petra_ste Review of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)

Spry Argento

[7/10 · 27 July 2014]

There is a moment in Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage where Tony Musante's hero is wandering the streets of Rome as evening looms, desperately searching for a missing woman, and the camera pulls aways from him, lost in a maze of buildings, then slowly focuses on a window in the midst of many others, where - we understand at once - the victim's time is running out. It's elegant and nightmarish at the same time, the kind of shot Hitchcock would have thought of.

Argento's debut is breezy, gripping, and - unlike everything he has done from the Nineties on - has aged extremely well: a tight thriller filmed with style and intelligence.

7,5/10