Have an account? Sign In Now
Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.
Please briefly explain why you feel this question should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this answer should be reported.
Please briefly explain why you feel this user should be reported.
When secrets threaten to surface and trust is about to shatter; a husband and wife independently devise their own plan to kill the other before their pasts are revealed.
Yes, good points by all. I've come to realize that for my style of writing, it's useful to write, re-write and re-re-write the logline at every stage of the creative process. It helps me to discover what the story is really about and when I finally figure that out, keep it in sharp focus. And primesRead more
Yes, good points by all.
I’ve come to realize that for my style of writing, it’s useful to write, re-write and re-re-write the logline at every stage of the creative process. It helps me to discover what the story is really about and when I finally figure that out, keep it in sharp focus.
And primes me for my 15 second pitch to Steven Speilberg when we chance to meet in an elevator. (Well, I can dream, can’t I?)
See lessActing in concert, birds start attacking people for no apparent reason.
Jean-Marie: You have raised a host of interesting issues specific to the movie, "The Birds" and to plotting in general that I think could generate enough posts to easily set another record. And it seems we don't agree on many of the issues. Great! The basis for a true dialectic, clashing theses andRead more
Jean-Marie:
You have raised a host of interesting issues specific to the movie, “The Birds” and to plotting in
general that I think could generate enough posts to easily set another record. And it seems we don’t
agree on many of the issues. Great! The basis for a true dialectic, clashing theses and antitheses from which, hopefully, will emerge syntheses of deeper understanding of plotting by of all parties to the discussion.
So a-w-a-y we go! Where to begin?
I agree with you that “The Birds” is an unconventional movie. Which at that point in his career, Hitchcock had the creative license — and creative chops — to pull off. (I have neither.)
But as Tony Edward and I pointed out in the other thread, contrary to your sweeping generalization, most of the basic elements are there: a protagonist, conflict, an antagonist, stakes.
I pointed out that the protagonist, Melanie, does have a character flaw. And now you, too, say she has one. But we disagree as to what it is.
What do we mean when we use the term “character flaw”? I’m going to leave that question dangling for now and hope we get back to it later. I think there’s a lot of wheat and chaff to thrash out on that one.
For now, I will merely throw out an admittedly simplistic definition of the character flaw: it’s the defining characteristic, introduced in Act 1, that gets the protagonist into trouble for the rest of the story.
Melanie does not display one millisecond of “fear and helplessness” in Act 1. So that can’t be her character flaw. “Fear and helplessness” is displayed much later in the story after she is attacked by birds. But the “fear and helplessness” is shared by everyone else in the movie. The “character flaw” is specific to the main character, not to the whole cast.
You also stated:
>>Basically : The birds is the same as JAWS without the Sheriff Brody and the Mayor Vaughan.
Well, yes, but…
The order of antagonists is not “the mayor then the shark”. The shark is far and away the first and greatest antagonist. The shark attacks first THEN the mayor reacts and resists. That’s the causal and temporal chain of events.
The antagonist can be an animal, a force of nature. I agree with you that in “Jaws” the animal is
complemented with a corresponding human antagonist. The dramatic function of the human antagonist is to frustrate the protagonist’s effort to defeat the animal protagonist. And that is the conventional way of doing it. But Hitchcock doesn’t follow that convention in “The Birds”. There is only one apparent antagonist, the birds.
Enough blathering for now.
See lessClashing husband-and-wife inventors of a new process to design life-saving drugs need to settle their differences in time to fight off a global corporation using espionage tactics to bury an invention that will save millions of lives.
Tony Edwards has scored most of the points I would have made. To which I would add: Character flaw: Melanie is a spoiled practical joker. She ended up being sued over one practical joke that misfired. And when Mitch plays a joke on her (knowing her reputation), she cannot NOT resist getting back witRead more
Tony Edwards has scored most of the points I would have made. To which I would add:
Character flaw: Melanie is a spoiled practical joker. She ended up being sued over one practical joke that misfired. And when Mitch plays a joke on her (knowing her reputation), she cannot NOT resist getting back with a practical joke of her own — the love birds (setting up the irony).
It isn’t cinema’s greatest character flaw but it is sufficient to get her in trouble, almost get her killed. It’s a flaw that motivates her to drive all the way to Bodega Bay. That is an actual location; I’ve been there; it’s 70 winding miles from San Francisco — that’s the measure of her character flaw in miles!
To be sure, the ending is atypical, unresolved in terms of what the birds will do next or finally. But when you’re Alfred Hitchcock with a long list of successful films in your bio — when you’ve demonstrated to the studios that you know how to make movies by the rules — you have the creative freedom to bend and break a few.
But when you’re nobody, you don’t have that license.
Which is why, although I study films like “The Birds”, I will never, never, NEVER use them as models for my first scripts, the ones I hope will get my foot in the door.
However, after I get my foot in the door… pecca fortiter.
See less