Scenes, Part 1

I'm trying out a new thing here, where I'll be posting scenes from movies both new and old that affected me in some way and that I feel are worth watching.  So, here goes.

First up is the infamous telephone booth scene from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.  I've always thought that this scene is done perfectly.  Hitchcock has a way of putting you in the shoes of the characters.  Notice how when things happen in this scene, they are almost always shown from the vantage point of the characters.  For example, the man being attacked by the gulls and the man lighting his cigar.  Both events are seen from the point of view of the characters in the diner and make you react in almost the same way they must be reacting.  The way the camera flashes back and forth between the panicked expression on Melanie's face and the flaming trail of gasoline has this odd almost strobe light effect to it that I like.  The descent of the gulls is pure genius, and their squawking is unnerving, which is aided by the complete lack of dramatic music in the scene.  Now, once Melanie is inside the phone booth, I find Hitchcock really turns the character's POV effect up a notch.  When I watch this scene, I really feel like I'm in there with her, in this upright glass coffin surrounded by attacking gulls.  It's claustrophobic and panic-inducing.  The sound effects are great in this sequence, especially the muffled sounds of the chaos outside that gets louder every time she opens the door, and the POP of the gulls killing themselves by smashing into the glass just to get at her.  What I found interesting about this movie, is that often the characters don't react the same way they do in modern horror movies.  When she's in the phone booth, Melanie doesn't scream like the vapid twenty-somethings in today's horror flicks do.  She just has this panicky hyperventilating expression that gets crazier and crazier the longer she's in there.  For some reason that seems more realistic.  So yeah, enjoy this scene from The Birds.  Definitely a movie worth watching if you haven't yet.  Other notable scenes that I loved are the playground scene, where crows slowly gather on a jungle gym, and the corpse scene with it's shocking plucked eyeballs and great horrified acting by the lady playing Mitch's mom.