For The Birds

I took my wife and 12-year-old son to see Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds last weekend. A local theater, Loews Jersey, a restored 1920s "movie palace," was showing a new, "archival quality" Technicolor print of the film. It was gorgeous! You would have thought it was filmed yesterday, not in 1963. The special effects are crude by today's digital standards, but the movie builds up a huge amount of suspense (after a slow start). Everyone who sees this film wonders why the birds attack. There's no definitive answer, though I think it has something to do with nature's revenge on people who cling to unnatural relationships. My son had an interesting theory: He thinks the birds were angry because the characters in the film were smoking too many cigarettes!