Wartime Journalism & "Cannibal Holocaust"

I knew what I wanted in high school. I wanted to go to Emerson College and study film. I just assumed that becoming a Hollywood screenwriter would immediately follow suit. My parents were wiser and always encouraged a backup plan, namely in journalism, but rather than listen I chose to gamble.

After taking a leave of absence midway through college to work on a failed indie horror film project, I returned to Emerson with a renewed vigor. In an attempt to expand my horizons and appease my parents’ suggestion, I took a “Wartime Journalism” class with the renowned Jerry Lanson...despite the fact that I never watch the news. I like horror onscreen, but I hate it in real life. That class, while amazing, underlined why I was not cut out for journalism. Thus I took the assignment of my final paper as an opportunity to explore my mind and rave about a favorite artist's misunderstood work of art, pastimes that I indulged in at least once a semester. For my Wartime Journalism class, the spotlight was on Ruggero Deodato's unbelievably controversial Cannibal Holocaust. I first saw this film in Summer 2001, after several years of avoidance based on its gruesome content and questionable reputation from both a cinematic and moral standpoint. Much to my shock and delight, I fell in love with the film that day in June. Much to my shock and horror, I relived its impact when the world changed that following September 11th. Barring Madonna and a handful of favorite (scripted) series, I have relentlessly avoided watching television ever since.

Robert E. Jeffrey 4/15/2005

JR485: Final Paper

     Outsider In: Looking at the

                      Psyche of the War Journalist 

I was first intrigued by the concept of wartime journalism in 2001 as a result of two significant works of filmmaking. The first, in the summer of 2001, was my viewing of a highly controversial, oft-banned 1979 Italian horror movie called Cannibal Holocaust, about the ill fate of a US network documentary team who travel the world staging or inciting bloody warfare and filming it to draw record ratings. The second was a documentary which aired on CNN shortly after the September 11^th attacks, one which showed the public execution of an Afghan woman convicted of adultery  and the skinned bodies of enemies of the Taliban.

The atrocities in both films, one a satire of the American media and one an insight into life under the Taliban, were similar in tone and content. They also equally provoked my interest in disturbing questions about what should be filmed and broadcast for television, and about the true intentions of the filmmakers who cover the world we live in. At the time, I was angry at what I perceived to be exploitation of current events. In the wake of the impact that Cannibal Holocaust had on my cynicism and the impact that 9/11 had on my paranoiac tendencies, I initially suspected CNN was exploiting literal “snuff” footage for ratings in the wake of a national tragedy and an international panic. These two powerful films shaped my perception of wartime journalism, prompting a unique approach to this course that finally lead to my writing this paper.

Despite being someone with no interest in a career in journalism, I am amazed by how much the experience of journalists who voluntarily commit themselves to the ghoulish horrors of warfare--all for the sake of authentically capturing it through their own eyes--has influenced my artistic endeavors. This is not to suggest that the lifestyle of a wartime journalist (a profession I was admittedly unfamiliar with until recently) has ever guided the formation of my ideas. Rather, it is because the existence of this profession, and the nature of their daily lives, has offered a whole new perspective to me on the role of violence in the media.

When journalist David Filipov spoke before the class, I was emotionally enslaved to his presentation: laughing at some stories, recoiling in horror at others, and vicariously riding the adrenaline rush of his brushes with death. It was a fascinating journey to go on, as an audience member. But to actually experience it must leave an incalculably profound effect. I wondered if his memories weren't far less entertaining without the benefit of an engaged, but naive, audience: going back and forth between enemy sides in a foreign country, performing as an actor or comedian to protect your body and life, witnessing brutality and knowing that your lives and the lives of those around you could vanquish at any second. I tried to imagine going from that lifestyle to sitting at a desk at the Boston Globe. Those front-line atrocities must still seem more real, even more present, than anything happening around him in America possibly could. Having learned that he has two children, both of whose parents are working war journalists, I wondered what home life must be like: after stretches of domesticity, do he and his wife both feel a need to be back in the heat of combat? And does this affect the security of children longing for the protection of Mom and Dad?

Most parents would probably agree that David Filipov and his wife made the right decision in leaving that world behind. Recent international events have demonstrated that the mere thought of a war going on can bring about great anxiety in young children, even those who have no familial connection to it whatsoever. A 2004 article entitled “Controlling What News Your Child Sees From TV” on the memorial website 9-11 Heroes references a study by the Georgetown University Psychology Department on the effects of repeated news footage of the September 11^th attacks on elementary school children. (9-11 Heroes) “Of the children in the study, 85 percent indicated that their basic sense of security and safety were shaken by the September 11 attacks.  Psychology Department Chair Deborah  Phillips reported afterwards that 'no one lost a family member…it was children not directly associated with the attacks, so I was surprised to find such high levels of stress. I expected maybe half, not 85 percent.'" (9-11 Heroes)

            These numbers merely refer to young children, with an inevitably limited understanding of the profundity of war but an innate fear of its deadly destruction. On the complete other end of the spectrum, the military and war journalists actually go to that proverbial “front line”, with many of them spending long stretches on the precarious road between a life removed from reality and a death lifted from gory nightmares. And what of their sanity? If children can be rocked to the core by repeatedly broadcast news footage of American skyscrapers tumbling into a city of people screaming in terror and distress (9-11 Heroes), could someone who sees such atrocities on a regular basis, for an extended period of time, possibly hold onto a sound mind?

