On Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds
Can someone explain why these things happen in The Birds?
a. The children are asked to go outside the school to protect them from the birds.
b. The man with the cigar is completely oblivious to the smell of the gasoline at his feet and then catches fire all over his body instead of just at his feet.
d. Melanie decides to go into a room from which she hears bird calls.
e. A report about the birds plays on the news exactly when Mitch turns on the radio.
e. A group of birds of different species has the intelligence to make coordinated attacks; and finally
f. Birds attack Bodega Bay.

This is the third consecutive Hitchcock movie I've seen with an preposterous plot and unrealistically stupid characters, the other two films being Marnie and Spellbound. I understand that most good fiction isn't plausible, but most implausible fiction isn't necessarily good. Unlike in other films, the most striking feature of the implausible bits in The Birds is that they are so visibly contrived. I think I am beginning to concur with David Thomson’s assessment of Hitchcock in Thomson's Biographical Dictionary of Film.