us bird with the crystal plumage special edition dvd review

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE
SEDA SPETTACOLI; ITALY
dvd specification
original year of release: 1969
approximate running time: 93 minutes
aspect ratio: anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1
system: NTSC (colour)
rating: unrated
sound: english 5.1 ex, english dts-es 6.1, english surround 2.0, english 2.0 mono, italian 5.1 ex, italian surround 2.0, italian 2.0 mono
dvd release: blue underground
region: 1
region coding: 0
dvd extras
audio commentary, international trailer, italian trailer, tv spots, dario argento interview, ennio morricone interview, vittorio storaro interview, eva renzi interview

[video][sound][extras][conclusion]

video
When reviews began appearing for Blue Underground's release, I suspected that the praise being dished out was too good to be true. Although they are to be commended for releasing so many rare and otherwise neglected titles, none of the transfers on Blue Underground's releases have struck me as being particularly good. In particular, they have a tendency to be overly soft with a high degree of edge enhancement.
The mediocre image quality of the two gialli released alongside The Bird With the Crystal Plumage - Strip Nude For Your Killer and Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye - looked set to confirm my worst fears. Luckily, Argento's debut has been given somewhat better treatment than its stablemates and, even if it doesn't look as good as it could (or should), it is comfortably the best presentation the film has had so far on DVD. Presented anamorphically in its original 2.35:1 ratio, this transfer was sourced from the original negative and reveals noticeably richer colours - particularly with regard to the reds - than the previous DVD releases. The grain is nicely handled and well maintained (a major improvement over the two other gialli mentioned before), and there are no visible compression artefacts. Sadly, the softness and edge enhancement are ever prevalent, and although close-ups generally look fine, the wider shots often show a horrifying lack of detail.

Perhaps I've been spoiled recently by the excellent giallo DVDs coming out of Italy - the recent remaster of What Have You Done to Solange? from 01 Distribution and the two Luciano Ercoli titles from NoShame's Italian office (streets ahead of anything their US branch has released) are a sight for sore eyes - but I personally don't consider Blue Underground's transfers at all deserving of the praise so often heaped on them.

sound
In terms of audio, at least, there seems little to complain about. A whopping seven different mixes have been provided, catering to every possible aural orientation. New mixes have been created for both the English and Italian variants of the film, the former receiving an aggressive DTS-ES 6.1 track, with Dolby Digital 5.1 EX and Dolby Surround 2.0 tracks provided in both English and Italian.
Thankfully, Blue Underground have included the original mono recordings of both too, which will please purists like myself. Despite my insistence on the inclusion of original mixes however, I was suitably impressed by the DTS track to actually watch the entire film with it enabled, and found it to be a sterling effort throughout.

Still, the original is there if you want it - and who can complain about choice? English subtitles, pertaining to the Italian track, are also included, although annoyingly they cannot be enabled or disabled on the fly. The only real flaw, which affects all of the available tracks, is that the quality of the dialogue recording is not particularly good, although this is of course a fault of the source materials themselves rather than the DVD.

extras
By far the meatiest of Blue Underground's giallo releases in terms of bonus materials, the extras are spread across two discs. The primary extra on Disc 1 is an audio commentary by journalists Alan Jones and Kim Newman. This is a laidback, breezy affair, more in line with an informal chat between two friends sitting in front of the television than the more academic affairs often featured on DVDs from the likes of Criterion. Of the two, Jones is clearly the more knowledgeable about all things Argento (a fact admitted by Newman quite early in the commentary), but they supplement each other well, delivering interesting anecdotes and personal interpretations, as well as drawing parallels between this and other films of the same period. This track is far and away better than the two solo commentaries Jones delivered for Anchor Bay's releases of Trauma and The Card Player, although this probably has as much to do with the superior quality of the film as anything.
The first disc also includes the international trailer, Italian trailer (which contains the infamous Hitchcock quote - marking it out as a re-release trailer rather than the original) and two American TV spots.

Disc 2 contains four interviews, the longest of which, at 18 minutes, features Dario Argento as he takes us through the process of making the film, discussing his roots as a movie critic and how this and his inexperience behind the camera shaped the end result. In recent years, Argento has definitely become more open to discussing his work (many earlier interviews were like pulling teeth), and he delivers a number of amusing anecdotes here, including Ennio Morricone's outraged reaction when Argento provided him with samples of how he wanted the music to sound, as well as a stunt involving a camera being thrown from a sixth storey window, suspending on a rope, which led to the equipment smashing on the pavement below ("The film was saved, fortunately" he says).

Ennio Morricone is next, speaking for 8 minutes about the score and going on to discuss his work for Argento on the four other films on which they collaborated. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro follows, speaking for 10 minutes about the ideas he brought to the look of the film, covering the use of close-ups to get inside the characters' minds and discussing how much responsibility and autonomy the cinematographer ultimately has on any project.
The final interview features Eva Renzi, who played Monica in the film. Renzi, who died of lung cancer a few months before the DVD was released, essentially goes on an 11-minute rant about how shoddily she has been treated by the industry. She feels that, due to taking bad advice from a variety of people, her career took a nosedive (she turned down an Orson Welles project at her ex-husband's insistence). She also takes the opportunity to lay into Tony Musante, who it seems she considered to be a vain and shallow individual. In that regard her views seem to be very much in line with those of Argento, about whom she speaks warmly, even if she doesn't appear to think much of the film or her character. All except the Eva Renzi interview, which is in English, are presented in Italian with English subtitles.

conclusion
Blue Underground have delivered what I am sure will be, for some time to come, the definitive version of The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. While the transfer bears the usual flaws associated with the label's output, the audio presentation and extras are of a high standard and should please fans of the film.
reviewed by Michael Mackenzie
(review originally posted at dvd times)

[reviews index][dvd index] [top of page]