As a writer of fiction, I was so affected by Mr. Filipov's classroom presentation that it prompted my decision to let the nature of this Wartime Journalism course shape a screenplay that I had been writing, one I already planned to incorporate into a separate class on the nature of violence in literature. This was compounded by the visit of Kevin Sites, who took a less dazzling, more analytical, and ultimately vulnerable approach to his experiences as a war journalist. He revealed that he had suffered the loss of a marriage and more than one engagement due to his commitment to his profession, and before the entire class he openly grappled with questions of what ethics to abide by in his career. It was very clearly an honest search for answers, rather than a demonstration of his career success. 

What most piqued my interest in learning about the profession of a war journalist was a desire to understand the psychological effect that “the news” has on the people who cover it. It seems that a lot of airtime and column space over the past two decades has been devoted to how children are affected when they see bloodshed on the six o’clock news, why teenagers run to slasher movies at the local multiplex, and what all this could mean when said young people enter the adult world. But it would appear, at least on a mainstream level, that less emphasis has been placed on the psyche of the people who broadcast such violence: the executives and editors and censors and newscasters who watch that bloody reality everyday and then decide on how they will break such truths to the rest of the world. At the heart of such mental and moral questions is the war journalist. Often a lone human being with modest protection and a questionable span of life, (s)he is willing to give up everything to potentially write the article or take the photograph that leaves a lasting impression on society. This passion, this monogamy, and this potential for horrible means of destruction has fascinated me since the beginning of the course, and it is what sent me off to at least scratch the surface of how a psychologist would look at the mind of a war journalist.

In 2004, The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) released a fact sheet entitled “PTSD in Journalists” written by Dr. Elisa E. Bolton and containing new findings from studies on journalists that were conducted in 2002 and 2003. (Bolton) Dr. Bolton points out that “it has been assumed that journalists are not permanently impacted by death and destruction…[that they are] unusually tough, somehow immune to the reverberating impact of the human suffering they witness.” (Bolton) “Journalists are often exposed to highly stressful, traumatic situations, and required to bear witness to others who have been overwhelmed by traumatic events. While emergency workers have, particularly in the last decade, recognized the need for self-care and organizational safeguards, journalists may not yet have been recognized as potential candidates for employee safeguards and increased support.” (Dart Center “Self-Primer”)

Does the general public care about the minds and lives and fates of war journalists? It’s sad to say, but time and time again the masses seem more apt to be moved by the sight of a fallen soldier--perhaps because the image is unconsciously identified with the most heroic figure in the spectator's life--than by the brutal death of a captured war correspondent. “In recent years there has been growing recognition that being a journalist, especially a war correspondent, can be quite dangerous. In 2001 alone, 100 journalists were killed. Organizations and researchers are recognizing that in addition to the danger of death, journalists are exposed to the risk of great emotional distress. Yet, [recent research] also indicates that few employers of photojournalists recognize the stress and negative impact on mental health that is associated with some assignments. Even fewer employers offer counseling services and education about PTSD symptoms.” (Bolton)

            The irony is that education about what one should or should not do on the front line would not necessarily be put to use anyway. In The Psychology of War, Lawrence LeShan excerpts the reflections of a WWII veteran named William Manchester who was hospitalized in Okinawa but escaped so that he could rejoin his fellow marines on a dangerous mission that they were about to embark on. “It was an act of love. Those men on the line were my family, my home. I had to be with them, rather than let them die and me live with the knowledge that I might have saved them. Men, I now know, do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other global abstraction. They fight for one another.” (LeShan 97)

While William Manchester was speaking as a veteran of combat, he could very well have been speaking as a wartime journalist. David Zucchino, a correspondent embedded with troops in Iraq, described his own experience as though he were a soldier, not a writer. “Peering through one of the Bradley’s three-inch-slits of bulletproof glass, I wasn’t just viewing the battlefield for a news story. I was searching for Iraqi fighters for the gunner to kill.” (Greer)

In War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, journalist Chris Hedges asserts that he  managed to retain his morality during his own wartime experience. However, referencing his time covering the first Gulf War, he concedes that, in the midst of the battlefield, a state of amorality is all too easy to sink into. “The prospect of war is exciting. Many young men [believe that they will] discover their worth as human beings in battle. The admiration…the glory…the ideal of nobility beckon[s] us forward. All the more startling [is that] that such fantasy is believed, given the impersonal slaughter of modern industrial warfare. Iraqi soldiers were nothing more on the screens of sophisticated artillery pieces than little dots scurrying around like ants—that is, until they were…reduced to scattered corpses….[by] high explosives fired from huge distances.” (Hedges 84)

Even in our advanced state of technology in the arena of mass murder, the human psyche has yet to be upgraded. It is just as vulnerable to emotional damage from firing today’s high-distance blasters as it was from impaling enemies face-to-face with bayonets a century ago. “Men in modern warfare are in service to technology. Many never actually see the people they are firing at nor those firing at them. To be sure, soldiers who kill innocents pay a tremendous personal, emotional, and spiritual price. But within the universe of total war, soldiers only have time to reflect later. By then these soldiers often have been discarded, left as broken men in a civilian society that does not understand them and does not want to understand them.” (Hedges 83, 86)

