The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) & The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971) & Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)

          Around the same time that Alfred Hitchcock’s career began to wane, potential successors for his “Master of Suspense” title emerged in Hollywood and abroad. In America, director Brian De Palma laced several films with overt homages to Hitchcock. Overseas, Italian director Dario Argento won a fleeting sort of international fame with his first three pictures, all of which have unmistakably Hitchcockian elements.

          Argento’s debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, benefits not only from the self-assurance of a youthful talent eager to strut his stuff but also from extraordinary collaborators. Having proven himself as a screenwriter on pictures including Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Argento secured the services of composer Ennio Morricone and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro. Their unnerving music and stately photography elevate the contrivances of the script Argento adapted from a 1949 novel by Fredrick Brown. The film opens with a bravura visual flourish—while living in Rome, American writer Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) happens upon an attack inside an all-white art gallery, so he watches from behind the gallery’s glass façade as a beautiful woman struggles to survive a stabbing. Luckily, he’s able to call for help. Afterward, police detective Morosini (Enrico Maria Salerno) confiscates Dalmas’ passport and forces the writer to remain in Italy until the investigation concludes. Dalmas then starts an investigation of his own, even as the killer attacks others who get too close to the truth.

          Despite myriad lapses in credibility and logic, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage moves along fairly well. Unfortunately, so many scenes feature the brutalization of women that Argento left himself vulnerable to charges of misogyny, just as De Palma did with his Hitchcockian shockers. That said, most of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is vivid. Expertly staged jump scares complement unpleasant scenes including a horrific razor-blade attack.  Salerno’s world-weary portrayal, while clichéd, is fun to watch, though Musante is far less impressive. In his defense, he’s burdened with some wretched dialogue (“What’s happening to me? This damn thing’s becoming an obsession!”). All in all, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is an impressive first effort, its rough edges attributable to inexperience and its highlights indicative of promise.

          Argento’s follow-up, The Cat o’ Nine Tails, is made with just as much confidence but slightly less panache. Morricone returns, but the movie suffers for Storaro’s absence, because the imagery in Argento’s second film is pedestrian instead of painterly. Also miring The Cat o’ Nine Tails in mediocrity are distasteful themes of child endangerment, homophobia, and incest. Once again, Argento uses the device of a witness who becomes an amateur sleuth. This time, blind typesetter Franco Arnò (Karl Malden) overhears a suspicious conversation and then makes a connection when he learns about a murder that happened near where the conversation took place. Franco enlists the help of newspaperman Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus), and they search for the killer’s identity. Things get convoluted fast, because the plot involves, among other things, cutting-edge genetic research and the use of a whip as a metaphor. Still, the plotting of The Cat o’ Nine Tails is no more ridiculous than that of the typical Hitchcock picture, except perhaps for the sheer number of McGuffins pulling the story down blind alleys.

          Logic is even more of a problem in Argento’s sophomore effort than it was in his debut, since the police in The Cat o’ Nine Tails seem both ineffective and weirdly tolerant of amateur detectives. Like Musante in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Franciscus cuts a handsome figure but offers little else to the proceedings, though Malden’s avuncular charm makes all of his scenes watchable. Argento’s apparent desire to out-Hitchcock Hitchcock gets a bit tiresome, as during a long scene involving poisoned milk, but Morricone saves the day with his offbeat score, all eerie wails and spidery syncopation. Furthermore, Argento comes through with a fun chase at the end as well as a colorful final death. So even though The Cat o’ Nine Tails doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, it’s the most entertaining installment of Argento’s so-called “Animal Trilogy.”

          Four Flies on Grey Velvet lacks the elegance of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and the pulpy energy of The Cat o’ Nine Tails. Worse, Four Flies on Grey Velvet tacks in a grotesque direction by fetishizing violence with close-ups of foreign objects penetrating skin. It’s as if Argento, upon reaching maturity as a storyteller, suddenly forgot the lessons about understatement he’d learned from Hitchcock’s work. Anyway, Four Flies on Grey Velvet gets underway when rock-music drummer Roberto Tobias (Michael Brandon) confronts a man he perceives as a stalker, then accidentally kills the man while another person photographs the incident. Blackmail ensues, so Roberto half-heartedly investigates with the assistance of artist friends and a PI. Meanwhile, Roberto navigates romances with two women. Four Flies on Grey Velvet is one of those befuddling thrillers in which the protagonist seems fearful of mortal danger in one scene, then seems untroubled in the next. Further muddying the viewing experience are brief attempts at comedy, such as a scene featuring Italian-cinema funnyman Bud Spencer. It’s hard to reconcile the lighthearted stuff with scenes of slow-motion mutilation, especially since the plot deteriorates into endless explanations of far-fetched motives sprinkled with cut-rate psychobabble.

