Even though she clearly heard wings flapping, and thus the reason she went up there in the first place??
Terrible script writing/directing. Yet another reason to dislike the movie, and quite honestly, the overrated director.
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Hitchcock was very famous -- perhaps more as an overall "movie and TV star" -- than as a director -- and I suppose that's why he takes some hits today, much as he did when he was the most famous director in Hollywood.
I think he achieved far too much over far too many decades(five, in England and America, with a side trip to Germany) to be overrated. Disliked sometimes...yes. Everybody has different tastes.
The truth of the matter is that The Birds got some bad reviews on release and it seems to have a script that simply wasn't as good as at least the four Hitchcock films ahead of it.
BUT...the effects, for 1963 and before Silicon Valley and CGI - -were incredible. Nobody could quite figure out how Hitchcock DID it -- it was animation AND puppets AND trained birds.
Hitchcock would have hated Moviechat, where the name of the game seems to be discussing plot holes. He said "I practice absurdity quite religiously" and stated that he only sought a certain amount of logic to his films. (Why does a villain have a house on Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest? Why does a killer come up with the plot that fuels "Vertigo"?) Actually, Psycho ends up being perhaps the most logical of all: a female thief is killed by a maniac at motel ..and BECAUSE she was a thief...she brings a private detective on her trail...and he alerts loved ones, etc.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
WHY Melanie goes up those stairs has been discussed elsewhere(since 1963) and the best rationale seems to be: Mitch is bloodied and exhausted after fighting the birds, she wants him to get his sleep. The daughter is too young, the mother is too old -- Melanie herself has to explore those noises. They aren't nearly as loud as the "attack" noises, so she thinks she is safe. She enters the room -- she does NOT close the door behind her -- and the birds knock her against the door and it closes and she is under attack.
WHY she goes into that room is "explained enough." But what is much more important is the ATTACK itself. An incredible mix of real birds and effects, cut roughly like the shower murder in Psycho but actually much more of a technical challenge and with a "creative decision" on Hitchcock's part with sound: no screeching and cawing this time, only the flutter of feathers. These diabolical birds want to kill Melanie WITHOUT waking up the others.
The Birds is a 50/50 split -- Hitchcock's greatest technical achievement, but with a sub-par script(which drove sub-par acting.)
The Birds -- along with Psycho-- is Hitchcock's most famous film today. But it rarely if ever made his Top Ten lists.
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