Even the most celebrated of wars—the  wars that carve out nations with the greatest of prospects, the wars that restore peace to troubled lands, the wars that literally save the world—the effects of violence prove immune to the glory of the soldiers who fight or to the journalists who cover their fighting. In War and Human Nature, Stephen Peter Rosen discusses the findings of a physiological survey conducted by the U.S. Army in the Spring of 1944. The first element discussed in the original review of the data was the stress level of all of the troops surveyed, which was related to “many factors, but among all of the factors, lack of sleep was cited more often than any other as a factor affecting combat performance”, with  troops citing few hours to sleep even during quiet times at war. (Rosen 110)
However, studies conducted in the 1960s on the effects of sleep deprivation as a stress-inducer lead to retrospective reanalysis of the WWII study, leading to the very possible conclusion that the WWII respondents were  hampered by fatigue and uncertainty moreso than lack of sleep. “Fatigue, the weariness that sets in after performing a task for long periods of time, has complex effects on human thinking and behavior. [In the 1960s studies], a particular kind of stressor—uncertainty—produced an entirely different reaction”. (Rosen 112-113).

Citing the actual test results, Rosen explains that the brain’s “corticosteroids are produced by conditions of novelty, strangeness or unfamiliarity—in which uncertainty is paramount. Unfamiliar situations produce feelings of uncertainty or anxiety which in turn trigger the secretion of cortisol. Cortisol levels are found to be particularly high in anxious or depressed patients.” (Rosen 113) But lest one think that journalists who covered WWII were spared such mental reverberations, Pulitzer Prize-winner Ernie Pyle’s recollections offer a startling account of the inescapable transformation. “Before he died in April 1945, war correspondent Ernie Pyle wrote, 'I’ve been immersed in it too long. My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. The hurt has become too great.' If this happens to you, seek counseling from a professional.” (Hight & Smyth, Chapter 4).

Much to my pleasant surprise, the Internet has given birth to a vital organization that was formed specifically to address the oft overlooked psychological needs of journalists who cover traumatic events. “The Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma is a global network of journalists, journalism educators, and health professionals dedicated to improving media coverage of trauma, conflict, and tragedy. The Center also addresses the consequences of such coverage for those working in journalism.” (DartCenter.org) Among the many resources available through their website is a “digital handbook”, Tragedies and Journalists: A Guide for Effective Coverage, by Joe Hight and Frank Smyth. In it, the authors take an empathetic approach to the daily lives and stresses of the modern journalist. “An exceptional thing about journalists is that we alone seem to think that we are exceptional in our reactions. Violence and its emotional aftermath affect all first responders, including police, fire, and ambulance workers as well as journalists.” (Hight & Smyth, Chapter 8).

In their message to journalists, Joe Hight and Frank Smyth integrate throughout each chapter the need for journalists to constantly communicate, to vent out what they see and how they feel in response—perhaps because, the authors suggest, journalists don’t do it enough. “A coffee shop or a bar may provide colleagues with an invaluable venue in which to talk and perhaps debrief each other about the emotions of their work. Recognizing the need for a debriefing forum or the opportunity to articulate emotions in the aftermath of a school-yard massacre or the World Trade Center attacks is not a sign of weakness, as too many journalists seem to think. Instead, when done successfully, debriefing fosters strength. The act of articulation — writing, drawing, painting, talking or crying — seems to change the way a traumatic memory is stored in the brain, as if it somehow moves the memory from one part of the hard drive to another. Journalists are people who, like almost everyone else who is exposed to pain, feel it whether it is theirs or not. Keeping it bottled up may only prolong its impact and make it worse in the future. Journalists, including free-lancers, should seek and take advantage of opportunities for both peer and professional counseling.” (Hight and Smyth, Chapter 8).

As a writer of films that explore the many facets of of sex and the nature of violence, I can relate to a journalist. I see the innate perversity of my screenwriting reflected in journalists' work in a very striking fashion: we both spend our hours penetrating a world of unspeakable depravity as a means of achieving career goals that feel less like signposts than they do missions, on which sanity and mortality is trivial compared to the work left behind. It is clear that journalists, as a group, are as dedicated to constantly expanding and improving upon their coverage as artists are dedicated to enhancing their body of work. Like artists, they are less interested in their safety--physical or mental--than they are in the final product, and they may be inclined to express their thoughts and fears through work rather than conversation. But clearly these related traits are dangerous, and unnecessarily so.

Journalists and artists communicate with the world on a profound level, putting passion and commitment towards work that stretches their emotional landscape. But raising their adrenaline by being exposed to ghastly horrors is as all-consuming in its destructive danger as it is inescapably thrilling. Wartime journalists are  prone to the same effects commonly associated with post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers, and this is why they need just as many resources and just as much emotional support as an ER doctor or police officer. David Filipov and Kevin Sites have recognized this, and their respective classroom presentations served as a form of the catharsis that is vitally necessary in their profession. But that doesn’t mean that they won’t go back to the front line, because it doesn’t mean that they have grown immune to the euphoric excitement of their brilliantly deadly profession. Like artists, war journalists are passionate about living their lives doing what they love....even if life itself should end on the job. 

Works Cited

Hedges, Chris. War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning.

Anchor Books, New York. 2003

LeShan, Lawrence. The Psychology of War.

            Helios Press, New York. 2002

Rosen, Stephen Peter. War and Human Nature.

