Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento

The Bird With the Crystal Plumage

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE "Right. Bring in the Perverts." - Inspector Morrosini "Toreproach Hitchcockfor specializingin suspense is to accuse him of being the least boring of filmmakers," wrote Francois Truffaut. His enthusiasm for the thriller in the hands of a skilful director, however,isn't universally shared. It may take a lot ofnerve to deny Hitchcock's greatness, but the thriller is still a low-rent genre; everybody's surprised when one actually turns out to be great, not just entertaining or pretty good or even great for a thriller. For all that highbrow critics and scholars have their reservations, auteur thinking has filtered down tothe mass-market writers and the movie-goingpublicas though it were the most natural thing in the world -nobody today looks askance when you talk about the new Steven Spielberg movie. Genre theory has proved a tougher nut to crack.Audiences recognize genres, of course, readily and with some sophistication . And they make hard ticket-buying decisions based on genre. Halfthe trick ofmarketing ismakingsureyour potential audiencehas the righttagforyourpicture and doesn't thinkTie Me Up! Tie Me Down!is a pornomovie, hence the controversy about its MPAA Xrating, which implied just that. Nor doyou wantthem tothinkSlam Dance (aneroticthriller)issomething on the order of Flashdance or Dirty Dancing, witness the tag line, "It's Not AboutDancing."Asto the notion that ifyour title gives yousomuchtrouble youought to think about changing it, well...whocanfathomit?Andit's notthat popular writers don't get it either, but that the concept of genre has something dismissive built into it. Just a horror movie(or a Western or a tear-jerker or an action/adventure picture)... those are words thatchill filmmakers'hearts.Pigeonholingafilm is awayofnot dealing with it, ofsaying, however subconsciously,'if it's just a Western, what more can there be to it?' This problem has 35 Broken Mirrors I Broken Minds produced the risible spectacle ofall kinds offilmmakersclaiming their moviesaren't exactly what they are -"Idon't consider this a horror movie..." being the odds on favourite for most frequently uttered. Argento, it must be said, has never denied the thriller orthe horror film; where evenHitchcocktreated his work with an ironic distance, Argento is a true believer. The Bird With the Crystal Plumage is the least baroque and most conventionalin its story structure ofany film Argento has ever made. Thoughhardly simple, the plot is linear and straightforward in its development.Argento receives sole credit for the screenplay, whichcarries with it the implication that he is also the author ofthe original story, but this isn't quite the case: it derives in large part from a novel written in 1950 by yet another American pulpwriter. Fredric Brown'sTheScreaming Mimi was passed alongto Argento for an opinionbyBertolucci, who intended to buy the rights for himself. Captivated by the novel's central idea, Argento resolved to borrow it and spinoff a new story. In fact, he borrowed quite a bit more. The plot of The Bird With the Crystal Plumage begins with Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante), an American writer living in Rome with his girlfriend Julia (Suzy Kendall),walking past an art gallery late one night. Glancing in, he sees two figures struggling: a woman,and a man in black glovesand a raincoat. There is a knife, and Dalmas rushes in tohelp. Theentrance to the gallery contains a double set of glass doors; Dalmas gets through the first set and they lock behind him. The inner set is locked as well, and he realizes he's trapped like an insect in amber; Dalmas can only watch in horror as the man in black escapes and the woman, stabbed, writhes on the floor. The police arrive, the woman is saved, and Dalmas is held first as a suspect, then as a witness to the crime, which is the most recent of a series of attacks on young women. The wounded MonicaRanieri (EvaRenzi), whosehusband owns the gallery, is the only one to have survived. His passport confiscated by the police,haunted by the feeling that he saw something important that night that he's nowunable to remember, Dalmas decides to investigate the killings on his own. His search leads him to an antique store where the first 36 Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) watches helplessly as Monica Ranieri (Eva Renzi) writhes. The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante), trapped and despairing, in The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. Broken Mirrors I...