The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Argento's first film as director, and the giallo template arrives almost fully formed.

An American writer in Rome watches an attack through a gallery window, becomes convinced he saw something he cannot place, and spends the film failing to remember it correctly.

Everything is here: the black gloves, the foreign witness, the trauma explained too late, the elaborate set-piece killings. It was shot by Vittorio Storaro before he was Vittorio Storaro, and Morricone provides a lullaby that will not leave you.

It was an enormous hit across Europe and started a boom that produced roughly 150 of these in a decade.

Argento was 29 and had been a critic and a screenwriter, including on Once Upon a Time in the West.

Not his best. The one everything else grew out of.