          After making Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Argento took a break from the rough stuff and made an outright comedy, which flopped. Thereafter, he doubled down on gore and weirdness with Deep Red (1975) and Suspiria (1977). Exit the would-be Master of Suspense, enter the Master of Horror. While none of Argento’s early thrillers remotely approaches the quality of Hitchcock’s best work, all three are creepy and imaginative, with moments that would have made the master proud.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage: GROOVY

The Cat o’ Nine Tails: GROOVY

Four Flies on Grey Velvet: FUNKY

Malicious (1973)

          Over the course of the 98 sexually charged minutes that comprise Malicious (original title: Malizia), Italian actress Laura Antonelli cements her screen persona as a fantasy figure, because every scene shows men fantasizing about her figure. And while the film itself is problematic, Antonelli delivers much more than an erotic charge. She’s believable and likeable and vulnerable, even when the narrative surrounding her seems far-fetched. It’s also worth noting that Antonelli benefits from the artful compositions and lighting of master cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, who gives Malicious more of an elegant sheen than the lurid narrative deserves.

          After his wife dies, fabric salesman Ignazio (Turi Ferro) discovers that his wife arranged for a housekeeper to take her place. The housekeeper is Angela (Antonelli), a humble and self-sacrificing young woman who seems unaware of her own beauty. Yet Ignazio is highly aware of Angela’s looks, as are Iganzio’s two grown sons, especially teenager Nino (Alessandro Momo). Angela proves herself useful by cooking wonderful meals, helping Ignazio’s youngest son overcome a bedwetting problem, and straightening Ignazio’s household. All the while, Ignazio becomes more and more obsessed with Angela, eventually enlisting the help of a priest to get the church’s blessing for marrying Angela. Concurrently, Nino makes sweetly flirtatious gestures, such as leaving flowers in Angela’s room every morning, until her acknowledgment of his kindness gives him license to act more boldly. He gropes her while other people are in the room, and he starts demanding peeks at Angela’s body. Inexplicably, she’s aroused by his misbehavior. In one scene, she lets Nino peel off her panties while they’re both sitting at the dinner table with the rest of the family (and the aforementioned priest). In another scene, she performs a striptease even though she’s aware that Nino has brought a teenaged friend to join him in watching Angela through a peephole. And so it goes from there.

          The psychology of Malicious gets so twisted that the film makes zero sense except as an exaggerated form of male wish-fulfillment, and in fact, Nino seems a lot more like a dangerous stalker in many scenes than a love-struck admirer. Somehow, Antonelli glides through with her dignity intact, even though most of the movie is set to raunchy music suitable for a dingy burlesque hall, and even though the climactic scene is a chase that would have felt at home inside a horror movie. The kicker, of course, is that Malicious is ostensibly a comedy. If you feel women exist only to serve men, then, yeah, sure, Malicious is a hoot and a half.

          In any event, Malicious elevated Antonelli to the status of a minor international sex symbol, so for the remainder of the ’70s, most of her movies received American releases. In 1979 alone, U.S. audiences got to see the saucy pictures The Divine Nymph (originally released in Italy in 1975), Secret Fantasy (a holdover from 1971), Til Marriage Do Us Part (recycled from 1974), and Wifemistress (previously issued in Europe in 1977), as well as The Innocent, a posh Luchino Visconti drama that originally graced European screens in 1976. Antonelli continued playing sexy roles, amid other acting jobs, until 1991, when drug charges pulled her into a 10-year ordeal of legal battles. She never acted again, and she died in 2015. Ironically, Antonelli’s last film was a reprise of her early conquest: She and fellow castmates reunited for Malizia 2000 (1991), a direct sequel to Malicious.

Malicious: FUNKY

Agatha (1979)

          Elegant and smart, Agatha has so many virtues it should be a better movie, but a sloppy script and questionable casting get in the way of the film’s lush production values and sensitive performances. An imaginary exploration of what might have happened in 1926, when the internationally famous mystery novelist Agatha Christie disappeared for 12 days, the movie presents a complex intrigue involving adultery, deception, romance, and a wicked plan to kill someone using an offbeat weapon—obviously, the idea was to entangle Christie in a murder plot as ornate as those found in her books. Alas, the piece is more ambitious than successful, largely because the filmmakers fail to properly define Christie and the other main character, an American journalist working in England, before things get weird; thus, viewers are forever racing to catch up with what’s happening, which precludes any real emotional involvement in the storyline.

          Furthermore, leading lady Vanessa Redgrave, playing Christie, and leading man Dustin Hoffman, as the journalist, are mismatched aesthetically and artistically. While it’s refreshing to see a female star tower over her male counterpart, the duo lacks chemistry, and Redgrave’s spacey detachment feels natural while Hoffman’s affectation of globe-trotting sophistication feels contrived.

          The story proper begins when Englishwoman Christie has a quarrel with her awful husband (Timothy Dalton), who wants a divorce so he can marry his attractive secretary (Celia Gregory). Meanwhile, popular columnist Wally Stanton (Hoffman) has become infatuated with Christie, whom he saw from afar at a press conference. When a distraught Christie flees her home, Wally tracks her down to a spa, where she has registered under an alias. He also learns that the secretary is a guest there. Disguising his true identity, Wally courts Christie and determines she means to harm the secretary.

