From the opening moments of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (turning 48 today!), we are firmly planted in the world of Dario Argento. A black cloaked, black-gloved figure sits before a typewriter, methodically plucking away at the keys. We abruptly cut to a beautiful, dark-haired woman walking through the streets of Rome unknowingly being photographed from afar. Before we can fully determine her place in the story, we’re back in the dimly lit lair of that mysterious figure in the rain slicker. We see an array of razor sharp knives lovingly displayed atop a red velvet cloth. A photograph of that beautiful woman is there, on the figure’s desk. One of the shiny blades disappears within the confines of the madman’s coat. The screen cuts to black. We hear an ear-piercing scream cut through the soundtrack. We’re left to assume the scream belonged to the woman we saw moments before. Within a two-minute opening title sequence, Argento has created a thesis statement for the majority of his career. We’re introduced to fetishistic voyeurism, narrative ambivalence, and the unsettling idea that danger could interrupt our daily lives at any moment, without warning, like a waking nightmare.
Moments later, as the story proper begins to unfold, we’re introduced to another important theme of The Maestro’s work: the unreliable eye. Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) is an American in Rome, walking along the quiet streets in the dead of night. Something across the way catches his attention. Through the large pane glass doors of a chic art gallery, he spots a red-haired woman in the midst of a scuffle with (surprise) a tall figure wearing a slick black coat, black leather gloves, and matching hat; the rim of which is just big enough to conceal the attacker’s face. Sam attempts to intervene, only to find himself trapped within the gallery’s entrance way as the attacker flees and the woman, who we quickly realize has been stabbed, crawls towards him, begging for help.
Once the police arrive on the scene, we learn the victim’s name, Monica Ranieri (Eva Renzi), and she is whisked away to the hospital with nothing but a flesh wound. The investigators naturally turn their attention to the one and only witness, Sam. While he repeatedly explains the events as he saw them unfurl, he can’t shake the feeling that he’s missing an important detail. That detail, of course, becomes the key to unlocking the mystery. I’m not one to spoil things if it can be avoided, and I’m sure a number our readers have been sleeping on this Giallo gem, so I’ll save those not in the know from the third act reveal. I will be addressing it with vague detail, though, and discussing how it relates to Argento’s filmography as a whole.
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is Argento’s first film as director. He’d been a screenwriter for some time, penning spaghetti western classics such as Once Upon a Time in the West. In the late 60s, he began writing his first thriller with an eye towards the director’s chair. Luckily, his father, Salvatore Argento (a famous Italian producer in his own right), was there to get his foot in the door. Goffredo Lombardo was the head at one of Italy’s biggest production houses at the time, Titanus Studios. Lombardo took a shine to Argento and decided to give the fledgling director a shot in 1969. Unfortunately, after two weeks of shooting, Lombardo wasn’t too keen on the dailies he was seeing.
As time would eventually tell, style was king to Dario and he was obsessed with making the film exactly as he had envisioned. The filmmaker took the time to shot list each and every moment, from beginning to end, just as he’d imagined it from his script. The film industry was a different beast back then, and the idea of a shot list was rather unheard of on Italian sets. His assistant director fought the rigid structure Argento brought to the production, but Dario was undeterred. A stylistic moment towards the end of the film that sees the demise of one particular character falling from great heights, was captured by literally tying a rope to a camera and sending it soaring towards the ground below. It’s an amazing shot that plays with the perspective of the audience, but one of the unfortunate side effects was an expensive film camera shattered into a hundred tiny pieces. That’s a small price to pay for art…especially when the bill gets picked up by the insurance company.
Argento pushed through Lombardo’s attempts to replace him. After all, he was not only the sole screenwriter but a producer on the film as well. He was going nowhere without a fight. After wrapping, another huge “get” for the first time director was a score by the legendary Ennio Morricone. Using the film’s unique style as a jumping off point, Morricone actually freestyled the compositions for the film with his band, literally playing and recording the themes as the film screened before them. All in all, Lombardo wanted the film buried after the initial screening. Crystal Plumage wasn’t procedural enough like the popular Poliziotteschi subgenre at the time (police-centric crime thrillers), nor was it a traditional suspense thriller. It wasn’t until the boffo box office receipts started rolling in that he called up Dario to proclaim they must get to work on another film, immediately. With that, Argento’s career was off to a roaring start. Crystal Plumage made way for two more gialli The Cat o’ Nine Tails and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (all three combine to create “The Animal Trilogy”), thus cementing the filmmaker’s status as the “Italian Hitchcock.”
But, what of the thematic seeds planted in the director’s very first film? That nagging feeling Sam has that he’s missing something? A key component to end the horrific string of “Ripper” style slayings is just out of his reach. Argento’s prior career as a film critic could be seen as the beginnings of this obsession. In the hushed, communal experience of a darkened theater, we each see the same images flash across the screen. Yet, we all walk away with different interpretations and opinions of the same work. Yes, a critic might hate a film, but that same movie could be another viewer’s favorite of all time. This idea carries into our everyday lives as well.
Have you ever argued with someone over a shared memory, each person declaring their version the definitive recollection? No matter what the other person says, you know that you are right, and they are wrong. Imagine that conversation is over whether or not you ate a certain soup the day before. While it might not seem sinister at first, place it within the context of a horror film. You’re having the same argument now. Did you eat the soup? You swear you didn’t. Well, what if I told you the soup was poisoned? You only have five minutes to live. Thankfully, I have the antidote. It will save your life…but only if you are in fact poisoned. If you’re right, and you didn’t eat the soup as you say, yet still take the antidote, the cure will likely kill you, too. Now, how confident are you in your own memory? Argento put it best:
“I’ve always thought that memory was deceptive. It can make you remember the wrong facts. Because memory is filtered by our culture, the things we read, the experiences we have.”
This struggle (in far less straightforward a setup) is brought back time and time again in Argento films. In Crystal Plumage, the question is, what exactly did Sam see in the art gallery. In what many consider to be Argento’s greatest Giallo, Deep Red, our hero doesn’t even realize it – but as plain as day, he saw the killer’s face. What makes that reveal an even bigger facepalm, we saw the killer too. The adrenaline of the moment was simply too distracting for him, or us, to notice. In Tenebre, Argento toys with this same concept. He shows us the killer without any hat tricks. The story would appear to be over, yet the killings don’t stop. They continue. Again, we doubt what we’ve seen. Of course, the explanation is one we would never have thought of, because we were too busy fixating on what we thought we knew.
It can be said that Argento’s strength is not narrative but style. There is surely great evidence to back up the idea, however, I believe within the fabric of that style there is a voice with something to say about the world we live in. Like the best films, it’s up for interpretation and analysis. And, what makes it so wonderful is that no two of us sees the same one thing.
