Submitted by the Arkell Museum at Canajoharie.
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The Arkell Museum at Canajoharie will be presenting the film ‘The Bird with the Crystal Plumage’ on Friday, January 22nd at 7pm. The film is about an American writer in Rome witnesses a murder and becomes tangled in the mystery. Italian. 1970, UR. With Jason Radalin.
Admission is $5 and includes popcorn and soft drinks. Desserts are available for an additional fee and include a complimentary glass of champagne.
Review by Sean Axmaker, DVD columnist for MSN Entertainment and former film critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligence~
Dario Argento takes sole writing credit for his directorial debut but The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is actually an unofficial adaptation of Fredric Brown’s novel The Screaming Mimi. Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante), an American novelist in Italy, is a helpless spectator to a vicious attack in an art gallery. Initially a suspect, Sam becomes the key witness to the attempted murder, the fourth in a month but the first survived by the victim. Something about the attack haunts him and so he launches his own investigation as the murders continue, the killer finally turning on Sam. Argento exhibits a sure hand in his first film, creating an easy to follow thriller spiced with tightly choreographed murder scenes and leavened with character humor (his colorful cast includes a genial stuttering pimp and an eccentric artist who lives in a house with no doors). But it’s his gift for arresting images and cinematic inventiveness that gives this thriller its edge, from the opening murder where Sam impotently watches the bleeding victim while trapped in a veritable glass cage to the killer’s naked eye peering through a peephole at Sam’s girlfriend (Suzy Kendall) as she hysterically searches for an escape from the killer’s pounding attempts to break into her apartment. Future Oscar winner Vittorio Storaro shot the film and Ennio Morricone provides an unusual, often eerie score arranged for human voices. While less baroque than Argento’s later work, it’s a fine first film and a standout in the giallo genre.
