Today, we are celebrating with the directorial debut of Dario Argento and the first widely acclaimed and financially successful Giallo: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. Plenty of Giallo were released between The Girl who Knew Too Much and Argento’s entry into the genre. Why did Bird resonate with audiences when earlier films failed to?

• Directorial Debut of Dario Argento
• Written by Dario Argento
• Starring Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall

Influenced by the pulp novel The Screaming Mimi by Fredric Brown, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is an unofficial adaptation. Several elements were changed in Argento’s rewrite, including the location, professions of the main characters, and the art object that triggers the killer’s insanity. Further revisions were made during filming that moved the plot further away from the original. There was a movie made in the late ‘50’s that sticks closer to the original story, but it was not as well received as The Bird with The Crystal Plumage, in part due to the original’s subject matter; Mimi focuses on an exotic dancer and an alcoholic journalist, while Bird changes these to a more-relatable art dealer and a novelist.

Box Office Breakthrough For Giallo

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was the first of the genre to get both critical acclaim and box office success. This led to an increase of Giallo and Giallo with lengthy titles, as well as the eventual parodies. It also cemented the aesthetics started by Bava as genre standards, most notably the killer in black gloves, bladed weapons, and a dynamic soundtrack.

Music by Morricone

His contribution here was his first Giallo, and just the start of his working relationship with Argento. It’s a fantastic soundtrack, easily recognizable as his work, particularly in the way he builds tension. From the dreamy opening melody, to the slow, dramatic “killer’s theme”, every song is perfectly suited to capture the audience in the moment.  

Morricone would go on to score four more movies with Argento, including another Giallo, Four Flies on Grey Velvet.

Review and Recap: Spoilers ahead

The opening sequence shows a woman being stalked, and a killer in a shiny black trench coat selecting a knife from a red tray that holds a wide variety of murder weapons. It cuts to black, a woman screams and then jumps to Carlo, a bird expert and friend of Sam Dalmas, an American author living and working in Italy writing guides on exotic birds while he struggles with writer’s block.

On his way home after turning in his final draft, he witnesses a woman getting attacked by a man in a black trench coat and fedora.  He rushes to help but is trapped in the glass vestibule by the attacker as he escapes. The woman, stabbed but alive, crawls to him for help as he tries to escape; he’s finally able to signal a pedestrian to call the police.

The Investigation Begins

The investigators show up and save the woman’s life, and the investigation begins. We learn that she is Monica, an art gallery owner when her husband, Alberto, shows up panicked and desperate to talk to her.

Sam makes the mistake of telling the detective that there was something wrong with what he saw. As evidence starts to pile up, Sam ends up in the police station with his passport confiscated. Sam is bothered by the events and although the inspector tries to strong arm him into helping, he doesn’t need to. After learning that there is a serial killer targeting young woman and there have been three other victims, Sam willingly joins the investigation.

While Sam isn’t one of our suspects, we’ve been introduced to a couple already, the cut to Carlo implies his potential involvement, and the husband is always a suspect.  The police start with local criminals previously accused of harassing women. They set up a line-up for Sam and deliver my second favorite line of dialogue: “Bring in the perverts”.  My favorite is “Bitches, leave” from Robocop, so the bar here is pretty high.

One of the elements that makes Bird so easy to get into is how sophisticated, you know for 1970, the detectives are in their investigation. Inspector Morosini is smart and capable, running forensics and using computers for statistical analysis of suspects.  He’s efficient too, sending Sam out to do most of the legwork of the investigation.

Relatable Characters

Sam, as a character, is easy to root for; he’s clever enough to adapt to the strange scenarios he finds himself in, from entertaining a creepy antique dealer to get a photo of a painting the first victim sold before she was killed, to befriending a pimp to get leads. He’s not flawless; he tends to disregard the danger he puts himself and his girlfriend Giulia in. Overall, his likeability gives Bird a solid protagonist, something missing from Blood and Black Lace.

Giulia is also fairly likeable, although not as developed a character. She’s a model and willing to help Sam with his investigation until it clearly puts them in danger when the killer starts making threatening calls and sending hitmen after them. 

Her concerns are framed as reasonable as throughout the movie, as the killer continues stalking and killing women.  Argento shows his visual skills in several of these sequences, framing the victims as small and defenseless in the frame.  He demonstrates restraint in the violence, preferring to focus on the moments leading up to the kill and a few drops of blood in the aftermath.  This is not to say this is a tame movie. The horrors are there, it’s just the gore that’s implied.  