            Princeton University Press, Oxford. 2005

Web Sources

Bolton, Dr. Elisa E. “PTSD In Journalists”. National Center for Post-Traumatic

Stress Disorder: Department of Veterans Affairs.

http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/facts/specific/fs_journalists.html

Greer, Jane. “War and Peace, Human Agency, and

Other Matters”. UUWorld.org

http://www.uuworld.org/2003/04/what.html

“Self-Care Primer”. DARTCenter.org

http://www.dartcenter.org/resources/selfstudy/1_journalism_trauma/text_05.html

Hight, Joe, and Smyth, Frank. Tragedies and Journalists:

A Guide for Effective Coverage. DARTCenter.org

             

“Mission Statement”. DartCenter.org

http://www.dartcenter.org/about/mission.html

Film Referenced:

Cannibal Holocaust. Dir: Ruggero Deodato, 1979.

EC Entertainment DVD, Netherlands. 2001

You Kill Me: The Shadows Of A Genius

Today marks thirty years since the Italian release of one of Dario Argento’s most acclaimed and popular films: Tenebrae. I have posted to this blog many times before about Dario Argento, from writing about his best films (Suspiria, The Stendhal Syndrome) to his not-so-best films (Trauma) to the massive role he has played in shaping my identity as a child in the mid ‘80s and as a teenager in the late ‘90s. In college, I wrote about Dario Argento’s films almost constantly, and not least of all because I felt his body of work was every bit as worthy of dissection and appreciation as that of any other great filmmaker. Yet while Hitchcock and Kubrick and Godard were all the rage during my film school years, Argento’s appreciation seemed limited to the horror aficionados—and even then, it was primarily limited to Suspiria.

This (slightly revised) piece was one of two essays that I wrote about Tenebrae during my first year of college. I was a nineteen year old movie snob, and the filmmakers whom I was most passionate about were all Italian and all relegated to the “horror film” ghetto by most of academia. Both of my Tenebrae essays were intended to introduce my professors to the film in the hopes that they might one day incorporate it into their curriculum, if not their movie collections. I have no idea if that would ever go on to be the case for my professors, but I hope that it could still be the case for some of you. 

Robert Jeffrey 2/26/01

MA101: History of the Media Arts Part II

                                    Dario Argento’s Tenebrae: Art as Exploitation

When it comes to contemporary exploitation cinema, most American viewers will immediately think of one genre: The Horror Movie. Different viewers might have different interpretations of how horror films exploit. Some would say they exploit women. Others would say that they exploit violence. Many would say that they exploit American youth, who over the past several decades have consistently expressed interest in the most controversial (and most underappreciated) of film genres.

Over the past several years, a number of the genre’s most prominent “exploitation films” have finally been recognized for their artistic merit. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) is a permanent resident of The Museum of Modern Art. I Spit On Your Grave (1978) has been reevaluated by critics and sociologists. Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Halloween (1978) are now held in the same regard as Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest works. Over the past two years, the films of Italian horror legend Dario Argento have enjoyed similar rediscovery and reevaluation. Since the release of several of his films uncut (for the first time ever in America) on laserdisc in the Fall of 1998, he has finally begun to be appreciated as one of the finest filmmakers of our time, if not of all time.

Although long dubbed “the Italian Hitchcock”, Dario Argento’s body of work has often been regarded as “exploitation” as a result of  its graphic violence. Despite an ever growing legion of devoted fans around the globe, some horror aficionados don’t quite know how to interpret his work. The strict “gorehounds” rarely appreciate the multiple layers of psychology within the confines of his films. Yet many intellectual viewers are unable to get past Argento’s lack of interest in the widely accepted mechanics of “fine filmmaking”. In addition to expressing a disregard for actors, he offers that the actual “mystery” in his mystery films should not be the emphasis of the viewing experience. “We don’t solve mysteries in real life, why should we do it in films? Motivation doesn’t matter to me very much…I’m interested in seeing what goes on in people’s minds..the psychology” (McDonagh 245). Chris Gallant, editor of the book Art of Darkness: The Cinema of Dario Argento, offers that such a daringly different brand of filmmaking is exactly why people continue to explore, and attempt to understand, his filmography. “Perhaps more than anything else, what seems to invite analysis is the placement of this body of work on an overlap between European art cinema and a genre labeled ‘Exploitation’. These films disrupt what is so often perceived as an inflexible divide between the artistic and commercial, high and low art, forcing a surprisingly easy cohesion between the two” (Gallant 7).

 Dario Argento’s 1982 film Tenebrae is, upon initial viewing, a fairly straightforward mystery/thriller. Peter Neal (American television star Anthony Franciosa) is a hugely successful American writer of horror novels. When Peter Neal arrives in Rome to promote his latest book, Tenebrae, a series of murders are committed which seem to have been lifted from the pages of Neal’s latest work. With each murder, the killer sends a passage of the novel to Peter Neal, enticing the author to investigate himself. As Neal is drawn deeper into the mystery of uncovering the killer’s identity, the body count mounts, and Neal himself becomes the final target of the maniac’s killing spree. Tenebrae is effective as a mystery, as a thriller, and as a horror movie. But it is the psychological subtext which invites repeat viewings and continued analysis. This is what sets it apart from the (seemingly) similar thrillers that lack its symbolism and nihilistic wit.

