The Birds (1963)

Following Rebecca (1940), this was another Daphne du Maurier adaptation by Alfred Hitchcock. It’s a sort of horror story, set in Bodega Bay, California, where birds begin to attack humans for no apparent reason. 

It’s to Hitchcock’s credit that he never explains away the cause of these bizarre events. You can interpret them any number of ways. Is it a Cold War allegory? Is it about repressed sexuality? Or is it simply a horror story? 

It’s strange in other ways, too. The relationship between Melanie (Tippi Hedren) and Mitch (Rod Taylor) doesn’t follow the usual love-story progression. And the age difference between Mitch and his younger sister is also striking. The widowed mother Lydia (Jessica Tandy) is also deeply odd. Initially, I thought the natural disturbance was a reflection of her grief manifested in nature – and it's possible that this is another of the many intended interpretations. 

The ending satisfies because it’s ambiguous and doesn’t offer any easy solutions.

Billy Liar (1963)

The hilarious yet heartbreaking story of a young man who lives in his imagination to escape the pressures and tedium of his daily existence. Billy Fisher simply isn’t ready for the sensible, grown-up world that surrounds him. Caught up in a web of his own fabricated stories, he has promised to marry three different girls and has managed to “lose” the calendars he was meant to post out for his undertaker employer.

It’s an unbeatable character study and Tom Courtenay is spellbinding in the main role. Julie Christie is wonderful as Liz, the most free-spirited and modern of his three sweethearts. Leonard Rossiter and Rodney Bewes are excellent as his bods (Mr. Shadrack) and friend/colleague (Arthur Crabtree) respectively. I usually dislike fantasy scenes in films (they ruined 9 to 5, for example), but here they are integral and work especially well. Billy machine-gunning the people who enrage him is an extremely vivid depiction of his inner world. There’s so much humour and intelligence in the script (adapted by Keith Waterhouse from his own novel), and real poignancy builds as the single-day plot unravels. A masterpiece, pretty much. Watching this again after seeing Cemetery Junction, I realise just how much that film borrows from this one.

From Russia with Love (1963)

In the second James Bond film, Sean Connery is reasonably credible if you can accept his character’s psychopathic tendency to make wisecracks when his victims die.

The plot is typically incoherent. For example, the role of the Russian girl (played by Daniela Bianchi) turns out to be completely pointless as she never does any of the work SPECTRE hired her for. It’s rather shocking to see Bond hitting her, but then he was never supposed to be a nice guy.

There’s an utterly ludicrous scene set in a gypsy encampment: Bond gets to see two scantily clad women grappling with each other in a “fight to the death” before saving them and earning them both as his “reward”.

There are engaging moments: for example, the parts on the Orient Express have a certain tension. And Blofeld – face unseen, hands stroking his white cat – has an undeniably iconic quality.

But is it a good film? Not really.

The Great Escape (1963)

A classic, of course, but it’s a stranger film than you might think. I don’t like the relentlessly chirpy, intrusive music, which often trivialises the drama and turns it into farce. The tone just feels wrong. There’s often gentle wit in the script, so the music didn’t need to “jolly it up”.

Steve McQueen is highly watchable and charismatic. It’s impossible to rate his acting because he doesn’t really act at all. He has very few lines. Mostly, he just looks good and gets the most glamorous part (motorcycle chase, escape expertise, nice clothes).

Far more engaging were the characters played by Donald Pleasance (who is losing his sight) and James Garner (who cares for him).

The cast is the very definition of “all-star”: an amazing list of A-list names including James Coburn, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson and David McCallum.

Most of the time the Nazis seem too kindly. And it was unrealistic that there was never a hint of dissent between the officers in the camp.

All that aside, the escape is genuinely exciting. And the ending – not what you might expect – is fairly satisfying.