The Bird With The Crystal Plumage

Imagine the good fortune to make your solo directorial debut on the Italian film scene with Morricone as your composer — that was just the first of Dario Argento’s brushes with history before going on to become one of the greatest horror-thriller directors in all of European film. Like many of Morricone’s thriller scores, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage is infused with an eerie sense of faux-innocence and subverted easy-listening grace; just listen to the deceptively carefree quasi-bossa-nova flourishes of the title theme and it sounds more like a carousel ride than a brush with death. That, of course, makes for the perfect setup for the melodies to turn sour, the strings to start twisting, and the voices to get short of breath, at which point Morricone’s abstract and suspense-stirring tendencies run their wildest.