Increased Tension

After more murders and Sam gets another call from the killer directly threatening Giulia if he does not drop the investigation, Sam finally decides to pack it in and go back to America.  As he and Giulia are packing, he plays a tape of the killer’s call for Carlo, the bird expert, who takes the tape thinking he recognizes a sound in the background. Sam gets one last brainstorm and decides to track down the artist who created the mysterious painting that kicked off the first murder.

It’s a creepy painting, depicting a woman being stabbed by a mysterious attacker in the snow. The artist, who Sam finds in a nearby village, is also creepy. He doesn’t paint that stuff anymore, but he does tell Sam that it was inspired by a real incident and a girl he knew. Sam takes this information and gets the hell out of there before things get worse.

Revealing The Bird

As he’s on his way back, the killer tries to break into their apartment and get Gulia. Sam scares him off just before he can get in. The next morning, Carlos shows up with news: he’s identified the sound. It’s a rare bird call, one that can only be found in the zoo. They call the police and go to the birds’ enclosure to see what apartments are nearby. Once there they discover that Alberto’s apartment overlooks the bird’s cage.

After a tense standoff with the police, Alberto plummets from his apartment. Before he dies, he confesses to the murders and his love of his wife. The inspector starts to wrap everything up.

Then Morricone’s eerie soundtrack kicks in.

Monica is missing. Carlo is missing. Giulia is missing.

One More Twist

Sam frantically starts looking for them, following witnesses’ directions who saw them pass by until he gets to an apartment. There, in the dark, he sees Carlo seated in a red chair, holding a dagger. Giulia is gagged and tied under a sofa? The lighting is so dark and moody here, it’s unclear.  Sam seems unaware of her presence in any case. Sam grabs Carlo, but he’s dead, stabbed in the back. The real killer laughs as she steps out of the shadows, wearing her shiny black coat.

Sam realizes that what he saw was Alberto defending himself from Monica, not the other way around.  That was the thing that seemed wrong about the scene. He chases Monica to the gallery where she traps him under a massive, spiked sculpture. She taunts him, clearly insane, but before she can kill him, the police arrive. Giulia freed herself and managed to save Sam all on her own.  

A Peaceful Resolution

As the detectives discuss the case for a T.V. interview, Sam and Giulia finally get to escape back to America.  Monica, traumatized by an earlier assault, was retraumatized upon seeing the painting in the antique shop. However, her disassociation caused her to identify with the killer, not the victim.  Her husband, madly in love with her, helped cover up her murders, even to the very end.  Monica ends up in a facility. Despite her horrific crimes, the newscasters refer to her as “a poor, unbalanced creature”.

The last lines of the movie are Sam’s as he remarks to Giulia, “Go to Italy, they said. It’s a peaceful country; nothing ever happens there”.

The Giallo in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Giallo are known for their soundtracks, and Bird helped define that genre element. I do find Bird to be a gentler entry for a lot of the other genre standards. The sets are artistic, but that has more to do with Argento’s framing and composition than the set design or locations. The Art Gallery is a standout, but other locations are more mundane.

It’s violent but it doesn’t linger on the brutality. The focus is on the tension leading up to the attack, rather than the kill itself.  There is a lengthy chase sequence that seems more action-oriented. This is not a bad thing. If you want to get audiences into an unfamiliar subgenre, don’t go to the most extreme examples. The black clad, blade-wielding killer is present, and the use of the shiny black coat adds a new visual element.

Bird also builds on the element of madness to Giallo. Monica has psychological issues, what seems to be trauma from her recent attack is actually deeper-rooted issues. Her replaying the actions of her attacker to gain control of what happened to her is both a twist and a homage to Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much, which also has a witness misinterpret an incident.

End Major Spoilers

Social Commentary

When visiting the pimp in prison, Sam asks him about the murders and who he suspects could have done it. The pimp tells him that it might have been a rich client. “Only gentlemen have those thoughts”.  It’s an interesting bit of dialogue in a movie that is ultimately about how appearances can be deceiving.

Final Thoughts

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage deserves its success and accolades. Especially with the years of Giallo that will follow it, it’s easy to recommend for horror-adverse or Giallo newcomers. H³ might even like this one.  Argento is starting to define his style here and his later works Deep Red and Tenebrae reflect how he mastered these techniques.   It’s easy to see why Bird succeeded in capturing audiences when earlier films didn’t. It offers the same tension, mystery, and suspense of the earlier films, but Argento makes his first film more approachable with his restrained take on violence and relatable leads without sacrificing style or kills.

Why do you think The Bird with the Crystal Plumage hit big?  Leave a comment below.

Check out my other Giallo Reviews

• Blood and Black Lace