The Birds

Those who would like to learn to write well could hardly do better than study Camille Paglia's The Birds (1998), the author's exhilarating monograph on Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 horror masterpiece. The British Film Institute (BFI), which sponsored the book in its BFI Film Classics series, has made some highly questionable choices in its "modern" selection of "the 360 key films in the history of cinema," including such mediocre productions as John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), James Cameron's The Terminator (1984), Michael Mann's Heat (1995), and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999), but their pairing of Camille Paglia with The Birds - the choice of film was probably hers - is nothing less than inspired. In 104 concise, robust pages, Paglia proves that depth of perception can be readily expressed without recourse to the labrinthian doublespeak that has infected American academia via the French Structuralists over the last quarter century. Paglia communicates clearly without seeming to try: the emphasis throughout is squarely on the intelligent conveyance of her ideas, and not on dreary abstractions and intellectualism. Her sentences virtually crackle with energy and verve, humor and acuity. Readers familiar with Paglia's previous work already know her to be a walking testament to Western culture. Here, Paglia brings the same brilliant contextual ability to The Birds that she brought to the work of Spencer, Byron, Swinburne, Wilde, Hawthorne, and Dickinson in 1990's Sexual Personae. Whether discussing Hitchcock's oeuvre or psychology, Tippi Hedren's facial expressions, wardrobe or coiffure, the original Daphne du Maurier short story upon which the film was based, real episodes of bird attacks along the California coast, or the myriad technical processes involved in the making of the film, from sound and cinematography to special effects, Paglia, who seems to know everything, is in top form. If a character so much as crosses their legs, Paglia has something revealing to say about it. Paglia carefully moves through and interprets each scene, expressing surprising and persuasive theories about the smallest of details, demonstrating in the process how absolutely nothing should be overlooked, assumed, or taken for granted in films as carefully planned and executed as Hitchcock's. Moving from episode to episode, Paglia cumulatively offers her own astute interpretation of the film's notoriously ambiguous meaning. Paglia has scrupulously researched her subject, interviewed Tippi Hedren, who she clearly reveres, and obviously enjoyed the writing of The Birds tremendously. Less hilarious than some of her other work, The Birds, film writing at its best and a cut well above most of the other titles in the BFI series, is a sheer pleasure to read. Illustrated with color and black and white photographs.

As a devotee of Sir Alfred Hitchcok I have read several biographies and critiques of his films. The best one is the one you are contemplating purchasing! Camille Paglia is a controversial professor of modern popular culture who does herself proud in this fascinating critique of Hitch's late film. Paglia has high praise for the coldly seductive Tippi Hedren and gives the reader a scene by scene description of what is going on screen and what symbolism is employed by Hitchcock and his outstanding team of movie magicians, Paglia draws on her wide knowledge of world literature, horror films and music to add fascinating insights. Of all the laudable BFI (British Film Institute) guides I hav e so far read this is the best because:a. Paglia writes in an easy to comprehend style.b. The rewatching of the film for the reader will be enhanced once this concise book has been mastered.c. Paglia provides a retelling of the story rich in allusion and symoblism. After seeing Paglia on a recent Author In-Depth Interview I had to search out her writings. This made for a very good introduction to her, Hitchcock's The Birds while buttressing my joy in the BFI guides. Dust off the DVD and watch the movie as you peruse the pages of Paglia! Have fun!

I got a bowl of popcorn, my DVD of The Birds and this book, and settled on the couch. I read her scene-by-scene interpretations, played that scene on my DVD player, paused it, read, watched, etc. It was heaven. I have watched The Birds several times, but this book brought a whole new depth to the experience. She directed my attention to details I had never seen before. She delved a bit into Hitchcock's psycholgy as a auteur, and psychoanalyzed the characters and their actions. It was so much fun!

Blimey, can it really be almost four years since Paglia has published a book? Her critique of 'The Birds' is one of the best of the BFI Classics series for several reasons. First, she approaches her nervy text like a detective, similar to the way Pauline Kael set about her research for 'The Citizen Kane Book'. Second, the book is thoughtfully designed and includes some nice photos that are not just the usual poorly reproduced film stills in faulty black and white; there is a startling pic on page 38 where Tippi Hedren resembles that other sensation of the early 1960s, Edie Sedgwick. Paglia probably insisted on the inclusion of the not-bad color film stills in the middle of the book; other BFI Classics I own show only poor B & W. (Remember, this is the woman who was going to "save" Madonna's 'Sex' book with layout advice!) Third, Paglia does a nice job of reviving Hedren's reputation as an actress and legitimate Hitchcock heroine, no easy feat after forty years of being hammered by most critics for not being Grace Kelly. A rare voice is scholar William Rothman's in 'Hitchcock - The Murderous Gaze' who calls Hedren "an exemplar of the difficulty and pain of expressing love", something that could never be said of wooden clotheshorse Kelly. Fourth, I like Paglia's ability to make fun of things she can't tolerate, her willingness to forgo a middlebrow politeness in her opinions, like Kael. "I want to slap her!" she writes contemptuously of "icky-sweet" Cathy Brenner, played by the youthful Veronica Cartwright. (Paglia might enjoy Cartwright's performances in both 'Alien' and 'The Witches of Eastwick': she is gruesomely dispatched in both, with virtuoso projectile vomiting special effects in 'Eastwick', a development undreamt of by Hitchcock, who merely has Cartwright run to the bathroom when she needs to purge.) Finally, Paglia is unique among most BFI Classics writers in that she does not impose incompatible intellectual or academic theories on a movie that can't support them. She is completely straightforward, something rare in 90s film studies.

Camille Paglia is a controverisal choice to review the Birds which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1962. She is a writer with her own mind and this approach puts her out of step with nearly everyone in academia. Paglia is a always readable and controversial. She has put a generation of feminist's teeth on edge. And on occasion she gets distracted from the task in hand to take a jab at her opponents. Yet this is a superb piece of criticism taking in every apsect of the production of Hitchcock's masterwork. Paglia is very good at the sexual and oedipal politics that pervade Hitchock's work. It shows that film criticism needs not be dense writing aimed solely at obscuring meaning. Her discussion on the ending of the Birds certainly opened my eyes to a flaw of the film. As great as the film is, the ending does not work. The original ending would have provided a great climax to a masterwork, yet it was not chosen. Anyone interested in the Birds or hitchcock should read this book. The book covers a lot of ground and is immensely readable. The best of the series which has shown good marketing sense, but really not a lot of good criticism.