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.

An Affinity For Insanity: "The Stendhal Syndrome"

I wrote this review of my favorite Dario Argento film, The Stendhal Syndrome, in April 2001 for a DVD/CD/LaserDisc retail store called Laser Exchange. As a cinema freak in my late teens, working at Laser Exchange was the best job I could possibly have had. Talking to phone customers on a headset made me feel like I was Spike Lee's Girl 6.  Checking in and out movie rentals made me feel like I was one of Kevin Smith's Clerks . And writing DVD reviews about the virtues of my favorite filmmakers made me feel like the American ambassador to EuroHorror.

 4/24/01

An Affinity With Insanity: A Look At 'The Stendhal Syndrome'

When Dario Argento’s La Sindrome Di Stendhal hit Italian theaters in 1996, it was already one of Argento’s most highly anticipated films. Now, five years after its release, it remains the most controversial film among his fans. I’ll keep the synopsis extremely succinct, since I don’t want to spoil any of the film’s surprises and since many of you reading this have seen this film already.

Anna Manni (Asia Argento) is a police officer from Rome working for the city’s Anti-Rape League. Anna is on the trail of serial rapist Stephen Blue (Thomas Kretschmann), who has been stalking the women of Italy, but who now appears to have set his sights on Florence. Anna travels to Florence, going on an anonymous tip she seeks out Stephen at the Uffizi Art Museum. And that is all I am giving away about this movie.

Part of the reason that the fan reception was so chilly is perhaps because the film is so vastly different from Argento’s previous works. It had been close to fifteen years since Argento last delivered a bona fide giallo thriller, and the plot line of a woman tracking a serial rapist seemed like the perfect vehicle for Argento to make a provocative comeback to the genre with which he is most fondly associated. So it certainly came as a surprise that the film was actually a psychological drama. Fans may have been expecting a violent, suspenseful thriller, but instead they got a thoroughly unique psychological drama that merely flirted with the giallo elements once inextricably linked to Argento. 

Since the release of his1969 directorial debut, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Dario Argento managed to invite immediate comparison to Alfred Hitchcock thanks to his poundingly suspenseful thrillers. The Stendhal Syndrome is far removed from those early films of his career. Nonetheless, it is arguably his most Hitchcockian effort. The film boasts Argento’s most  precise and linear narrative, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It incorporates the “wrong man” paranoia of so many Hitchcock classics in a manner so inventively twisted that the Master would indubitably love it. And most of all, it offers an incredibly complex portrait of its two protagonists, a dissection as intense and incessantly fascinating as that of James Stewart in Vertigo or Tippi Hedren in Marnie.

The Stendhal Syndrome is also the most distinctly Argentoan film of the director’s career, in spite of how different it may seem from his earlier works. The film is missing the dazzling camerawork that wowed audiences in films like Tenebre and Suspiria and the pounding rock soundtracks that make Argento’s brand of terror so distinct. However, these are merely technical aspects of Argento’s films; the thematic elements are present in full force. Argento has always depicted violence as lush, beautiful, and thoroughly sexual. Never has this technique been as blatant as it is in this film, and as such, never has the violence in an Argento film been so disturbing or so unsettlingly believable. From the casting of a heartthrob-type actor to play a sadistic rapist to the S&M quality of Anna and Steven’s first encounter, Argento pushes his viewer’s buttons in a way he has never done before. This is not to suggest that the film in any way glorifies rape, or even depicts rape as a sexual act (as is the case with most portrayals in Hollywood films). To the contrary, Argento’s sexualization of filming rape is so disturbing that he achieves in painting rape as the most violent of crimes.

While The Stendhal Syndrome may not boast the Goblin soundtrack that made films like Deep Red and Suspiria so memorable, the film does reteam Argento with early collaborator Ennio Morricone. The legendary Morricone (Once Upon A Time in the West, The Untouchables) had previously scored Argento’s “Animal Trilogy” in the early 1970s, and here he delivers what may be the finest score of his career. Mixing haunting, wordless female vocals (his trademark feature) with an eerily simple string melody, The Stendhal Syndrome’s music is every bit as disturbing and deceptively beautiful as the film itself. It perfectly underlines Anna’s unnatural obsession with Stephen, and adds to the hallucinatory atmosphere of her surreal descent at the hand of The Stendhal Syndrome. 

Sadly, it seems that every DVD incarnation of the film is lacking in some department. The UK release was a heavily censored edition (unless you were lucky enough to get one of the “accidental” uncut copies in their first pressing). The French edition boasted a knockout transfer, but had a disappointing audio mix with minimal surround use. And while the U.S. DVD had an impressive sound mix and some new interview clips with Argento, its soft, incorrectly framed transfer was a letdown. Additionally, it was a Troma release, and came complete with a cheesy Lloyd Kaufman introduction to the film and the usual batch of X-rated interactive goodies. Fun stuff, for sure (and who doesn’t like Troma?), but let’s face it: Troma Entertainment does not exactly spell out artistic credibility, and thus serves to slap the film in its face. 

