Dario Argento’s debut film was not the first Giallo ever made (Mario Bava’s 1963 film The Girl Who Knew Too Much usually gets that honor, followed by another Bava film Blood and Black Lace from 1964 – both of which I’ll be writing about later). Nor did it create any of the hallmarks usually associated with the genre (black-gloved killers, bold use of color and camera angles, psycho-sexual motives, etc). I wouldn’t even say he perfected it (at least not with this film). Still, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage was exceedingly successful, helping to popularize the genre and influencing a decade’s worth of Italian horror films.
It is a bit like how John Carpenter’s Halloween didn’t invent the slasher (a genre greatly influenced by the Giallo) but it popularized it to the degree that without it 1980s horror would look extraordinarily different.
The thing to remember about Giallo is that they are all essentially murder mysteries. Someone is killed (usually female, usually graphically), and someone else (usually not a cop) tries to solve the crime. They fall into the horror category because the violence is often stylized, brutal, and blood-soaked, and the killer often pops out of nowhere leading to jump scares. But at their heart, they are no different from other crime stories.
The genre in general, and Argento in specific never seem to care that much about the details of the crime or its solution. If, upon examination, some part of the story doesn’t make logical sense, that’s okay. What matters is the style and the execution (of the story, not the victims, although the kills are an important part of the genre.)
So it is with The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. Some of the plot points are a little goofy and the final solution is a bit ham-fisted, but I never care no matter how many times I watch it.
Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) is an American writer vacationing in Rome. While walking home one evening he sees what appears to be a woman attacked by a man wearing a black trench coat, black gloves, and a black fedora. The woman is stabbed and the man runs away through a back door.
Sam tries to help but finds himself stuck between two sliding doors. He stands there helpless, watching this woman bleed out. Eventually, he manages to flag down a passerby who calls the police. The woman lives.
The police think the assailant has also killed three other women in the city within the last few weeks. Sam is haunted by what he saw. He thinks about that scene over and over again. He can’t even make love to his girlfriend without thinking about it. He’s convinced he missed some vital detail. Perhaps he saw the man’s face and can’t remember it. Or maybe there is some other clue he’s not seeing.
The film keeps flashing back to that moment as well. We see the attack from slightly different angles. In slow motion. It zooms in. As an audience, we examine the scene, looking for some vital clue. All cinema is voyeurism, but Argento makes it explicit. We are a part of this movie.
In another scene, the killer will look at his potential victim. He’ll snap photographs of her. The movie camera will look through the photographer’s lens. Voyeurism upon voyeurism.
The film opens with the killer in his black coat, donning his black gloves typing at a typewriter. Anecdotally I know that it was Dario Argento himself wearing those gloves, being seen creating words on a typewriter. In this moment the creator of the film portrays the killer creating something. Creation is art and art is violence.
Sam begins his own investigation into the crime. He visits an antique shop where one of the victims worked. The last thing she sold was a strange painting of a girl getting stabbed in the snow. More art. More violence. He visits the artist and finds that his painting is based on a real incident that happened several years before.
Meanwhile, the killer makes a few attempts on Sam’s life. In one stunning scene, he’ll attack his girlfriend in her apartment. The killer makes threatening phone calls. All the while Sam and the police get closer to him.
The ending is a bit of a letdown. It reminded me a little of Pscyho which is also a fantastic film right up until the end.
The Bird With the Crystal Plumage isn’t my favorite Giallo, it isn’t even my favorite Argento film but it is a stunning debut and helped crystalize what the genre was about, and certainly influenced nearly every Giallo that came after.
I previously reviewed this film for Cinema Sentries.
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