The Birds - ITV 3 now
- Thread starter Groucho
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CalmerChameleon
famous destroyer of peace
The dead man with the pecked-out eyes is my favourite bit 
The dead man with the pecked-out eyes is my favourite bit
I love the school teacher and when her eyes went I wept.
Reno
The In Kraut
...'fraid the back projection just makes me laugh...
If the absence of computer generated effects in a cinematic classic nearly half a century old makes you laugh, then I expect that the lack of perspective in medieval tapestries must have you in hysterics.
You'll be glad to know that for cinematic divs like you Michael Bay is currently remaking The Birds, CG effects and all.
May Kasahara
take me to the feeling
You'll be glad to know that for cinematic divs like you Michael Bay is currently remaking The Birds, CG effects and all.
I was just going to post that
And Nightmare On Elm Street too. What a cunt.
The Groke
hot hail/Paging Dr. Beat
If the absence of computer generated effects in a cinematic classic nearly half a century old makes you laugh, then I expect that the lack of perspective in medieval tapestries must have you in hysterics.
You'll be glad to know that for cinematic divs like you Michael Bay is currently remaking The Birds, CG effects and all.
I have to say I found it hard to take seriously as well.
Not so much the lack of CGI or "convicing" effects - I still adore and delight at the works of Harryhausen and others of that ilk - but I just couldn't buy into any sense of menace or threat attempted by the film, it just came across as silly to me.
Not to say it isn't an enjoyable movie, but it quite clearly didn't have the effect on me that the director intended, nor the effect that it clearly had on audiences in it's time.
I think the special effects (ie the birds themselves) were innovative at the time, but the back projection in a number of scenes is appalling. I've seen better in films from the 40's and 50's. I didn't watch it last night but when I was a professional cinematic div I saw it countless times and bits like when she's rowing across the the bay just shout 'shoddy'. It was a fairly big budget film and was originally shot for 3D but not released as such. So maybe things had to be patched post production.If the absence of computer generated effects in a cinematic classic nearly half a century old makes you laugh, then I expect that the lack of perspective in medieval tapestries must have you in hysterics.
You'll be glad to know that for cinematic divs like you Michael Bay is currently remaking The Birds, CG effects and all.
from me too.Why do they remake classics? If they're short on original stories (which they're not) there are hundreds of also-rans which for some reason didn't quite gel and are ripe material to be remade.
CGI? I don't even wanna go there.
Reno
The In Kraut
The Birds was briefly considered to be made in 3D, but that idea was abandoned before it went into production (it may say so differently in Wikepedia, but its wrong). Most of the effects weren't achieved by backprojection, but by the sodium vapor process invented by Disney Studios, which was an early compositing technique. It may not look flawless now, but then was state of the art. Nothing was "patched in post production", at the time it was one of the most complex special effects films ever made and a lot of work went into it. Fact is, special effects techniques date and you simply have to be able to watch old films within their historical context. The shark in Jaws looks fake and the bluescreen effects in Superman made 15 years later look as fake as the effects in The Birds and yet doesn't matter to me because they are all great films.
Personally I actually like the somewhat unreal look of backprojections and matte paintings and I find the striving for realism in special effects not particularly interesting. There is an artificiality to all of Hitchcock's films, be it the acting, the art, the camera work or the special effects, you either get it or you don't. To me modern audiences lack imagination by demanding for everything to look like real life.
I still find The Birds a gripping film today, simply because unlike many directors today Hitchcock understands how to create tension and because unlike most horror films today The Birds is full of interesting undercurrents. Ultimately it's more about the tensions between a goup of people than just about murderous animals.
I agree. With Hitchcock there are cinematic tricks to build up suspense that were innovative. Today so many films simply rely on FX to replace thought and innovation.
I find Hitchcock's women fascinating. Hitchcock was undoubtedly a mysogonist. From Pabst to Hitchcock we see potrayed the allure of the sexually confident woman together with the repulsion felt by these directors for a sexuality they were simultaneously attracted to and appalled by. They unleash a hatred and desire for women they cannot control, and a self loathing for desire they cannot supress.
So Hitchcock's Melanie Daniels and Pabst's LuLu are women whose life style sits on the wrong side of morality for which they are detested and lusted after for. Men can safely watch and satisfy their lustful fantasies whilst condemning these women for their immorality. However, women could watch and in part fulfill a desire tobe more independent themselves . After all the response of many women to the portrayal of Louise Brooks (LuLu) and her sexually free 'immoral' doings on and off screen was to...copy her clothes and hairstyle to be more like her.
Mrs Magpie
On a bit of break...
The best effects were in Daphne du Maurier's original story. Even Hitch couldn't do it justice.
