The Bird with the Crystal Plumage ( L' Uccello dalle piume di cristallo ) ( Bird with the Glass Feathers ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ]

An American reporter staying in Rome witnesses a truly shattering event one evening when he sees a gruesome assault takes place inside of an art gallery. Barred from interfering with the proceedings due to huge sliding glass doors, Sam Dalmas can only look on with horror as two figures, one clad entirely in black and the other a woman, struggle with each other over a very shiny knife. The person in black flees the scene of the crime, leaving behind the hapless woman with a knife wound to the abdomen. When Dalmas does his duty by calling in the police, his story leads the officers to cast a doubtful eye on the concerned American. The police insist that Sam stay in Rome until the investigation turns up some clues, much to the consternation of Dalmas and his pretty girlfriend Julia. It seems that Sam was planning to leave Rome, but all bets are off as more murders occur that the police suspect are linked to the crime seen by Dalmas. Moreover, Julia and Sam start receiving grim phone calls from an unknown person who almost certainly is the figure behind these crimes. Our hero is in a real fix, with his only supporters being his woman and a friend who works at a museum. At least the cops start to come over to his side as the bodies pile up, especially once they listen to those eerie phone calls. A unique sound in the background of one of these calls provides the break Dalmas needs to identify the killer he saw on that fateful night. The conclusion has more twists and turns than a cyclone.

"The Bird With the Crystal Plumage" helped inaugurate the era of the Italian giallo (Italian for yellow), so named because in Italy cheap paperback crime novels came with yellow covers. These are the films with the anonymous, black-gloved killers toting gruesome looking knives while stalking their mostly female prey. The crimes are often seen from the point of view of the killer, giving the audience the impression that they are part of the heinous murders. Argento plays the giallo for all its worth here, matching this disturbing technique with a great score by the inestimable Ennio Morricone and camera work rarely seen in the horror genre. The cinematography here is simply divine, with the director including a shot from the point of view of a man falling from a tall building and an ultra cool scene where the camera points at a lighted doorway from inside a darkened room. All these elements combine to make this film a taut thriller of enormously entertaining dimensions. Moreover, of the few Argento films I have seen to date, "The Bird With the Crystal Plumage" contains one of his most coherent plotlines.

Gorehounds might find themselves a bit disappointed with the lack of the trademark Argento gore (no sharp corners to bash a head against here!) in this movie, but the stellar camera work, truly creepy scenes of murder and mayhem, and the strong performances from Tony Musante as Sam Dalmas and Suzy Kendall in the Julia role more than make up for the 'PG' rating. Still, that rating made me wonder a bit about what the people at the MPAA were thinking when they viewed this picture. There is upsetting violence here, along with some truly disturbing scenes that hint at where Argento would go in the future. The way the killer caresses those weird looking blades (one of which, I am almost certain, appeared in a later Argento film called "Deep Red") and the participatory effect the audience feels during the killings makes you wonder how this movie got off with such a mundane rating.

The DVD version of "The Bird With the Crystal Plumage" is strictly bare bones: you get the film and a trailer, which is good considering its relative obscurity but could have been better. As others have said, the audio is quite muzzy at times and the picture quality isn't anything to write home to mother about. After viewing this picture and a couple of other Argento films, I must say I really enjoy how these movies mess with your mind. Just when you think you know what's going on, good old Dario throws another curveball. He does this in many of his films, but he does it here for the first time. What a joy it is to watch it today!


Argento's 1st Remains a Stunner   February 28, 2007
J. R. Thelin
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

For many years, I'd felt that of the Argento films I'd seen, Deep Red (Profundo Roso) was easily my favorite. However, recently I ordered - on DVD - that movie, Suspiria, Inferno, and Bird Witb a Crystal Plumage. And while I'm glad to have all four in my collection, I've concluded that - at least for the time being - Bird has become my top choice, which surprises me.

Bird really benefits from the increased production values of DVD over VHS (I've owned a copy for the past decade): the cinematography (thank you, Vittorio Storaro & crew) is astounding. There are times when I feel like I can reach right out and touch buildings, foliage, people. It's that visually tactile. Also, the film is very tight. Little, if any, wasted space - and it's a talky picture, too. Fortunately, a good chunk of the dialogue is funny, sometimes hilarious (check out the scene when protagonist Tony Musante visits a painter whose work looks to be a significant clue in a series of mysterious murders that Musante is investigating in tandem with the police).

The mystery's a good one, too. And the use of repetition works like repeated motifs/actions should: a fascinating revelation of the process of memory - and how we may construct and reconstruct events through it. Though Bird's use of repetition looks something like DePalma's Blow Out (released over a decade later than Bird), it has more in common with that other late '60s enigmatic masterwork, Blow Up.

We also benefit from an imaginative musical soundtrack by the recent lifetime Academy Award winner, Ennio Morricone, who scored several of Argento's earliest efforts, including Four Flies on Grey Velvet (where has that gone?) and Cat o' Nine Tails. While I enjoy the pulsing, thrashing musics of Goblin in Deep Red and Suspiria, Morricone's pieces are more surprising and impishly playful - in much the same way Argento plays with us - including his use of a false ending.

Okay, so it's his first major direction. And the dubbing into English is, well, dubbing into English. But the suspense builds and builds, intelligently, leaving this viewer more than satisfied - after repeated screenings. If you're into Argento and you've overlooked this one, please get with it! And if you're a newcomer to this horror/mystery master, this is an excellent place to start. And do see it on DVD.


amazing giallo   February 16, 2007
P. Valedon
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

this is argentos first horror film and one of my favourites how it all comes together at the end is amazing one of the best giallos i've ever seen!!!


Buon giorno, Mr. Hitchcock.   October 16, 2002
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

*The Bird with the Crystal Plumage* is cult-fave Dario Argento's first movie. Horror fans have complained that *Bird* is too tame for their bloody taste; that it's for "completists" only. (Meaning, Argento fans should have it only to complete their collection, and others need not bother.) They're right, in a sense: we certainly don't swim through rivers of blood and gobbets of gore as we will later in Argento's *Deep Red* and *Suspiria*. This 1969 film explicitly tips its hat to *Psycho* -- and the Hitchcock oeuvre, generally -- without straying too far beyond the parameters of graphic violence that had been set by the earlier film. Hitchcock devotees will be familiar with the type of protagonist presented here: an American in Rome who becomes a witness to a murder, finds himself under a cloud of suspicion, is hunted by the real killer, starts an investigation of his own . . . you know the drill. (Tony Musante's inept performance is good for some chuckles. Though to be fair, he's Olivier compared to the amateurs Argento tends to cast in his films.) In any case, there's more to any movie than just blood & guts, all you horror fans out there. This movie has about 6 or 7 set-pieces -- Musante witnessing the crime while trapped within glass partitions like a bug in a jar; a chase through a graveyard for Rome's public buses; our hero getting literally pressed down by a collapsed sculpture that has spikes; the surprising revelations at the end; and especially the cloaked killer's attempt to carve a hole through a door using his murderous knife, in order to get at the hero's girlfriend -- ALL of which are worthy of the deepest admiration.


Modern Filmmakers Take Note!   May 4, 2002
Lillian Patterson (Big Rapids, MI)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

Here's a movie with a surprise twist ending that doesn't rely on the ending to carry the whole film (i.e. "Wild Things," etc.) Superb use of shadowy darkness to set the mood (one of the few things that has stuck in my mind since I saw this film when I was 12)--along with the creepy, eerie voice of the killer on the phone--no, "Scream" didn't do it first. A must-see for all horror fans--one of Argento's best.