Analysis of "The Birds" by Alfred Hitchcock

The clip starts off with a long shot of the actress in her surrounding area. This sets the scene for the audience and establishes the area. It then cuts to a mid shot of the woman knocking on the door and her entering into the house. This, however, is from a different angle inside the house but it is still a mid shot. The camera pans her movements as she explores the kitchen. When the actress stops walking, the camera stops moving too. The characters facial expressions make it look like she is fixated on a particular object and gives us a sense that she thinks something is wrong. The camera then zooms in to a close up of her face. This leads to an enigma for the audience as they are left questioning why she is reacting this way? And what does she think is wrong?
As the actress enters into the hallway, we go from a mid shot to a long shot which allows us to fully see her reactions and analyse her body language. When she enters the room, it cuts from a long shot straight into a mid shot. This sudden change in shots allows us to see her facial expressions as she looks into the room. We are then given a point of view shot as she scans the room to see what has happened. We are shown that there is a broken window with a dead bird in it and the ornaments and shelves have all fall down. This again leads the audience to question what has happened and why. The camera momentarily focuses back on the actress in a close up and shows her looking at the floor. It then cuts to a close up of the bloody feet and speedily back to the actress. Following this we see the dead body. It progresses from a long shot of the body, to a close up and then an extreme close up of the face. This leads to questions such as who is this man? And what happened to him? We see the character rapidly turning around and running away. Her body language here shows that she is frightened and shocked by the whole situation and doesn’t know what else to do.
Throughout the whole clip we constantly hear diegetic sound from the movements that the character makes such as closing and opening the door.