The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) Dario Argento as the complete article (Review)

While far from the most prolific in the sub-genre, Dario Argento is synonymous with the Giallo. His directorial debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, counts among the most acclaimed and beloved movies in the cycle – also, it is credited as popularising the style across the world. The man credited with its creation is Mario Bava with 1963 film, The Girl Who Knew Too Much – but that is a debate many continue to have. Popularity and success aside, Argento’s debut is an interesting proposition when you compare it to a collection of thrillers renowned for gore and singled out for his questionable treatment of female characters. That curiosity comes from the fact that the Bird with the Crystal Plumage is neither – those touchstones came later.

American author Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) is caught up in the web of a black-gloved murderers games as he sees an attempted murder while walking past a lavish Roman art gallery. After being caught between the doors in the gallery, Dalmas starts to help a hapless police force out before he heads back home to America. A plot development that will have the uninitiated asking all sorts of questions – like, why would the police force put a civilian in harm’s way to catch a serial killer? And if there was going to be one, consistent genre-wide criticism of the Giallo it would be that quite often these films don’t subscribe to conventional logic, or to put it more simply, these films don’t make a lick of sense.

The biggest question that can be asked of this early Argento picture is the police’s trust of this one writer, but to call the film out for that when both American and Britain had scores of do-gooders fighting crime throughout the 1970s would be disingenuous. Elderly ladies, doctor’s and priests solving crimes is one thing but it is hardly the same as the suspended disbelief necessary to enjoy the films of Sergio Martino, Lucio Fulci, Aldo Lado, Emilio Miraglia or Argento himself. Fortunately, for the uninitiated, which, at the point in history, was everyone, Crystal Plumage predates a lot of the more entrenched tropes. This is a simple murder mystery plot with all the prerequisite twists and turns and many of the murders take place before events of the film, leaving the narrative free to unpack the mystery, and on this first watch, I can comfortably say that the script is confident and never once succumbs to predictability. Usually, with the Giallo, they place prime value on their Grand Guignol-inspired excesses in the gore, score and bravura cinematography leaving their plot to languish, what’s more, these films are usually quite predictable if you enjoy picking out who the killer might be.

Ennio Morricone has gone down as one of the greatest composers in modern history, from his work with Sergio Leone to his collaborations with Elio Petri (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion), and here the broadness of styles he consumes into his soundscapes are beyond compare. He uses subtle but broody instrumentation to set up the unease of the skulking killer and he offsets that with arrhythmic jazz drumming, a ploy that many other composers have done before and since. The difference between those other examples and this, however, is that Bird with a Crystal Plumage has Ennio Morricone in the chair and he understands how the flow of music and the flow of a scene intersect one another better than just about anyone ever has. Cinema will never have another composer of Morricone’s class and invention. Traits which elevate this film about as much as a musical composition could.

A Godly composer would be enough for most films, but not for Argento, he also had the eye of Vittorio Storaro – a man the International Cinematographers Guild judged to be one of history’s ten most influential cinematographers. The erratic otherworldly sculptures of the art gallery is full of angles and lighting opportunities to marvel over, the Gothic abyss of Almas’s abandoned block of flats, the chase scene, a seamless P.O.V shot as a victim falls out of a window to their death and finally Almas opening a door into darkness (and one of the most beautiful examples of this shot too). I could go on and on. This has to be one of the finest looking violent films ever – and, vitally, it doesn’t stoop to the parlour tricks of to using saturation and phantasmagorical excess.

Giallo existed before and after Argento, but he piloted (or at least co-piloted) it through its peaks of popularity, some of his work played with broader inspirations (like science fiction in Tenebrae) or stuck to the generic convention (Cat ‘o Nine Tails) but he was always there. It’s amazing to think then he started that journey as the finished article, hitting the ground running. If you have a hankering for the weird, flamboyance and sleaze of the Giallo – your best starting place is the Bird with the Crystal Plumage, it can be made no simpler than that.

Jumping over to purveyors of this fine release in Arrow Video. With the label migrating their award-winning releases to the opposite side of the Atlantic, the quality of their releases have improved yet again and in this title they have almost taken the home video release to an art form. The box art from Candice Tripp has turned the titular crystal plumage into a piece of art that would turn the head of anyone. While the extras couldn’t possibly match that, it does contains scores of new interviews, a commentary with Giallo historian Troy Howarth, an essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and a general adulation of a loved film that you just don’t find in your average release.

Rob’s Archive – The Bird with the Crystal Plumage