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Fashion & Film Feature

Ruggedly Masculine – Rod Taylor in The Birds

When Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) first meets Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) in the bird shop in San Francisco, his look is impeccably executed. In his charcoal grey suit – fit cut, slim tie and white shirt – he is an urban careerist in San Francisco (a defense lawyer), equally brash and charming, arrogant and worldly. […]

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Feature Four Frames

Four Frames: Petrol station attack in The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock 1963)

Only Hitchcock could use four moments of stillness to kick-start an action sequence. Having watched helplessly as an unwitting motorist is engulfed by fire, Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) is frozen in close-up by the horror of an unstoppable river of flame as it meanders towards a petrol pump to precipitate the inevitable explosion. Hedren, her […]