The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Horrorphile

E-mail Subscription

Receive an e-mail notification of new posts on this site:

Vimu Subscription

Horrorphile - September 2008

L’uccello Dalle Piume di Cristallo (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage)

September 4th 2008 00:58

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Italian movie poster

Italian gorehound, terrorfreak and all-round horrorphile Dario Argento came out with both guns blazing on his debut feature, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), a giallo psycho-thriller with oodles of style and panache. It may not be quite as resonant and memorable as some of his latter – crazier – movies, but it certainly commands attention.

Sam Dulmas (Tony Musante) , a writer based in Rome, living with his model girlfriend Julia (the delectable Suzy Kendall) , becomes the key witness to an attempted murder after he apparently sees Monica (Eva Rinzi), the wife of an art gallery curator, being stabbed by a black-gloved, darkly-clad intruder who escapes. Sam is questioned by police and finds the whole incident both troubling and intriguing. He latches on to the idea that what he witnessed wasn’t the truth, and so – in typical giallo fashion – decides to do his own detective work.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Tony Musante

Tony Musante as Sam

The killer soon becomes aware of the situation and begins to taunt Sam, as well as threaten Julia. The more Sam becomes embroiled in the crime the more dangerous his environment becomes, not to mention the safety of his girlfriend whom becomes a prime target, but not before several other pretty women are terrorised and violently murdered by the unidentified killer.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Suzy Kendall

Suzy Kendall as Julia

Screenwriter and director Argento apparently very loosely based his movie on a novel called The Screaming Mimi by Frederic Brown, but this detail is uncredited. The novel’s title is a reference to the exotic bird that caws in the background of a recorded phone call which leads Sam and police to the killer. It’s a very tenuous title indeed; The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, especially when you discover the bird sequence bears no real significance to any other part of the story. However the title makes for a great lure (my brother recently sent me a huge immaculate print of the original Italian poster he found in Germany which I plan to have framed!)

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Eva Rinzi

Eva Rinzi as Monica

Argento has never been one to let logic and reason get in the way of a good visual narrative, and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage kick-started his career in exactly the fashion that he would continue: a vivid colour palette, striking art direction and production design, stunning use of composition and mise-en-scene, beautiful women in peril, animals in the periphery, a solid, often alarming score, violent, graphic, often outrageously choreographed death sequences, and a twist in the tail.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Rosa Toros

Rosa Toros as victim #4, and Dario Argento's hands

Curiously Argento was given two of the most celebrated and respected technical creatives in their respective fields: Ennio Morricone as the composer and Vittorio Storaro as cinematographer. Morricone would work on three other Argento movies; Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) and The Phantom of the Opera (1998) , whereas Storaro realised the dark brilliance of Bertolucci’s The Conformist the same year, and would go on to cement his position as, arguably, one of the very finest cinematographers of the century with Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris, 1900, The Last Emperor, and Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. But I digress.

Rosa Toros adds another notch to the killer's belt

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Karen Valenti

Karen Valenti as victim #5

Although Argento would go on to make the majority of his movies in English, his early movies are in a language limbo. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage's original title is in Italian, and the movie is set in Rome. Obviously the newspapers, signs and plaques are all in Italian, however the opening typed document read by the killer and a computer print-out in a science lab scene are both written in English. The actors, certainly the leads, are speaking English (even though the entire soundtrack has been dubbed), yet actors in other smaller roles are obviously speaking in Italian. As I said before coherence has never been a strong point of the director, but then, that’s why I love his movies. No other director – David Lynch being the exception - gets away with being so satisfyingly obtuse and abstract with their cinema storytelling.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage Suzy Kendall and Tony Musante

Julia and Sam are terrorized by the apparent killer

Argento next three movies were giallo murder mysteries; The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971), Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), and Deep Red (1975), before he turned his attention to the supernatural and delved deep into the malevolent witchery of Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980). Stay tuned for my reviews of Four Flies, Inferno, the third part to his witchcraft trilogy; Mother of Tears (2007) over the next fortnight!

The psycho-killer pins Sam with a deadly piece of modern art

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage international movie poster

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage DVD - which features an excellent hour-long Argento doco An Eye for Horror - is courtesy of Umbrella Entertainment, many thanks!

Here's the original international trailer:

Shared on

Subscribe to this blog

Email this post to a friend

Go to the Orble Film Channel

Start your own blog

[ Link ]

Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

Related Posts:

Relate This Post

[ Previous - The Slumber Party Massacre ]

[ Next - Boxing Day ]

Comments

9 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Cibbuano

September 4th 2008 03:10

20/20 Filmsight
Science News
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak

awesome... I'd like to get my hands on this one!

I'd like to hear about Mother of Tears, though!

Comment by Bryn

September 4th 2008 03:26

Horrorphile

For some reason I thought you'd reviewed this, but you haven't ... I have a hot little copy of La Terza Madre from overseas.

Comment by JohnDoe

September 4th 2008 03:47

Film & TV on DVD

Another great review of a classic Bryn,

I haven't seen this in a few years but may now have to revisit. Of this era the Karl Malden starring Cat O Nine Tails is my fave.

Comment by Bryn

September 4th 2008 04:40

Horrorphile

JD, I have Cat o' Nine Tails somewhere on VHS, not sure where though. I was somewhat disappointed by it, when I saw it some years ago. I'd like to see a widescreen DVD of it again. It's probably the most conventional of his murder mysteries from memory. Nothing overtly "Argento" about it ... ?

Comment by Damo

September 4th 2008 12:41

For the Sake of Argument
My Apologetics

It look delightfully old world and groovy.
I am not sure about the soundtrack but I like the style and will try see if I catch it some where.

Comment by David O'Connell

September 5th 2008 01:54

Screen Fanatic

This one's not too bad at all as I recall, though it's been a while.

Funnily enough, none of Morricone's scores for Argento are particularly memorable with a lot of uninteresting, droning underscore. The cruder Goblin scores are more effective I think.

Comment by Bryn

September 5th 2008 03:46

Horrorphile

David, it holds up well considering its age. I agree though that Goblin's scores are far more effective. Nothing will ever come close to the soundtrack to Suspiria. And I really fond of the Tenebre one too.

Comment by robicentauri

September 8th 2008 18:50

Does anyone know the real life artist of the painting in this movie? Or whom they were influenced by? I loved this movie, and the creepy painting is still very present in my mind, 15 years after seeing it for the first time!

Comment by Bryn

September 9th 2008 01:35

Horrorphile

robicentauri (curious alias),
i'm don't know the answer myself, but i'm sure if you posted that question on its respective imdb.com movie page you'd get an answer fairly quickly ... Glad you liked the movie. Have you seen many other Argento movies?

[ Previous - The Slumber Party Massacre ]

[ Next - Boxing Day ]

Add A Comment

To create a fully formatted comment please click here.

CLICK HERE TO LOGIN | CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Name or Orble Tag

Home Page (optional)

Comments

Notify me of replies

Notify extra people about this comment

Is this a private comment?

List the Email Addresses or Orble Tags of the people you would like to be notified about this comment

One per line max of 30

List the Email Addresses or Orble Tags of the people you would like to be notified about this private comment thread. Only the people in this list will be able to see or reply to your comment.

One per line max of 30

Your Name
(for the email going out to the above list, it can be different to your Orble Tag)

Your Email Address

(optional)

(required for reply notification)

Submit

November 2008

2 Posts

October 2008

21 Posts

September 2008

19 Posts