L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo [The Bird with the Crystal Plumage] (1970)
(In French, On Cable TV, November 2020) I was pretty sure that I didn’t like giallo, but as I made my way through Dario Argento’s debut feature The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, it struck me that I didn’t dislike the genre as much as I thought I did. In fact, giallo looks much better when placed next to the slasher horror that it inspired in the Halloween/Friday-the-13th/Black Christmas tradition. Argento’s debut feature predates all of this, obviously: Working in 1970, Argento was more clearly inspired by classic horror—albeit with more bright-red blood. Where this film does well, as is usually the case with giallo, is presented a much-heightened vision of standard horror thrills. Exuberant with colours, unusual camera angles, subjective viewpoints and an aggressive soundtrack, giallo is usually far more interesting than the stories it portrays—although there too, there are plenty of opportunities for being wilder than more staid thrillers. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage does have a familiar base premise—an innocent man investigating a murder in a foreign location, something that would pop up again later in Argento’s career in films such as Deep Red—but it adds a few striking wrinkles to it. The result is quite watchable: still effective in its stylish excess, and benefiting from a generally solid script. It also unlocked the key to giallo as far as I’m concerned, as a far more interesting stylistic variant on the usually dull slasher films that would follow.