The Bird With the Crystal Plumage
Dir Dario Argento, Italy 1970 Arrow Video, £29.99 (Dual format) Forty-odd years on from his heyday, Italian director Dario Argento is still the best known exponent of the horror subgenre known as giallo. The giallo is a type of thriller with very defined elements, which takes its name from the yellow covers of pulp crime novels in Italy. Essentially a whodunnit, the giallo generally has a series of murders committed by a masked or fleetingly-seen villain who uses a cruel or unusual method of dispatching his victims and is not unmasked until the climax. The hero, sometimes a journalist or a relative of the first victim, struggles to identify the culprit but hits on a key clue just before the end, leading to a final confrontation. Having said all that, what sets the giallo apart from more mainstream thrillers is that the plot is simply a vehicle for a series of stylish and often violent set-piece sequences. The Bird With
the Crystal Plumage wasn’t the first giallo but it’s among the best, and is also notable for being Argento’s debut feature.
Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) is an American writer living and working in Italy. One night he witnesses a brutal attempted murder in an art gallery; speaking to the police he learns that the city is experiencing a wave of such attacks. Convinced he saw something that night which holds the key to the killer’s identity, he conducts his own investigation into the crimes thereby putting himself and his girlfriend Julia (Suzy Kendall) in mortal danger.
Argento’s skills as a director are an absolute command of filmmaking technique, a superb eye, and a flamboyant style; his use of widescreen and flashes of vivid colour are particularly noteworthy and both much in evidence here. On top of that, he always acted as his own scriptwriter with the result that story and visuals were perfectly matched. In Bird he creates some especially memorable supporting characters: the wildly camp antique shop owner, the wildly eccentric artist, and the wildly vicious hit man, for example.
Argento’s films were absolutely made for Blu-ray and Arrow Video have pulled out all the stops for this reissue which is a 4K restoration from the original negative. Crucially, it is in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio (thereby correcting a problem hanging over from an earlier edition) which preserves Argento’s meticulous framings.
There are a multitude of extras too, for those wanting to explore this fascinating subgenre more deeply. Daniel King