The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Sam Dalmas, an American writer living in Rome, witnesses an attack through the glass front of an art gallery one night. He remembers what he saw and feels that something about it is wrong. The whole film is built on that faulty memory. It is Dario Argento's first film as director, an Italian and West German co-production. The screenplay draws heavily on Fredric Brown's 1949 novel The Screaming Mimi; Argento moved the story from Chicago to Rome and changed the killer from an exotic dancer into an art dealer's wife. Vittorio Storaro shot it. Ennio Morricone wrote the score, his first for a giallo and the start of a five-film collaboration with Argento. It succeeded commercially and critically and is credited with spreading the giallo internationally. Roger Greenspun in The New York Times wrote that it has the energy to support its elaborateness and the decency to display its devices with style. A fad for gialli with animals in the title followed. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 85 percent and it made Empire magazine's 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. Who it is for: viewers curious about where giallo came from and who like visually ordered thrillers. Who it is not for: anyone who wants the solution to feel fair. The film withholds no information and misdirects your eye on purpose.