Reno
The In Kraut
Hitchcock didn't even try to do it justice, he chucked out the plot of du Maurier's short story and only kept the premise, making the film his own. I'm sure if he wanted to he could have included the bird attack on the planes (there was a spectacular plane crash in his earlier Foreign Correspondent), they just didn't fit with Hitchcock's more intimate setting.
The only thing that would have me interested in the remake is if they went back to the original story in the way Carpenter's remake of The Thing did. Of course they are not going to do this as Naomi Watts is already attached to star as Tippi Hedren's character.
Reno
The In Kraut
Interesting comparison to Pabst's Pandora's Box, another one of my favourite films. I think though that in both cases the directors condemn the men more than the women. Brooks' Lulu is amoral rather than immoral and the men self-destruct as a result of her following her impulses, rather her destroying them. The men in Pabst's film are all rather weak and pathetic while Lulu is this life force who dies an ecstatic death at the hands of Jack the Ripper. It's fucked up, but also rather complicated.
Equally I think the treatment of women in Hitchcock's films is more complicated than being outright misogynistic. I don't think he was a feminist but we aren't always supposed to approve of the way his men treat their women.
Lulu is not the villain, but despite herself she destroys men. The idea is that Lulu as Pandora becomes the fantasy of each man she comes across and thus destroys them as they can't own her all to themselves. Interestingly Pabst had a simular view of Louise Brooks herself and was somewhat obsessed, jealous and loathed her for it whilst lusting after her. Pabst has to kill off Lulu - such a free spirit can not be permitted to live. Pabst sees men as weak but women's sexuality as corrupting. The final scene is extraordinary. Here we have Jack the Ripper repenting and declining an offer of sex with Lulu - I have no money. Never mind says Lulu, I like you. She has to almost drag him to her room. He wants to turn his back on his evil doing and throwsd his knife away. But he too cannot resist Lulu/Pandora whose act of amorality corrupts him and leads to her violent end. By being a beautiful woman sexually free she corrupts Jack the Ripper!
With Hitchcock we see simular themes. In the fantastic Vertigo, Kim Kovaks character is a modern (for the time) Lulu. Her sexual alure destroys the men she meets.
In The Birds Mitch is stifled by his mother who keeps him from developing a relationship with women. However, Melanie has been too much the free spirit and needs (and desires) taming by Mitch. The film's metaphorical caging of Melanie in the phone booth is an unintentional metaphor for Hitchcock's desire to see women tamed.
In Psycho Norman Bates also has a domineering mother responsible in part for fucking him up. We are not supposed to approve of Bates' murder of Marion, but her act of theft typically sets her up as victim fodder - a kind of retribution.
Epona
Radar 2006-2020, Sonic 2006-2022, Jakey 2007-2024
A theme which can be found as far back as the Old Testament and the garden of Eden, convince me why I should consider Pabst and Hitchcock's view of the corrupting influence of women any less distasteful or less reactionary? Because those portrayals appealed to women? Is it really in any way liberating to emulate Lulu?
[/devilsadvocate]
jeesus...
Did I suggest that the Pabst/Hitchcock view was less distasteful or reactionary in essence?
What I was saying is that the elements of the fantastic (that is unreal) portrayal of LuLu that society would condemn were in some way things that some women saw as positive. For instance the idea that women could sleep with who they want rather than who they are told to. So the characters and, in Louise Brooks case, the actress and her own personality as distorted through media outlets and gossip journalism, were creations of men, fantasies of men, but to be controlled and condemned by men. But these fantasies escape their creators and take on a different aspect entirely, especially when reinterpreted by women.
Louise Brooks sought her freedom in the context of an extremely sexist World. She both rebelled against the social mores of her time, whilst conforming to certain cultural constructions. Her bob hairstyle came to be associated with independently minded fun loving women, and not kitchen bound housewives.
Reno
The In Kraut
James Steward's Scottie falls for a fantasy of the ideal woman, not for the real thing, while the men in Pandora's Box fall for Lulu herself. They can't cope with Lulu's indepent sexuality and they try to mold her but they fail, unlike Novak's Madeleine who is the construct of another man to start out with. When Judy, the much more vulnerable, flawed real woman beneath the fake, perfect exterior of Madeleine reveals herself to Scottie, he ends up destroying her. It's not Novak's sexual allure which destroys Steward's character, but his own sexual/romantic fantasy of her, which is completely removed from the actual reality of the woman. It all functions perfectly as a critique of how men reduce women to sexual/romantic constructs to serve their own needs. I really don't see any similarity to the independent spirit of Lulu, whose powerful sexual allure men are drawn to like moths to a flame but who acts on her own terms, unlike the Galatea type character that Novak represents in Vertigo.
