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Summary: A book on the Birds which soars on eagle's wings!!!!
Review: As a devotee of Sir Alfred Hitchcok I have read several biographies and critiques of his films. The best one is the one you are contemplating purchasing! Camille Paglia is a controversial professor of modern popular culture who does herself proud in this fascinating critique of Hitch's late film.
Paglia has high praise for the coldly seductive Tippi Hedren and gives the reader a scene by scene description of what is going on screen and what symbolism is employed by Hitchcock and his outstanding team of movie magicians,
Paglia draws on her wide knowledge of world literature, horror films and music to add fascinating insights.
Of all the laudable BFI (British Film Institute) guides I hav e so far read this is the best because:
a. Paglia writes in an easy to comprehend style.
b. The rewatching of the film for the reader will be enhanced once this concise book has been mastered.
c. Paglia provides a retelling of the story rich in allusion and symoblism.
After seeing Paglia on a recent Author In-Depth Interview I had to search out her writings. This made for a very good introduction to her, Hitchcock's The Birds while buttressing my joy in the BFI guides.
Dust off the DVD and watch the movie as you peruse the pages of Paglia! Have fun!
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Summary: dead-on critique by an obvious movie lover
Review: Blimey, can it really be almost four years since Paglia has published a book? Her critique of 'The Birds' is one of the best of the BFI Classics series for several reasons. First, she approaches her nervy text like a detective, similar to the way Pauline Kael set about her research for 'The Citizen Kane Book'. Second, the book is thoughtfully designed and includes some nice photos that are not just the usual poorly reproduced film stills in faulty black and white; there is a startling pic on page 38 where Tippi Hedren resembles that other sensation of the early 1960s, Edie Sedgwick. Paglia probably insisted on the inclusion of the not-bad color film stills in the middle of the book; other BFI Classics I own show only poor B&W. (Remember, this is the woman who was going to "save" Madonna's 'Sex' book with layout advice!) Third, Paglia does a nice job of reviving Hedren's reputation as an actress and legitimate Hitchcock heroine, no easy feat after forty years of being hammered by most critics for not being Grace Kelly. A rare voice is scholar William Rothman's in 'Hitchcock - The Murderous Gaze' who calls Hedren "an exemplar of the difficulty and pain of expressing love", something that could never be said of wooden clotheshorse Kelly. Fourth, I like Paglia's ability to make fun of things she can't tolerate, her willingness to forgo a middlebrow politeness in her opinions, like Kael. "I want to slap her!" she writes contemptuously of "icky-sweet" Cathy Brenner, played by the youthful Veronica Cartwright. (Paglia might enjoy Cartwright's performances in both 'Alien' and 'The Witches of Eastwick': she is gruesomely dispatched in both, with virtuoso projectile vomiting special effects in 'Eastwick', a development undreamt of by Hitchcock, who merely has Cartwright run to the bathroom when she needs to purge.) Finally, Paglia is unique among most BFI Classics writers in that she does not impose incompatible intellectual or academic theories on a movie that can't support them. She is completely straightforward, something rare in 90s film studies.
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Summary: Inspired choice for the birds
Review: Camille Paglia is a controverisal choice to review the Birds which was directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1962. She is a writer with her own mind and this approach puts her out of step with nearly everyone in academia. Paglia is a always readable and controversial. She has put a generation of feminist's teeth on edge. And on occasion she gets distracted from the task in hand to take a jab at her opponents. Yet this is a superb piece of criticism taking in every apsect of the production of Hitchcock's masterwork. Paglia is very good at the sexual and oedipal politics that pervade Hitchock's work. It shows that film criticism needs not be dense writing aimed solely at obscuring meaning. Her discussion on the ending of the Birds certainly opened my eyes to a flaw of the film. As great as the film is, the ending does not work. The original ending would have provided a great climax to a masterwork, yet it was not chosen. Anyone interested in the Birds or hitchcock should read this book. The book covers a lot of ground and is immensely readable. The best of the series which has shown good marketing sense, but really not a lot of good criticism.
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Summary: What fun
Review: I got a bowl of popcorn, my DVD of The Birds and this book, and settled on the couch. I read her scene-by-scene interpretations, played that scene on my DVD player, paused it, read, watched, etc. It was heaven. I have watched The Birds several times, but this book brought a whole new depth to the experience. She directed my attention to details I had never seen before. She delved a bit into Hitchcock's psycholgy as a auteur, and psychoanalyzed the characters and their actions. It was so much fun!
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Summary: Paglia for people who don't like Paglia
Review: I often think Camille Paglia is really dippy, but I just adored this book nonetheless. Her characteristic hyperbole works terrifically when talking about a movie she adores (who doesn't like to go off the deep end when discussing a favorite film?), and she keeps her pet rants about feminism and academia to a minimum. Her analysis of "The Birds" is often first-rate and engaging, and though she does go on in places about her insane Nietzschean paradigms even there she's very funny. Best of all, this book includes an insightful and intelligent interview with that most gifted and most neglected of Hitchcock's icy blondes, Tippi Hedren, which does much towards illuminating her famous performance in this film and also dispelling some of the myths promulgated by Donald Spoto. Highly recommended!
