The Birds 1963

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader: Alfred Hitchcock's most abstract film (1963), and perhaps his subtlest, still yielding new meanings and inflections after a dozen or more viewings. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: Few films depict so eerily yet so meticulously the metaphysical and historical sense of a world out of joint. Read more

Bosley Crowther, New York Times: Mr. Hitchcock and his associates have constructed a horror film that should raise the hackles of the most courageous and put goose-pimples on the toughest hide. Read more

TIME Magazine: The movie flaps to a plotless end. Read more

Tom Milne, Time Out: It's fierce and Freudian as well as great cinematic fun, with ample fodder for the amateur psychologist following up on Hitch's tortuous involvement with his leading ladies. Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: Beneath all of this elaborate feather bedlam lies a Hitch cock-and-bull story that's essentially a fowl ball. Read more

Andrew Sarris, Village Voice: Drawing from the relatively invisible literary talents of Daphne DuMaurier and Evan Hunter, Alfred Hitchcock has fashioned a major work of cinematic art, and "cinematic" is the operative term here, not "literary" or "sociological." Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Hitch's much misappreciated follow-up to Psycho is arguably the greatest of all disaster films -- a triumph of special effects, as well as the fountainhead of what has become known as gross-out horror. Read more