I agree with the above as a reply to Groucho, plus:
- Lulu is independent and decides to die -- she is not killed off by Pabst. She asks another person to kill her. She DOES NOT corrupt anybody (what on earth do you mean by corrupt?). She DOES NOT destroy men, unless you think men can't think for themselves.
- I am sick and tired of film critics who pretend to reside inside the brain of a director and to know everything they thought and felt. How on earth do you know that Pabst loathed Louise Brooks? Or that Hitchcock desires to see women tamed? Your analysis tells more about the way you think than about the persons you are talking about.
- If you think that Pabst and Hitchcock's views are distasteful and reactionary, and that Hitchock is a misogynist, how come you like their movies?
- Lulu is independent and decides to die -- she is not killed off by Pabst. She asks another person to kill her. She DOES NOT corrupt anybody (what on earth do you mean by corrupt?). She DOES NOT destroy men, unless you think men can't think for themselves.
- I am sick and tired of film critics who pretend to reside inside the brain of a director and to know everything they thought and felt. How on earth do you know that Pabst loathed Louise Brooks? Or that Hitchcock desires to see women tamed? Your analysis tells more about the way you think than about the persons you are talking about.
- If you think that Pabst and Hitchcock's views are distasteful and reactionary, and that Hitchock is a misogynist, how come you like their movies?
Reno
The In Kraut
The presumption that all directors always condone or identify with the behavior of their central male characters is deeply flawed. It's a Freudian interpretation which was all the rage in the 70's but film theory has moved on since then and most people who write on film now would acknowledge that films don't necessarily function as veiled autobiographies for their creators.
Reno
The In Kraut
No I was agreeing with you and I was thinking that this is the angle from which Groucho is approaching this.
In answer to the last point because there is more to Pabst and Hitchcock than their reactionary attitudes towards women, and because their mastery of film explores their troubled view of women - which echoes a societal view of women - in an interesting and illuminating way.
Pabst was obsessed with Louise Brooks as a sexual object of his desire. He was also jealous of her attentions to other men. On one film set she had a young man with her, who she was not having a relationship with but who she pretended to Pabst that she was in order to keep him away. She slept with him once (said it was good as it happens) but didn't want to again...
When I discuss the attitudes of the director I do not do so in a straight-forward biographical way. Their attitudes echo those of the society in which they live, sometimes consciously and sometimes not. Sometimes the conscious adoption of wider attitudes is in contrast to the directors own views or feelings. The attitudes they express in film are their attitudes as expressed through film - what they actually might think is not relevent because I am discussing them as directors.
In the case of Pandoras Box, the version we have available now is very much a Pabst outlook. It did not sit well with the censors of the day. The version cinema audiences of the day saw was cut by about a third, including the loss of the ending, and made little sense in terms of plot.
As for the idea that Pandora corrupts those around her - this is the Pandora myth upon which Pabst basis his film. In the original legend Pandora is a gift from the Gods aimed at undermining man (and in some versions women too).
I maintain that in Pandoras Box and throughout Hitchcock a recurring theme is fear of the sexually independent woman. But I also argued that this fearis mixed with desire on the part of men. At the same time there is, and was, scope for women to admire the independence of Louise Brooks character (although throughout she was dependent on others for money).
I can agree with a lot of that as regards Vertigo, that there is a significantly more complex approach taken to the destructive side of sexual desire. It is by far Hitchcock's best film.
I don't think you get it.
I really don't care whether Louise Brooks slept with Pabst and whether it was good. I also still fail to see how this is relevant to an appreciation of the movie.
You do have an arrogant tendency to use biographical guesswork about the private life of people to support your arguments, and this seriously puts me off your posts. I remember you hoisting a similar argument about García Lorca and Dali, correct me if I'm wrong. I am not a fan of Dali (I love García Lorca) but really (a) what gives you the right to analyse the private life of someone you don't even know, and (b) what on earth does your half-baked analysis of a person's private life have to do with their work?
No, you don't discuss the attitudes of a director in a straight-forward biographical way. You attempt a full-blown analysis of what you think went on in their mind, and you pepper it with gossipy details as if to strengthen your argument. This bothers me big time.
No, you are not discussing them as directors. You have just written something that sounds like it's straight out of Hollywood Babylon, you mention the words sexual and desire a few times, and you present the outcome as a director's outlook. Can you please point me to a few examples of Hitchock's reactionary attitude towards women, in his films?
About Lulu and Pandora -- different people can see all sorts of things in a movie. It is blatantly clear that our views differ enormously and I doubt we are going to agree any time soon.
Anyway, I'm off to watch the rest of Messiah of Evil now.
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