A large part of Dario Argento’s appeal to fans is often used by his detractors to criticize him: the hyper-stylization inherent in his filmmaking. Within the Argento canon, Tenebrae could almost be described as one of Argento’s realistic efforts, although “gritty crime drama” it is not. One of the most controversial and thoroughly Hitchcockian aspects of Argento’s genius is his ability to portray graphic violence with the glamour and sensuality that most directors would apply to a romantic scene. The most striking and disquieting example of this in Tenebrae is the film’s most graphically violent scene, in which a woman’s upper arm is chopped off by an axe. The scene is not portrayed with the realistic attempts of a contemporary horror movie. Nor does it boast the outrageousness of Herschell Gordon Lewis drive-in fare, or the exploitive violence of gruesome slasher films. Instead, the depiction is far more terrifying in its spectacle: the camera pans to follow the character, blood literally painting the bleach white wall beside her as she slowly and fruitlessly backs away from her killer. The overtly seductive audience appeal in Argento’s murder sequences, particularly this one, make the acts of violence all the more disturbing. The portrayal is so fluid, and so effectively woven into the canvas of the viewing experience, that the audience is not inclined to look away. The audience may potentially find itself riveted by the hypnotic depiction of violent death in Argento’s world, a stark contrast to the more realistic depictions of violence that audiences are generally more accustomed to. Argento’s deviant delight in toying with his audience’s psyche injects each viewing experience with a thread of black humor, present to varying extents in every one of his films.

It could be argued that since 1970, when Dario Argento made his directorial debut with The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, no other director has been quite as influential as he has been in the use of telling a story first and foremost with the camera. The films of such directors as John Carpenter, Brian DePalma, David Fincher, and The Wachowski Brothers have all evidenced Argento’s influence, often using the benefits of bigger budgets to expand upon Argento’s innovations. In addition to a number of devices used to generate suspense and shock, Tenebrae boasts two very simple yet seminal techniques that have served to define Argento’s style. One is the film’s famous “louma crane sequence”. It begins with a shot of a woman looking outside of the window of her house. The camera pans up, gliding across the second story, peering into the windows of the house, before settling on the window of the woman’s lover. The camera begins to move in, before pulling back and panning up again. The camera moves over the roof, and then moves down, looking into the windows of the other side of the house. It finally settles on the ground floor, where the killer is breaking into the home. All of this is caught on film in one uninterrupted shot that lasts for more than two minutes. On paper, the sequence reads like a classic suspense setup. However, the rebellious Argento instead uses it as a means of taking the viewer’s mind in a completely different direction. Rather than attempt to generate suspense here, he chooses to throw a cinematic curveball, in which for no apparent reason the viewer explores the house in which the next killing is about to take place. The scene adds to the film’s stylishness, but furthermore it pulls the viewer into the film’s twisted landscape. A similar concept would be revisited—much more elaborately and with the benefit of CGI effects—in David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999).

Another one of Argento’s innovations is put to use in the film’s final ten minutes. In this scene, the killer is in an apartment crouching near the body of the final victim when two characters walk in to discover both of them there. Argento shot a master shot of this encounter using a static camera. The three characters fill up the entire 1.85:1 frame, with sparing cuts to close ups, making the confines of the location seem even tighter than they already are. The frightening effect of this is heightened by the darkness of the room and the pouring rain outside, as this is one of the few set pieces in the film not set in broad daylight. Here, Argento creates tension amongst the three characters so tangible that it is almost unbearable. This claustrophobic encounter may well have been mimicked in the classic Hong Kong action film City on Fire (1987), which according to legend inspired similar scenes in the Quentin Tarantino films Reservoir Dogs (1992), True Romance (1993), and Pulp Fiction (1994).

Among the most striking (and famous) of Tenebrae’s many artistic merits is the film’s fluorescent, washed out visual scheme, courtesy of legendary Italian director of photography Luciano Tovoli. Dario Argento had previously collaborated with Tovoli in 1977 for his most famous film, Suspiria. In that film, Tovoli utilized an outdated Technicolor film process to achieve a kaleidoscopic array of vivid colors that added tremendously to the film’s terrifyingly dreamlike surrealism (McDonagh 144). In Tenebrae, Argento wanted something more much more realistic. Argento was attracted to “American television series like Columbo and Charlie’s Angels...people spit on this kind of police show, but personally I find in them a very precise aesthetic..[with a style] which is deranged by way of its directness” (McDonagh 171). In Italian, “tenebrae” is translated as “darkness” or “shadow” (McDonagh 163). As such, the use of harsh lighting and a washed out cinematographic process to add to the film’s super-brightness serves as an inventive juxtaposition. Argento has often pointed out that this aesthetic underlines the title being a reference to spiritual, rather than literal, darkness (World of Horror). But it also illustrates a consistent defiance of convention, something which marks so many of Argento’s so-called “horror” films.

Equally interesting is the fact that Dario Argento chose not to display any of Rome’s defining landmarks in the film. Maitland McDonagh, author of Broken Mirrors, Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento, noted that Tenebrae “takes place in a Rome that has no past: there are no shots of the Colosseum, the Trevi fountain, classical statuary, Renaissance paintings or churches..[the film] takes place in a city of dazzling white concrete. It’s all cool, stark, and slightly remote” (McDonagh 166). Argento’s choice of harsh lighting and ambiguous architecture serves to complement the lesser known fact that the film is set several years in the future—though the viewer is never made aware of this. “Tenebre occurs in a world inhabited by fewer people, with the results that the remainder are wealthier and less crowded. Something has happened to make it that way, but no one remembers, or wants to remember” (McDonagh 166). With this knowledge, the viewer can recognize the common theme that runs throughout the film: underneath a sunny façade, everyone hides dark secrets that can come back to haunt them.