The Dutch Film Works DVD is the fourth incarnation of the film on the format, and overall, it is arguably the best. First off, we get a solid 1.85:1 transfer of the film. The transfer is not enhanced for 16:9 screens as the original promotional materials indicated, and this is certainly a let down. It is, however, correctly framed, and looks quite good. The transfer comes from a great looking source print, though the colors are not as vivid or the image as sharp as the French DVD. It’s not reference quality, but judged on its own merit (that French DVD is damn near impossible for any film to top in the visual department) it is pretty impressive. This disc is, however, definitely better than the U.S. DVD. Troma’s edition of the film was too bright, resulting in washed out colors and a white haze that covered the screen throughout the film. Here all of Argento’s shadowy lighting is accurately represented, with more well defined colors and a much sharper image overall. (Viewers should take note that I was watching the film via PAL-NTSC conversion, which can downgrade the quality of the transfer itself.)

The U.S. DVD of the film  presented the film in a Dolby Surround soundtrack that was active enough to be mistaken for Dolby Digital 5.1. The French disc, on the other hand, was essentially limited to the front speakers, with a bare minimum of surround channel usage. This disc falls in between the two. The surround channels are definitely active here, though they are not as noticeable as on the U.S. DVD. However, the soundtrack is never overbearing, and the surround sound is generally better integrated with the front speakers to create a rich sound experience that probably represents Argento’s vision better than the previous DVD releases.

Although one could argue about its status in the audio/video department, this disc clearly boasts the best supplemental features of any of the “Stendhal” DVDs. The prize extra here is the terrific Michele Soavi documentary Dario Argento’s World of Horror. This 75 minute documentary has not ever been particularly scarce since its 1985 release, and unlike the U.S. DVD edition, this one does not contain chapter stops. However, getting it as an “extra feature” is certainly preferable to shelling out $29.95 for it on a separate DVD, so you really can’t go wrong here. Additionally, it’s one hell of an entertaining documentary. It contains clips from all of Dario’s directorial and production efforts beginning with The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and going right through Phenomena and Demons. The clips are interspersed with lengthy interviews with Dario as well as interviews with members of his various crews. You also get to see behind-the-scenes footage of his films, including the filming of the louma crane shot in Tenebre, the final sequence of Phenomena, and even the scoring sessions for Suspiria. It makes a great introduction to the director’s career for new fans and a terrific tribute for longtime fans.  The uninitiated Argento fan should be forewarned though, because the film inadvertently manages to spoil the final twists of Four Flies on Grey Velvet and even Deep Red! 

Next up we have a theatrical trailer for the film. This is the “official” international trailer for the film, and not the lame 30 second exploitation blip used by Troma to promote the film as a schlocky gorefest. It’s the same trailer as featured on the French DVD, only this time its credits are in English and the voice-over and vocals are strangely absent. It plays more like a teaser than a theatrical trailer, and thus offers an appropriately succinct glimpse of the classy yet brutally violent film. The extras are rounded out by a still gallery and talent files. Optional Dutch subtitles are also included. 

I may be going out on a limb by saying this, but I consider The Stendhal Syndrome to be the best film of Argento’s entire career, besting even Suspiria, Deep Red, Tenebre, and Opera. The film is simply brilliant, a rich drama/thriller that explores its characters with a sympathetic intensity scarcely seen in American thrillers. Argento has crafted his most mature and accomplished screenplay (an area of filmmaking for which he has never been particularly revered), and proves that even without the flashy visuals and loud music, he can still craft a profound and uniquely frightening film.

In another rarity for Argento films, The Stendhal Syndrome  boasts a brilliant, star-making performance from lead Asia Argento. Ms. Argento not only dissolves any prejudices the viewer might have about being cast as the lead in her father’s film, she also delivers one of the finest performances of the 1990s. As a driven cop whose ambition and verve may not be enough to save her from a descent into madness, she brings a quiet complexity to the role that exceeds the capability of her American contemporaries. That her ability shines through in spite of behind dubbed by another actress (one might guess the backers wanted a more “American” voice for the English soundtrack) serves as a testament to the talent and promise of this extraordinary performer.

