7.5 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
An American expatriate in Rome attempts to unmask a serial killer he witnessed in the act of an attempted murder - and is now hunting him and his girlfriend.
Starring: Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno, Eva Renzi, Umberto RahoHorror | 100% |
Foreign | 60% |
Mystery | 22% |
Psychological thriller | 12% |
Thriller | 5% |
Video codec: MPEG-2
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.34:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: LPCM 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 16-bit)
Italian: LPCM 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 16-bit)
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
It’s a rare director who is credited with inventing a genre, or at the very least porting that genre into the film medium and giving it life as film. Italian director Mario Bava is widely cited as the first director of the so-called giallo genre, an Italian idiom which in fact had been part of the literary tradition for decades before Bava’s 1963 opus The Girl Who Knew Too Much. Giallo means “yellow” in Italian and initially referred to the color of paperback mystery novels, perhaps ironically written quite frequently by American or British authors. Over the course of time, and especially with regard to cinematic gialli, the term came to mean a certain kind of erotically charged thriller, almost a pre-cursor to the slasher craze of the seventies and eighties, where a mysterious killer sliced and diced his or her way through a bevy of (usually) beautiful young women. Gialli were often quite lurid and often intentionally visually provocative. Bava’s follow up to The Girl Who Knew Too Much, 1964’s Blood and Black Lace is in turn often cited as having provided substantial inspiration for another director who would become associated with the giallo genre, Dario Argento, an erstwhile film critic (hmmm. . .) who decided to ask his wealthy father for a loan in order to put his own stamp on giallo in the form of 1970’s The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, a film which is usually listed as one of the greatest gialli of all time. It’s absolutely fascinating to watch The Bird With the Crystal Plumage now from the vantage point of some forty-plus years (wow!) since its initial release. Argento’s style and even plot mechanics can be seen as having sparked, at least in part, all sorts of different films, including those aforementioned slasher flicks as well as perhaps some more unexpected fare like more “literary” efforts such as De Palma’s Blow Out (a film which of course owes as much to another Italian, Michelangelo Anonioni and Blow Up). There is in fact a rather interesting through line from a film some Italians might consider a gialli, Michael Powell’s 1960 effort Peeping Tom, through to Blow Up, and on to The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (and then perhaps at least tangentially to the De Palma thriller). All of these films deal with a certain kind of voyeurism, where the efforts of a hero (or anti-hero) trying to come to terms with something he’s witnessed (or in the case of De Palma’s film, heard) acts as a metaphor for the very act of watching a film. Peeping Tom went a step further, giving the audience a disturbing point of view perspective of murders being committed—by a madman documenting his killing spree on film. But all of these films are at least subliminally (and some might argue absolutely overtly) dealing with the psychological issues of “witnessing” in its most basic form.
The Bird With the Crystal Plumage is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of VCI Entertainment with an MPEG-2 encoded 1080p transfer in 2.34:1. Fans of this film have but one question on their minds, at least with regard to this Blu-ray: how does it compare to the Blue Underground release? That Blu-ray is now out of print and fetches sometimes absurdly huge sums on several online sites. I have added three screenshots from the Blue Underground version in positions 21 – 23 to mimic the first three screenshots accompanying this review which are from the VCI version. A quick comparison shows that the VCI version is somewhat brighter, but perhaps surprisingly that does not affect blacks or the overall contrast of the film, and in fact I was not overly bothered by this change, despite being used to the Blue Underground Blu-ray. The image is still somewhat soft by today's standards, but VCI has not overtly scrubbed the elements here, and a rather swarthy amount of grain is still in evidence, especially in the darker sequences. Colors are very nicely saturated, and fine detail pops rather well in close-ups. I would certainly not fault this transfer in any major way for being brighter than the Blue Underground release, and in fact in some ways I think the colors pop more effectively in this version. Perhaps surprisingly, despite VCI's continued use of the now ancient MPEG-2 codec, there were only a couple of instances of very brief artifacting, the most noticeable of which is in the early fog scene where Sam is walking home.
Perhaps the biggest allure of this VCI release is the restoration of the original mono soundtracks, in either English or Italian, delivered here via LPCM Mono mixes. There's a quite noticeable difference between the two languages, with the Italian mix sounding notably more muffled in the higher frequencies, and with quite a bit more hiss than the English version. That said, both version present dialogue and Ennio Morricone's interesting score very well. Personally, I preferred the English language version due to the much more present upper registers, but those who want to hear the Italian language version in mono won't be too horribly disappointed, given reasonable expectations.
Fans who didn't scoop up Blue Underground's release of The Bird With the Crystal Plumage when it first came out have been kicking themselves ever since. My personal opinion is that the video quality here is at least acceptably comparable to the Blue Underground release, though it's also noticeably (if frankly slightly) different. The biggest change here is really in the audio mixes, where this VCI release offers the original mono mixes, as well as a much less lustrous assortment of supplements on this release. This is certainly a budget friendly option for those who don't want to spring for the now excessively expensive Blue Underground version. Recommended.
Arte Originale / Limited to 1,500 / L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo
1970
L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo
1970
Limited Edition | L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo
1970
L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo
1970
L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo | Remastered | Limited Edition
1970
L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo | Remastered
1970
Profondo rosso
1975
Standard Edition
1982
Il gatto a nove code | Special Edition
1971
Sei donne per l'assassino
1964
Non ho sonno | Standard Edition
2001
Cosa avete fatto a Solange?
1972
1980
Standard Edition
1985
4 mosche di velluto grigio
1971
I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale / Carnal Violence
1973
Limited Edition | La sindrome di Stendhal
1996
Reazione a catena
1971
Le foto di Gioia
1987
Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso
1972
Special Edition | La morte cammina con i tacchi alti
1971
Chi l'ha vista morire?
1972
Passi di danza su una lama di rasoio
1973
Communion / Holy Terror
1976
2018
Featuring The Girl Who Knew Too Much / La ragazza che sapeva troppo
1963