Dario Argento has never been apt to employ traditional scare tactics. His debut, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, drew immediate comparison to Alfred Hitchcock because it demonstrated Argento’s ability to generate classical suspense that the Master himself would be proud of. His subsequent works are arguably even more Hitchcockian, though this has less to do with their style than with their approach to Hitchcock’s favorite instrument of terror: the human mind.  This is most apparent in Tenebrae, where the secrets hidden and the guilt  lived with serve to bring about the downfall of the film’s characters. Wrote Maitland McDonough, “in the gloom one can hide what one wants to reject, what one doesn’t dare show. But we are ill at ease in the harsh glare. We have everything right in front of us” (McDonagh 171). Thus the “darkness” of the title is not found in the exteriors of the film’s locations, but rather in the interiors of the killer’s soul. “Tenebre is about a very modern kind of horror; not monsters, not witches, but the horror of a twisted mind” (McDonagh 244).

Using the knowledge gained by the revelation of the killer’s identity in the final minutes of the film, the viewer can abandon “the whodunit experience” and go back to more closely observe the twisted mind of the film’s killer. To explore the psychology of Tenebrae, one must know the identity of the film’s killer, but to spoil the ending of this film for the uninitiated would be a disservice to any true fan of cinema. Tenebrae boasts one of the most brilliant identity revelations in film history, on par with the shocking finale of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Yet what makes Tenebrae stand out is that the killer’s identity works so beautifully into the canvas of the film’s psychology—it’s as if the whole movie were leading the viewer to an understanding of a deranged mind before we know whose mind it is. To guess the identity of the killer, one need not put the pieces of a puzzle together, as in conventional murder mysteries. Rather, the viewer must attempt to fully understand the psychology of the killer in order to predict a conclusion that is genuinely shocking yet perfectly rational.

The reason that Tenebrae could be placed into the exploitation subgenre has less to do with the film itself than with its distribution—particularly in America. Although the film premiered in Italy in October of 1982 (Gallant 280), it was not until 1984 that it finally made it to American audiences (McDonagh 165). When it finally opened in limited release, its American distributor, Bedford Entertainment/Film Gallery Inc., had cut the film by more than ten minutes. Violence was censored. Vital exposition was trimmed from the American release along with half of the louma crane shot and even the heel-in-mouth shot. Hoping to cash in on the slasher film craze of the day (rather late in the game, considering how much it had waned since its 1981 heyday), the film was strangely retitled Unsane and promoted as a gory horror movie (McDonagh 165). In 1987, this version of Tenebre was released on home video. Until 1998, American fans not lucky enough to import a Japanese laserdisc had to settle for this bastardized version of the film (Gallant 297).

Aside from its trashy American release, Tenebrae could still easily be mistaken for an exploitation film. It is extremely violent. It does not always adhere to the conventions of mystery/thrillers. And, like most Italian films, it was acted and filmed in English but ALL of its dialogue was dubbed in post-production—and not always by the actors appearing onscreen. Yet despite all of these seemingly defining factors, in the end, it is not Dario Argento who is making “exploitation movies”. Rather, it is the distributors of his films who take his art and sell it as exploitation. Thus far, only a handful of Argento films have played to American audiences in unadulterated form. Most were severely reedited, censored, and even “dumbed down”, bringing the violence to the front and center. Audiences also play a role in branding Argento’s oeuvre as “exploitation”, as proven by the fact that many of his fans seem to appreciate the violence of Tenebrae more than they do its layers of psychology. Worse yet, the very film connoisseurs that should relish such genius are often unable to look past the film’s vital but graphic bloodshed. Thus, as is perhaps the case with all of Dario Argento’s films, you could say that one ultimately takes away from Tenebrae what one brings to it. But with an open mind, and a dark sense of humor, one is unable not to appreciate power of one of the most complex and expertly crafted thrillers ever made.

Works Cited

Dario Argento’s World of Horror. Dir: Michele Soavi, 1985.

Synapse Entertainment DVD, USA. 1999

Gallant, Chris, ed. Art of Darkness: The Cinema of Dario Argento.

England: Fabpress Publishing, 2000.

McDonagh, Maitland. Broken Mirrors, Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento. New York: Citadel Publishing, 1991.

Tenebrae. Dir: Dario Argento, 1982.

Anchor Bay Entertainment DVD, USA. 1999

Like Fine Wine: Happy Birthday Dario Argento!

May 23rd, 2010: The day that one of my GREATEST dreams came true!

This Friday, September 7th, marks the  72^nd birthday of the truly ageless Dario Argento, my favorite filmmaker of all time and a human being whom I have come to regard as “my artistic father” in more ways than one. I love all of his films, and in fact prefer a bad Argento film over a good movie by any other director. It’s much like my love of Madonna, in that I connect so personally with the origin of his work that I can rarely fault it the way other people can. There are, however, a few films in his canon that I adore less than others, though most of these I grow to love over time. Such was the case with Trauma, his first and last American feature (excepting the 20^th Century Fox-funded Inferno). 