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Summary: Some Good Politically Incorrect Criticism
Review: I usually stay away from contemporary artistic criticism as literary and film criticism of the past twenty years has simply been ridiculously pretentious. Interpretations have followed strains of politically correct/leftist thought regarding gender relations, homosexuality, consumerism, and other such drivel while the critics' own arrogance prevent them from recognizing that they have not produced an original thought in years.
The BFI Film Classics series has therefore been refreshing. Although I have read a few others in the series, it was THE BIRDS that captured my attention. Hitchcock was an exciting director who was willing to use women's sexuality in ways that has gotten him trashed as a sexist today, The Birds is one of his classics and Camille Paglia is the cultural gadfly whose intellect is matched by her willingness to call things as she sees them without a concern as to what others may think.
Not surprisingly, the result is quite a bit of fun. Paglia takes us through the film bit by bit adding her own personal wit along the way. We learn that The Birds was based on a Daphne du Maurier story which itself may have been based on German airstrikes during World War II. But nature has always been more destructive than man in Paglia's viewpoint and her interpretation of the film is consistent with this view.
Paglia's strength is in her discussion of Tippi Hedren. Although never a major actress in the Hitchcock universe, Hedren holds her own in The Birds, which Paglia correctly points out. Hedren has as much sexual power as any buxom blond in any Hitchcock film. For anyone familiar with Paglia, it will come as no surprise that her analysis of Hedren exploits that to the max.
It is also worth pointing out that this book is packaged very nicely. Its color photographs and reproduction of the movie poster on its cover makes THE BIRDS a visual treat as well as a literary one. A nice job all around.
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Summary: Does It Have Pictures?
Review: I Wanna know if this book has pictures? Does It Have Pictures?Can anyone on here tell me if it has pictures? If you can then tell me when you get the messege on here
Because the exorcist one like the birds has pictures so i wanna know if this one has pictures too
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Summary: Before Fabio got goosed, there was 'Tippi'
Review: No offense to Ms. Hedren, but cool blondes just don't do it for me. I'll take a raven-haired lovebird like Suzanne Pleshette - or Camille Paglia - any day. She bewitched me so much I shelled out the ten bucks for this one - 10 cents per page! After shocking the world with "Psycho", the ever-adventurous Alfred Hitchcock released "The Birds", an odd, stilted movie cluttered with obtrusive "symbolism" for college daws to peck at, complete with a trite Oedipal situation (incest and eye-gouging) and inane signpost dialogue. The best things about it are the Bodega Bay scenery and the absence of a Bernard Herrman Wagner-cum-soda-water score. This monograph by Camille Paglia is a different story. It is pure joy, the best of the twenty or so BFI booklets I've read, and the only memorable one besides Salman Rushdie's "The Wizard of Oz." Paglia can really write, and her enthusiasm is infectious. Every page contains clever turns of phrase and insight, focussing on gesture, movement, and costume in a way that may remind readers of the "The Faerie Queen" chapter in "Sexual Personae." Most of the perverse visual touches she notices, I admit, went right by me when I watched the movie. I'll make darn sure to pass them off as my own observations the next time I'm in Westwood trying to impress a film-school brunette.
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Summary: Camille Paglia's delicious treatment of The Birds thrills!
Review: One of Hitchcock's half-dozen authentic masterpieces, The Birds still manages to titilate as it terrifies; its poetically bleak yet mordantly witty vision of the random shattering of everyday life has only gained clarity and luster. The madcap Paglia has risen to the occasion--this treatment is the most sustained critical piece ive read from her in some time, and the focus it requires of her frees her--for the most part--from her characteristic insecurities (manifested by wearying "shock" tactics) while it brings out her most appealing qualities, daring insight and psychological acuity and historical breadth. She does a first-rate job of depicting and scrutinizing the great women of the film--Hedren, Pleshette, Tandy--bringing out their decadent sultriness and mysterious sexual glamour, in ways that successfully underpin her view of the film as a Romantic treatise on the vagaries of "rapacious nature" and Woman's enigmatic sexual allure and power. The only real failing is the ending--where is it? A carefully orchestrated finale of insight would have made this fine, rousing piece a real showstopper.
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Summary: Classic, hilarious Paglia
Review: One of my favorite authors writing about one of my favorite movies--how could I resist buying this book? I know, I know, Paglia's reputation as a "scholar" is not on the firmest ground, but you have to admit she can write some memorable sentences, and she outdoes herself in this slim but entertaining read. It's basically a scene-by-scene analysis of Hitchcock's film, with some great backstage info and gossip (much of it from a revealing interview with Tippi Hedren) interspersed with Paglia's typical rantings about Dionysian aspects of this or that, phallic pencils and dock pilings, and why the perspective of drag queens is to be treasured over that of the average viewer. I'm not trying to be dismissive--on the contrary, I love Paglia's theories. For me, this book was pure fun to read. However, if you're looking for serious, traditional film criticism, you may want to look elsewhere.
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