Afternoon at the Movies - The Birds

Based on the novella by Daphne du Maurier, this 1963 Hitchcock film and the short story were inspired by the true events of a mass bird attack on the seaside town of Capitola in California on August 18, 1961. It’s the film debut of Tippi Hedren, who starred in Hitchcock’s next movie, ”Marnie”(1964). Hitchcock insisted that real birds be used for the film despite spending an estimated $200,000 creating mechanical birds. Hitchcock decided to do without any conventional incidental score, instead using sound effects and sparse source music in counterpoint to calculated silences to create fear and tension.