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The Birds (1963) PRoduction: Hitchcock, UNIVERSAL
Screenplay:Evan Hunter from a short story by Daphne du Maurier
Camera:
Special Effects: Lawrence Hampton
Bird Training: Ray Berwick
Costumes:Edith Head
Music: Bernard Herrmann
CAST: Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy,
Suzanne Pleshette, 
While Tippi Hedren enters, Hitchcock exits the pet shop in his CAMEO appearence in the birds. PLOT: Melanie( Tippi Heedren) is fascinated by young lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) whom she meets in San Francisco in a pet store and decides to join on a visit to his young sister in Bodega Bay, bringing a couple of love birds as a gift. She drives in her 1963 Dodge Dart convertible and takes a boat to cross the bay. On the way across the bay, Melanie is attacked by a swooping gull, the precursor of the war about to be waged by the birds. The gulls also attack a birthday party for Mitch's sister, and a neighboring farmer has his eyes gouged out by crows. Mitch and Melanie become trapped in the Brenner home, while the birds attack in squadrons, after having caused havoc at a petrol station and killed Mitch ex girlfriend and town teacher (Pleshette). Eventually the birds break into an upstairs room and trap Melanie who is savagely attacked. She is rescued by Mitch and Mitch drives her, his mother (Jessica Tandy) and his sister (and the Love birds who had remained friendly)away and the film's final, haunting image is of the birds brooding and waiting as the car drives off into the distance. 
The Brenners and Melanie try to escape from the house while the birds watch.(Jessica Tandy, Tippi Hedren, in the car) Rod Taylor. 
Alfred Hitchcock on the set of the birds,directing the last scene Typically Hitchcock was not worried about the the enormous technical difficulties posed by such a film. in one of his most celebrated 'bon-mots', when asked by a journalist how he got the birds in the film to perform so well, Hitchcock deadpanned" We paid them well~"
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While in the Du Maurier's story the birds attack a family, in the film they attack a whole community. Of prime importance was the casting of the central character Melanie Daniels, and as in every film since 1951( except for "The trouble with Harry in 1956) the girl had to be a blonde. Hitchcok was still looking for an actress he could cast in the Grace Kelly mold, and with Nathalie 'Tippi' Hedren he finally found one. Tippi Hedren was a model who Alma spotted in a television drinks commercial in the early 1960s.At the age of 28, The Birds was to be her film debut and Hitchcock quite literally groomed her for stardom. 
The gulls create havoc at the gas station The Crux of "The Birds" is that the animals in question are tame and docile, until they turn, with terrifying violence, against mankind. The transition had to be sharp and bloody. To emphasize that reversal, they had to be seen ferociously attacking Hedren and there could be no suggestion of trickery. The actress spent seven whole days trapped in a room on set doing nothing but being attacked by specially trained birds. The director would not even consider using a stand-in, or using mechanical birds, as originally intended. 
Hitchcock directs Rod Taylor and Suzanne Pleshette in "The Birds" |