Trauma was the film that first introduced me to Dario Argento when its production was covered in the pages of my favorite magazine, Fangoria, in 1992. Yet it was not until the 2005 Anchor Bay DVD that I was able to give this film its proper credit, and to see the movie that Argento clearly saw when he was making it. It’s actually quite a shame that Argento’s 90s output remains so underrated, for his films during that decade were far more personal and mature than many of the highly entertaining neo-giallo thrillers he would go on to make in the first few years of the 21^st century. I consider The Stendhal Syndrome to be his finest film, and his outrageous take on The Phantom of The Opera (which many consider a work of cartoonish lunacy) to be his most underrated. I don’t have that same passion for Trauma, but I do love its romance, its personal insights, and its odd sentiment, set against Midwestern bloodshed and confused actors. It may not be up to par with earlier Argento films, but it is still as “unabashedly Argento” as anything he has ever made.

I wrote this paper at Emerson College for one of my favorite classes with one of my favorite professors: American Independent Cinema with Professor Rachel Thibault. I wrote about Trauma because it is, technically, “an American independent film”, and I wanted to expand the horizons for what that term could encompass. Also, while at Emerson, I took every opportunity I could to write about the greatness of Dario Argento. 

I made a few minor changes to better relay my thoughts, but I did not amend the glaring omission of any details about the plotline. Apparently I got so drawn into my own reactions that I failed to reference what I was reacting to. More than that, I am embarrassed that in my paper I failed to credit the role that Christopher Rydell’s sensitive, highly effective performance had in renewing my appreciation of this film. It is his chemistry with the ever-brilliant Asia Argento that fuels the film’s tender love story. This love story distinguishes the film from most of the Dario Argento films released in the twenty years that preceded Trauma.  It also anticipates the bizarre romances on display in his films made in the twenty years since, particularly The Stendhal Syndrome, Phantom of The Opera, The Card Player, and Jenifer. Trauma is the definitive turning point in Dario Argento’s career. Whether that is a good or bad thing is up to the viewer to decide. But when it comes to the ever-expanding body of Dario Argento’s work, I, for one, am happy to stay onboard for the whole ride. 

Robert E. Jeffrey

MA421E

Prof. Rachel Thibault

September 27th, 2005

         “Like Fine Wine”: A Renewed Appreciation for Dario Argento’s TRAUMA

Dario Argento is an Italian filmmaker best known for his 1977 surreal horror classic Suspiria, which became one of the most prolific and commercially successful European horror films of all time and gave new terror credibility to a director whose previous commercial success writing and directing crime thrillers earned him the moniker “the Italian Hitchcock”. It is a label that remains to this day despite two very different—if similarly inspired—film catalogues (Jones 15). I first saw his 1993 American thriller Trauma in the summer of 1999, when I was beginning to immerse myself in the Argento canon. It was the first Argento “giallo”—a uniquely Italian horror/thriller hybrid steeped in sexuality and violence and usually involving heavy shades of Catholicism and Freudianism—that I had ever seen. I had previously been exposed only to his most surreal works: the hallucinatory Suspiria (1977), the nightmarish Inferno (1980), and the outrageous Phenomena (1984). Trauma was also unique from the previous Argento pictures I had seen in that it was not a European production: in fact, it remains Argento’s sole American feature.

When I first saw the film, I was disappointed by how different and relatively uninteresting the film seemed in comparison to the over-the-top, dreamlike Argento films that I had recently discovered. The film lacked the style, wit, and scares of the three aforementioned films, and felt highly unimpressive—at times even incompetent. I would soon discover that the film is also in stark contrast to earlier gialli like 1969’s The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and 1982’s Tenebrae, which boast more vivid color schemes and flashier setpieces. The film is presented in a muted, occasionally bland color palette, riddled with some embarrassingly over the top performances from actors who often seem either bored or frustrated (or both). It’s backed by a Pino Donaggio score that often feels over-the-top and poorly synched with the visuals: fine but perennially inappropriate music often pops up out of utterly powerful silence, abruptly punctuating onscreen action as though one were jarringly transported into vintage Disney/ Spielberg territory. For years, I held against the film the fact that this would be Argento’s only American film: I hated it for ruining Argento’s long overdue shot at Stateside success. And yet, in my years of posting Argento reviews and bulletin board posts, I’ve often been surprised by how many fans include Trauma among their Top 10 or even Top 5 Argento films….when most, including myself, would be inclined to put it at the very bottom of such a list.

I made several attempts to re-watch the film, hoping to find something that I had somehow missed, but could never move past my own prejudices against its drear-drenched look, cartoonish score, and mostly lousy acting, save for a touching turn by Dario’s daughter, Asia Argento, that I felt wasted her talent and the commitment she brought to her performance. That this depressingly inconsequential film came from Dario Argento, the man whom I considered the single most inspired, fascinating, and consistent icon ever to emerge from the “Italian Horror” subgenre, made me absolutely loathe Trauma. That was until August of 2005, when Trauma was finally released in America on DVD courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment, at long last in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Finally, I could view the film as Argento had intended for it to be seen. In doing so, I was able to appreciate Trauma as I never had before. What I once thought was rationale for its reputation as his worst film I now see as evidence of Dario Argento’s unrivaled genius: viewed properly, all the pieces come together to craft a film far more profound, affecting than it would have been if it was, by most standards, a “better” American independent horror film.

