Perhaps the most subtle horror film ever made, The Birds contains some of Alfred Hitchcock's most sophisticated technical achievements in the creation of sheer, seemingly inexplicable tension. There is so much inaction, so much silence, so much Nothing in The Birds - and, after all, its monsters are just birds - it seems Hitchcock is rummaging about in the most excruciating realms of personal terror, what Christopher Warren (Wadsworth Atheneum) labels “the frailty of our complacent world. The film's main characters (except for the child Cathy, who is delightfully direct) are all involved in the ‘games people play,' seldom saying what they feel and constantly jockeying for position. This is especially true of the film's heroine, Melanie Daniels.... Although she was treated unmercifully in reviews at the time of the film's release, Tippi Hedren perfectly captured the role of the vague, vacant, silly, shallow socialite. Her awkward, affected model's walk and affected, almost bird-like head tilts and poses when trying to be witty and sophisticated were exactly what the part called for....
“Only when faced with the coming apocalypse do these characters seek the deeper relationships that unify them and give them strength. (And these) character studies are all that Hitchcock gives us to work with in The Birds. There is no clear answer as to why the strange events occur during the fatal weekend in the community of Bodega Bay, California. The audience is as mystified as the performers....” (JB)