takes his time setting up the plot, almost to the point of boredom. Nothing truly dramatic happens during the first hour of the film. Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren), a beautiful, wealthy, and independent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":617,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":616,"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615\/revisions\/616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/memoiresactives.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}