Trauma is in many ways, technically, a “bad” film. Yet this is part of what makes it so great: Dario Argento is too sharp and too acute to make a “bad movie” without being well aware of the game he is playing. In regards to the “aloof” performances, I realized that the film plays into Argento’s predominant direction of screen performers: Argento is privy to utilize “bad movie traits” such as blatantly unrealistic and awkwardly delivered dialogue and inappropriate emotional turns in response to various plot points to his advantage. He fulfills the needs of his most desperate and devoted viewers, those who crave cinema that rebels against a tradition of pristine reproductions of daily life onscreen: he delves instead into the realm of dreams, where things look like real life yet feel very, very different. This might also explain the strangely placed musical score, which achieves what would seem a deliberate effort to throw off an audience’s emotional connection to what is happening onscreen. However, such a design is not new: both Suspiria and his 1975 giallo masterpiece, Profondo Rosso, utilized overbearing rock soundscapes to disorient viewers’ sensorial intake during the most intensely suspenseful sequences. But Trauma is a deeply personal affair, arguably more so than those far more audience-friendly films. With Trauma, Argento is unprecedentedly revealing. He allows his most personal nightmares—the anorexia of his stepdaughter with ex-wife Daria Nicolodi and the toll his career took on Asia Argento, his daughter with Nicolodi—to take shape as they might in his own unadulterated, unconscious mind. (Jones 216)

Despite the presence of Dario Argento’s unusual direction of actors and placement of music, the film still feels inappropriately “American”, and largely due to the equally strange choice to light and photograph the film as if it were intended to be viewed on the small screen. Trauma is expertly composed in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, but the colors are soft and bland, lacking in vibrancy, if not aesthetic appeal—especially when compared to the “eye candy” of Argento’s most celebrated films. In spite of a few surreal setpieces, Trauma is never as dreamy looking as Suspiria or Inferno, but its visuals are equally distinct, and just as vital to the film’s emotional core as primary colors were to the aforementioned films’ overbearing sense of impending death. Trauma, along with Argento’s infinitely more well-received 1982 thriller Tenebrae, liberally steal their respective looks from American television of their respective eras: the bright, washed out look of detective shows for Tenebrae and the dull, gloomy look of movies-of-the-week for Trauma. One might surmise that the anorexic back-story to Trauma contributed to its looking like a modern network telefilm, as that was certainly the most commercially appropriate American means for dealing with anorexia when Trauma was being filmed in 1991. Trauma utilizes a familiar American aesthetic for exploring empathetically human issues (ie. anorexia in teenage girls) and inserts into the mix surreally Argento fare like a trunk full of severed heads and a therapy session involving hallucinogenic berries. It serves its purpose as “an American horror film”, arousing familiarity in the American viewing audience, before brazenly exerting its independence from American horror expectations to analyze the mind of its creator.

Trauma was Dario Argento’s chance to emerge as in icon of American independent horror a’la John Carpenter and Wes Craven. When it turned out not to be the fan-satisfying yet commercially viable vehicle for expanding his American audience, many thought he blew it. Yet this negative judgment demonstrates the need for an archetype, for rules to be followed, for responses to be predicted by past film experience and fan expectations. As I look back on my earlier feelings about the film, I realize that I was no different from the other fans that disliked the film based on its perceived inability to deliver what Argento fans felt “an Argento film” should give to its audience, each and every time. I look back and see how fixed my expectations were, and how selfish I was as a viewer. Rather than allow the maverick of horror to take me to a new world and a rarely touched side of life-terror, I expected to be taken back to the old ones he had long since passed over. I was too preoccupied with my own need for “an Argento fix”, and I failed to realize how much I had reduced his films to little more than an effective formula that could and should be repeated to satisfy paying customers. By very deliberately choosing not to abide by such a philosophy, Argento sheds his commerciality and demonstrates his commitment to expressing himself through art as faithfully and unabashedly as possible. In his own unexpected way, he demonstrates an understanding of his fan’s expectations—and the importance, sometimes, of subverting them!—by asserting himself as a very conscious observer of American culture, cinema, and preconceived notions about what to expect from genre filmmaking. Beneath what one would be apt to call a “bad film” is in fact a far more lush, personal, at times disturbingly close-to-life statement than most of the works that made him a legend in the first place.  

Reevaluating the film six years after my initial viewing, I have fully come around to appreciate the very faults that initially lead me—and so much of the Argento fanbase—to label Trauma not only a career low, but also a genuinely bad film. In retrospect, I deeply regret having been so ignorant, and so unable to trust Argento’s vision.  Trauma serves as an exercise in demonstrating what one expects from specific genres and specific filmmakers, particularly when certain familiar ingredients are put before the audience. Unconsciously, audiences tend to put films together themselves, and criticize the film they are watching for how they either do or don’t conform to our expectations. Trauma very consciously bucks this trend, with Argento offering up what should be an old-fashioned giallo before twisting  his concoction into a device for filtering his recurring obsessions (family secrets, sexual dysfunction, crimes of passion) through his personal relationships. As a stand-alone, technically efficient horror/thriller picture, the film is inevitably deemed a failure by low-budget American independent horror standards, which generally requires a certain amount of suspense and violence and audience catharsis as measures of successful filmmaking. By such standards, Trauma may be an unusual, slightly uncategorizable, and very off-putting picture to most American audiences. But as a personal insight into the mind of Dario Argento, one of horror cinema’s most cleverly unique and truly mature filmmakers, it is a hauntingly personal and vividly realized work of film art.

Works Cited

Argento, Dario, dir. TRAUMA. Overseas Group/Anchor Bay Entertainment, U.S., 1993/2005.

Jones, Alan. Profondo Argento. London, UK: FabPress, 2004.