Release and Accolades
The film premiered March 28, 1963, in New York City.
The Museum of Modern Art hosted invitation-only screening as part of a 50-film retrospective of Hitchcock’s film work.
The MoMA series had booklet with monograph on the director written by Peter Bogdanovich.
The Birds was screened out of competition in May at the 1963 Cannes Film Fest, with Hitchcock and Hedren in attendance.
As special favor to Hedren, Hitchcock allowed her to take copy of the film when she visited her hometown of Minneapolis after the premiered in New York City. On April 1, Hedren hosted her parents and about 130 residents of Lafayette, Minnesota, at the local neighborhood theater Hedren frequented in her youth, The Westgate, in Morningside, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, where Hedren grew up. (The theater was demolished in 2019.)
Oscar Context:
Ub Iwerks was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Special Effects, but the winner that year was Cleopatra.
Tippi Hedren received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year–Actress in 1964, sharing it with Ursula Andress and Elke Sommer.
She also received the Photoplay Award as Most Promising Newcomer.
Critical Reception
The Birds received mixed reviews upon its initial release, in 1963
Bosley Crowther of the N.Y. Times was positive, calling it “a horror film that should raise the hackles on the most courageous and put goose-pimples on the toughest hide”. Crowther was unsure whether the birds were meant to be an allegory because “it isn’t in Hitchcock’s style to inject allegorical meanings or social significance in his films”, but he suggested that they could represent the Furies of Greek mythology who pursued the wicked upon the earth.
Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky considered it a masterpiece and named it one of the 77 essential works of cinema.
Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic called The Birds “the worst thriller of Hitchcock’s that I can remember.
Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post called it “gorgeous good fun”: “I haven’t had this kind of merriment since King Kong toppled from the Empire State Building”.
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: “For all the brilliance of scenes like the attack down the chimney, one rarely has a chance to suspend disbelief”, but the review still thought that “there is still a great deal more to enjoy than carp at.”
The film ranked second on Cahiers du Cinéma’s Top 10 Films of the Year List in 1963.
Andrew Sarris of The Village Voice praised the film: “Drawing from the relatively invisible literary talents of Daphne du Maurier and Evan Hunter, Hitchcock has fashioned a major work of cinematic art.”
Philip K. Scheuer of the L.A. Times was among the critics who panned the film, writing that Hitchcock “was once widely quoted as saying he hated actors. After his 1960 Psycho and now The Birds, it must be fairly obvious that he has extended his abhorrence to the whole human race. For reasons hardly justified either dramatically or aesthetically, the old master has become a master of the perverse. He has gone all out for shock for shock’s sake, and it is too bad”.
Variety published a mixed assessment, writing that while the film was “slickly executed and fortified with his characteristic tongue-in-cheek touches”, Hitchcock “deals more provocatively and effectively in human menace. A fantasy framework dilutes the toxic content of his patented terror-tension formula, and gives the picture a kind of sci-fi exploitation feel, albeit with a touch of production gloss.”
Brendan Gill of The New Yorker called the film “a sorry failure. Hard as it may be to believe of Hitchcock, it doesn’t arouse suspense, which is, of course, what justifies and transforms the sadism that lies at the heart of every thriller. Here the sadism is all too nakedly, repellently present.”
It is the only Hitchcock movie in Mad (as “For the Birds”, issue 82, October 1963, by Mort Drucker, Arnie Kogen, and Lou Silverstone). In the Mad spoof, it is “revealed” that the birds are controlled by Burt Lancaster as revenge for his not having won an Academy Award that year for his starring role in Birdman of Alcatraz.
The film’s first TV broadcast was in Canada on CTV television on December 30, 1967. Its subsequent U.S. appearance was on NBC television on January 6, 1968, and became the most watched film on TV surpassing The Bridge on the River Kwai with a Nielsen rating of 38.9 and an audience share of 59%. The record was beaten in 1972 by Love Story.
With the passage of time, much like other of Hitchcock’s works, the film’s standing among critics has much improved. The film has been influential on the horror genre inspiring filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro and John Carpenter.
On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 93% rating based on reviews from 59 critics, with an average rating of 8.20/10, and the website’s consensus states.
On Metacritic, it has a score of 90 out of 100, based on reviews from 15 critics.
Italian Federico Fellini ranked the film among his top ten favorite films of all-time list.
Japanese Akira Kurosawa included the film in his Top 100 Favorite Films of All Time list.
In 2000, The Guardian ranked the scene where the crows gather on the climbing frame at No. 16 on their list of “The top 100 film moments”.
The scenes where birds are attacking humans viciously were ranked at No. 96 on Bravo’s The 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
In 2021, the film was ranked at No. 29 by Time Out on their list of “The 100 best horror movies.”
The film was honored by the American Film Institute as the seventh greatest thriller in American Cinema.