If you’re wondering why I have not explained the seemingly crucial meaning behind the film’s unique title, it’s because it is not so crucial after all. It does serve a symbolic purpose to the telling of the story, and is certainly vital to the opening sequence. However, first time viewers need not know what it means before Anna does. Once you’ve seen Argento’s incorporation of it into the film, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

There has yet to be a truly perfect DVD release of this nearly perfect film, but this edition from Dutch Film Works is certainly the closest thing to it. You get a better visual transfer than the U.S. DVD, a better audio transfer than the French DVD, and better supplements than either of the aforementioned versions. To top it off, you also get the best artwork of the three packages-a big plus, in my book! So for fans of Argento (Dario and Asia), this is simply a ‘must-own’. 

VIVA ARGENTO: "Suspiria" at St. John's Prep

        May 23rd, 2010: A photograph I took of Dario Argento at the "2010 Weekend of Horrors" in Los Angeles!
                                                    (Copyright 2010, Robert E. Jeffrey)

Dario Argento’s Suspiria means a lot to me. I first saw it shortly after I turned thirteen, when I’d exhausted nearly every American selection from the “Horror” aisle of my local video stores and began exploring foreign territory. I still remember several images of violence that stuck out, but nothing about it frightened me at the time. It wasn’t about the ineffectiveness of the film or my own lack of intelligence: it was about the evolution of my film brain. "EuroHorror”, and Argento’s work in particular, does not necessarily belong on the same shelf as American horror staples like A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s not to say one continent has a better or worse output, but rather that each approaches the expectations of genre audiences very differently. 

It was not until I was seventeen years old that I rewatched Suspiria through more enlightened eyes. The movie had just gotten a bit of press, in the Summer of 1999, when the wild success of both The Blair Witch Project and The 6th Sense prompted both USA Today and Entertainment Weekly to rank their selections for the most frightening films of all time. Suspiria made both lists, and not surprisingly it took me only ten minutes before I found myself having to cover those enlightened eyes. On my second viewing, Suspiria was the scariest movie I had ever seen, and Dario Argento immediately became my favorite director. Within weeks I snatched up all of his films on DVD and every VHS I could get my hands on, as well as Maitland McDonough’s indelible Broken Mirrors, Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento. A few months later, writing about my love of Argento was part what got me accepted into Emerson College. It would be no stretch to say that rewatching Suspiria on that fateful summer night permanently changed my life.

In October 1999, my senior year of high school, I arranged to show Suspiria to the “Film History Club” at St. John's Prep. I got clearance from the front office to put up flyers everywhere, featuring praise lifted from various reviews and even a John Carpenter quote from the Criterion Collection commentary for Halloween. There was an announcement of the screening over the PA that day in October, and hearing my high school assistant principal promise that Dario Argento’s film would be shown “uncut and with its original 4-channel matrix surround soundtrack” will always be a highlight of my life! A screening of Suspiria in the basement of a scary old building at an all-boys’ Catholic high school seemed THOROUGHLY appropriate, and I’m sure more people would have showed up if someone had not mysteriously ripped down all but one of my flyers. To this day, I remain convinced that a real-life campus cult didn’t want its secrets being spilled out via Suspiria.

The school did not have an available player for my laserdisc of Suspiria, so I showed a VHS dub made from the Image Entertainment laserdisc. The laserdisc ended with American and “International” theatrical trailers for the film, and I decided to fill up the remaining space on the display tape by tacking on a few bonus Dario Argento trailers from my DVD collection. It was my attempt to further showcase Argento's work to uninitiated fellow film fans. All of them were freshmen or sophomores, so I always hoped a new generation of Argento fans was thriving at my alma mater after I had graduated.

      And THIS is what played that afternoon in the basement of “the Xavier building":

SUSPIRIA : US Trailer 

 

This trailer gives us all an insight into what was like to be a TV-watching kid in the 70s….a TERRIFIED TV-watching kid in the 70s who soon runs screaming out of the living room!

SUSPIRIA: International Trailer 

I used to force people to watch the first fifteen minutes of this film all the time. Those who got most scared were the ones left blank-faced by this trailer! (It's true, I'm wicked.)

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE 

One of my favorite thrillers of all time. I NEVER cease to be amazed by its undying scariness and unbelievably enduring impact on horror cinema in America and Europe.

TENEBRAE 

Everything I love about Argento is here: style, suspense, wit, color. It’s as deliriously enjoyable as any movie could ever have a right to be, and the 1999 Anchor Bay DVD remains the most-spun in my collection! 

PHENOMENA 

In 1986, it was my introduction to Dario Argento. In 1994, it was the first Dario Argento film I ever saw. In 1999, it was the first Dario Argento DVD  I ever bought.  Its role in my life is massive, and shall be detailed in a separate blog about the day I finally met Dario Argento and why I asked him to sign my copy “To ANGELO”….

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA 

I hope Dario Argento will be given an opportunity to let his subconscious run wild with a big budget again: I think this is his most romantic film and possibly his most underrated.