The Meeting Of The Film Society 1

I am watching Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds again on Turner Classic Movies (Huzzah for TCM!), and for the first time I am appreciating it for how well executed it is. I am also enjoying seeing Tippi Hedren as an actress, instead of a Hitchcock protegée.

(Of course, it is not as quite as perfect as School Of Rock with Jack Black, which was perfect in all regards, from writing to acting to directing to wardrobe to editing to sound to Foley artistry, etc.,etc., etc.
School Of Rock had the extra added gold star of ignoring the question of what immediately happened in the aftermath of the story. There were scenes at the end showing how things were in the near future, but it totally - and correctly! - ignores the ridiculous business of trying to square a fantasy with reality; i.e., how the kids and their fast-tracking parents were immediately reconciled to having lost a semester of studies.
One does not reconcile fantasy with reality within the context of the film. School Of Rock did a slight return to the normal world by adding those scenes at the ending credits, which did not detract from the main story in the slightest.)

I find myself liking The Birds a good deal. Of course, there is the lovely Veronica Cartwright, whom I would not see again until Alien some fourteen years later, and a mesmerizing Jessica Tandy who floats like a butterfly and stares like a cobra.

I think it a shame Tippi Hedren did not have a more robust career as an actress. Unfortunately, with a first name such as "Tippi", I suppose most of us expected her to be associated intimately with "Longstockings", or something along those lines.

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