Suspense In Alfred Hitchcock's Film The Birds

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Every time I’ve read a book and then watched the movie for it, I’ve been disappointed. One element that I look for when I watch a movie after I read the book is the suspense. When I saw the movie version of The Birds, I noticed that the suspense was more obvious than it was in the short story. Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds does a better job of creating and utilizing suspense because of the suspenseful sounds, the filming techniques, and how the people can’t do anything when they are being attacked.
The film The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock does a better job of creating and using suspense due to its use of suspenseful sounds. For example, when Melanie is sitting on the bench outside of the school, smoking her cigarette, the kids in the background are singing a long song with repeated lyrics, and the birds are landing one by one behind her. This is a very suspenseful scene, but it was even more suspenseful because of the kids singing in the background. In this scene, the viewer is just waiting for it to end and there is a lot of tension because they know that once the children stop …show more content…

For instance, when Melanie is walking to the stairs to see where the flapping of the birds is coming from, there is a view of the staircase from her eyes and she is getting closer and closer to it. The filming of this scene makes it more suspenseful because she is walking very slowly toward the staircase, which creates more suspense because the viewer is seeing it from her point of view. Another moment that was suspenseful because of the filming was when the gasoline was spilling and then that guy lit up his cigar and the whole area exploded. This was a very scary moment because everyone knew what was gonna happen and they were just waiting on it, but at the same time, the big explosion was a surprise. This is how the filming affects how suspenseful the film