          As written by Kathleen Tynan and Arthur Hopcraft, Agatha wobbles indecisively between drama, romance, and thrills for much of its running time, thereby failing to excel in any of the three genres. Versatile director Michael Apted guides actors well (even though the geography of scenes is muddied by arty camera angles), and legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro elevates the material considerably with his luminous images. Both leading actors are strong, though they seem to be starring in totally different movies: Hoffman’s charming turn is all surface, while Redgrave’s intellectualized performance is all subtext. So, while Agatha has many admirable qualities, not least of which is a genuinely imaginative premise, the lack of a solid narrative foundation prevents these qualities from coalescing into a satisfying whole. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Agatha: FUNKY

Luna (1979)

          Jill Clayburgh made intriguing choices during her brief run as a box-office attraction, bouncing between commercial fare like Silver Streak (1976) and arty projects like Luna, a provocative drama from Italian auteur Bernardo Bertolucci. It took nerve on Clayburgh’s part to play Caterina, an American opera star who embarks on an incestuous relationship with her heroin-addicted teenaged son, Joe (Matthew Berry), while the duo recovers from the sudden death of Caterina’s husband, Douglas (Fred Gwynne). Clayburgh commits to the role without any reservation, putting all of her considerable dramatic resources into every scene, whether she’s mimicking the grandiose performance style of an opera diva or getting handsy with her onscreen son.
          If only the material was as vibrant as Clayburgh’s performance.

          Co-written by Bertolucci, the story is meandering and pretentious, unfurling across a nearly interminable 140 minutes. Bertolucci’s camera probes every trivial nuance of character interaction, so many scenes feature pointless shots swishing around actors as they contemplate whether to step forward or simply stand in place with angsty expressions on their faces. The movie also includes long visual sequences that add nothing to the story, like montages of characters wandering aimlessly through picturesque Italian neighborhoods. Some of these random visuals have flesh-and-blood intensity simply because the cinematography by frequent Bertolucci collaborator Vittorio Storaro is so magnificent; he creates a palpable sense of heat and texture in almost every frame, lending gravitas to scenes whose actual content is of no real interest.

          The large supporting cast of European actors (including, very briefly, a young Roberto Benigni) gets overshadowed because the picture is obsessively focused on mother and son. Although newcomer Berry is naturalistic as Clayburgh’s petulant offspring/paramour, he is incapable of making his character’s absurd mood swings believable, so his weak performance is yet another one of the picture’s fatal flaws.

          As for the picture’s most lurid aspect, even though Bertolucci eases viewers into the incest material (the duo doesn’t get physical till halfway through the movie), the plot development feels ridiculous because the opera singer’s choices are incomprehensible: Instead of seeking treatment for her addict son, she provides heroin and comforts him with her body. So rather than being daring and memorable, Luna comes across as unfocused, forgettable, and more than a little distasteful.

Luna: LAME

Apocalypse Now (1979)

          One of the definitive cinematic statements of the ’70s, Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War drama is indulgent, pretentious, and undisciplined, but the film’s narrative excesses perfectly match its theme of men driven mad by an insane world. Famously adapted from Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness by gonzo screenwriter John Milius, then rewritten by Coppola and sprinkled with evocative narration by Michael Herr, the harrowing movie follows the journey of military assassin Captain Willard (Martin Sheen), sent by his U.S. Army masters to take out a rogue Green Beret, Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who has established an ultraviolent fiefdom in Cambodia. The irony of the Army condemning one of its own killing machines for being too bloodthirsty is just part of the film’s crazy-quilt statement about the obscenity of war in general and that of the Vietnam conflict in particular; even though the narrative wanders into many strange places along the way, it always returns to the maddening central idea that murder is acceptable as long as it’s done according to plan.
          Moving away from the classicism of his early-’70s triumphs and entering a vibrant period of expressionist experimentation, Coppola oversees a string of bold and inspired sequences, many of which have become iconic. The opening salvo, with hallucinatory intercutting of jungle imagery and a sweaty Saigon hotel room while the Doors’ menacing song “The End” plays on the soundtrack, goes beyond masterful and enters the realm of tweaked genius. And how many scenes in other movies match the audacity of the helicopter attack scored with Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries”? The film’s dialogue is just as vivid, from “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” to “The horror, the horror.” Sheen is extraordinary, channeling his intensity and remarkable speaking voice into a performance of perverse majesty, while supporting players Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper match him with crystalline personifications of two different brands of lunacy. Famously overpaid and uncooperative costar Brando gives Coppola fragments of brilliance that the director stitches into something weirdly affecting, and the fact that Brando’s performance works is a testament to the heroic efforts of a team of editors including longtime Coppola collaborator Walter Murch.
          Speaking of behind-the-camera participants, it would be criminal not to sing the praises of Vittorio Storaro’s luminous photography, which somehow captures not only the heat but also the suffocating humidity of the jungle. Actors Timothy Bottoms, Laurence Fishburne, Albert Hall, and G.D. Spradlin all contribute immeasurably as well, and Harrison Ford pops up for a bit part. After consuming the powerful 153-minute original version, consider exploring the fascinating (and even more indulgent) 202-minute extended cut titled Apocalypse Now Redux, and by all means seek out Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, possibly the most illuminating behind-the-scenes documentary ever made.

Apocalypse Now: OUTTA SIGHT