Sight and Sound (1998) - Beauty and the beasts

Details

• book review: Beauty and the beasts
• author(s): Leslie Felperin
• journal: Sight and Sound (01/Oct/1998)
• issue: volume 8, issue 10, page 65
• journal ISSN: 0037-4806
• publisher: British Film Institute
• keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Camille Paglia, Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, Leslie Felperin, North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Tippi Hedren, Video recordings

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Abstract

Paglia reviews The Birds directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Article

Camille Paglia on nature and civilisation in Hitchcock's 'The Birds'

Beauty and the beasts

I first saw The Birds when I was in high school, and it had a profound effect on me. Its view of nature fascinated me, and Tippi Hedren's performance impressed me. I was not old enough to have been influenced by Grace Kelly or Ingrid Bergman in Hitchcock's films, so I didn't come to The Birds with any preconceptions that made me feel Hedren hadn't met the standards of a slightly older generation of actresses. For me, Hedren is the ultimate Hitchcock heroine.

The Birds is respected for its technical achievements, which were cutting edge at that time, but there's always a backbiting about Hedren. So in my book on The Birds I wanted to show why her performance is wonderful and why the audience loves the film, and loves her. Critics don't like her because as Melanie Daniels she comes across as too fashionable, too chic, and there's an animosity towards chic, fashionable women among academic film critics. They believe fashion is a capitalist conspiracy by heterosexist imperialists, to keep women down and give them low self-esteem!

In my film criticism I take the position of the fan. I look at film from the point of view of appreciation. I believe it's the critic's function to open the work further to the audience, not to demean the work, to attack it, to find all the racism, sexism or homophobia in it.

I love the beauty and glamour of the great Hollywood studio era. So I'm perfectly positioned to appreciate the high-fashion style that Melanie Daniels was created to ...

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Camille Paglia was talking to Leslie Felperin. 'The Birds' is available on ClC Video; Camille Paglia's BFI Film Classic on 'The Birds' is available from all good bookshops