Dario Argento
L'Uccello Dalle Piume Di Cristallo

Excellent debut as a director by Dario Argento, "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" ('69), equally inspired by the novel "The Screaming Mimi" by Fredric Brown and the feature film "Blood and Black Lace" by Mario Bava, as well as by Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow Up", turns out to be one of the most commercially successful films of the so-called Italian thriller and a true cornerstone of the genre.

The very plot of the film constitutes the model for much of Argento's filmography: a young artist in a creative crisis accidentally witnesses the assault of a young gallery owner, managing to save her. In all likelihood, the attacker is a serial killer causing panic in the city. The young man thus finds himself involved in the investigations, seeking the truth in the killer's past, and in his own memory, looking for a detail that doesn't add up. The identity of the culprit will be completely unexpected.

Well-shot, thanks in part to the cinematography of a young Vittorio Storaro, well accompanied by the music of Ennio Morricone, and, overall, well-acted by a diverse cast of actors (Tony Musante, Enrico Maria Salerno, Eva Renzi, Umberto Raho, Suzy Kendall, Mario Adorf), the film does not seem aged at all nearly forty years after its release. Argento's feature does not suffer, in my opinion, from the limitations of much of the subsequent filmography of the Roman director: the depiction of the murders, often shown after they have occurred, is not the epicenter of the action, nor the pretext around which to build a story; the directorial virtuosity is confined to the long takes, to the scenes of pure suspense; the subject and screenplay, perhaps due to the clear literary influence, are well structured and, overall, credible; the characters themselves are well-developed.

The film's strong point - without delving into details - is the surprise ending, which results in a total shift in the film's perspective: some may find it obvious, but in my opinion, perhaps except for Tenebre, the ending of this debut film is the most unexpected in Argento's filmography.

"Simplifying" (in a positive sense, of course) Antonioni's poetics, the young Roman filmmaker reaffirmed the difference between perceived and real, between being and appearing, between subjectivity and objectivity. Not bad, for a work intended for pure entertainment, and as effective as never before, in Argento's future cinema.