Sleepless (2001)

From http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6a/Sleepless_(2001_film).jpeg

Dir. Dario Argento

First of all, after Opera (1987), my viewing of the films of Dario Argento has been spotty with a few gaps. Yet to see Mother of Tears (2007), haven't seen Trauma (1993), The Phantom of the Opera (1998) and Dracula 3D (2012). Aside from this, I've seen all the important films of his. All there is left, beyond those mentioned above, is the obscurer works. If a drop of quality has taken place, it's not the horrible downward spiral that I've heard others describe his career as having become. Instead it's a wider issue, beyond even Italy's genre cinema having declined taking its toll on his aesthetic rigor, but horror cinema in general being underused. This issue is in fact part of cinema in general, regardless of there being a climb or decline within it. If you can make a film fully through how you desired it to be, it'll be a miracle. A director with films under their belt are not safe from outside factors. Less budgets, cheaper camera, popular tastes that'll date films etc. Argento is a working filmmaker, in a profession first, that involves for more production costs than other mediums, and is an auteur secondly through the fans and critics, us, that see his films. And there are also times when the audience may have missed something that wasn't an outside influence or necessarily bad either. Once having found quite a few of his films, on the first viewings, dull, which I openly confess to having thought before rewatching those specific films, I've had a more complicated experience in my admiration for the director's work, able to see his major work at least twice. Argento has always skirted the schlocky and absurd in his prime era of giallos and supernatural horror - hockey plots, out-of-the-blue plot twists, obvious special effects. His films are legitimately great because of his style and that he can take these potential flaws in any other director's work and clearly embrace them in a baroque tone intentionally. And it's clear how deliberate it can be as well.

He would have seen having his protagonists be amateur sleuths in trying to solve murder cases, over the police, as fantastical in nature, but it's clearly done on purpose and I cannot help but think of the suspense of disbelief that exists in genre, especially crime stories. Unfortunately the virtues of suspending disbelief and embracing the clearly unrealistic has been lost on me for some time before now. It's also been lost in a lot of genre cinema. I blame the desire for realism and logic in narratives for having done this, even though both of them are mythical creatures in films purporting to be documents of reality. To embrace suspension of disbelief, which finds its biggest reservoir within the pulpiest of works, knowing flagrant in realism, is to intentionally enjoy films (or books, games etc.) that play within their own made-up realities. Even The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970), Argento's debut and most restrained work, has absurdities within it. Then he eventually went as far as having a monkey welding a razor blade in a film a decade later and likely knew how ridiculous it was. The Bird With The Crystal Plumage and The Cat O' Nine Tails (1971) were films I liked on the first viewing, and the likelihood was that they are the most streamlined and less-tangent filled films by him. After ...the Crystal Plumage, the films became more and more expanded, more tangent filled and clearly breaking to pieces the narratives they had on purpose and probably from the haphazard nature of many Italian genre cinema of the time. The most obvious example of this, was Deep Red (1975) and its extended screwball comedy sequences with David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi; the fact that most of it was removed from the shorter English language release of the film more than likely altering how viewers would react to his film, not seeing how tongue-in-cheek and peculiar he actually was. Plots in his films were lurid and not logically rigorous, more inclined to the spectacle of pulp, Four Flies From Grey Velvet (1971) getting its title from a scientifically impossible concept to catch the killer straight from sci-fi or Victorian gothic literature. If there was a peak for this expanding and divisive excess it was undoubtedly the eighties. Inferno (1980) is the most abstract film of his, Opera pulls the carpet under its viewers' feet, and Phenomena (1985) is clinically insane. And that's not discussing the use of Iron Maiden and Saxon in the mid and late eighties films.

From http://projectdeadpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Sleepless2.png

A film like Giallo (2009) still carries the hallmarks of this auteur. As does The Card Player (2004), The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) and, returning to the film of this review, Sleepless. I don't see a sudden damnation in mediocrity to the pit of the worst of cinema fans have proclaimed it to be with him. Filmmaking, even from an outsider who hasn't picked up a camera, is such a chaotic, arbitrary bastard of a career to be an artisan in when public taste, money and resources are variable and have such a drastic effect on the final product. Those who've been championed in horror cinema especially have been just as effected by this - see John Carpenter, Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, George Romero and so forth. Add European directors like Jess Franco, whose career was a roller coaster. Or go further, and beyond just horror films, like with Takashi Miike, a self proclaimed working director who, at one point making five films in a year, is clearly dependant on making films to live and has to do so by following what he will be able to work on, which is something I am having to accept with my disappointment with his later mainstream films. Auteurs or people with unconventional ideas are a pain in the arse for producers to work with, and as new talent exists, older veterans have ended up being ignored. A director who can keep a rich filmography usually works with whatever their budget is, even if its low, and is the equivalent of the mad lord isolated in a tower by themselves, sustained by those who've cared to listen to them. Yes, Argento and many director are countable for some really bad ideas in their weaker films - Adrian Brody's wonky accent(s) in Giallo for starters - but it's probably hell to get these productions off the ground let alone with little compromise. We forget as viewers it's a job, which can be as arbitrary as any other job we have, paid or unpaid.

A series of murders from 1983 have seemed to begin again many years later. The killer was said to have been a man with dwarfism, yet the fact that he apparently committed suicide, and the newest killings follow the originals' traits exactly, suggests that this was likely wrong. The son of one of the original victims Giacomo Gallo (Stefano Dionisi) is brought back to Turin, reacquainting himself with a crush of his past and intending to find out who actually killed his mother. Also brought back in is the original detective of the case Ulisse Moretti, played by the legendary Max Von Sydow, long retired but bringing himself into the case again as memories and his desire to close it too returns to him. The film's a throwback to Argento's first giallo films, less about who the killer turns out to be, but the labyrinth of the plotting. Giallo are more inclined to the notion of spectacle - the effect of the plotting, throwing its protagonists in the deep end, the gory deaths. It's a nasty film when it wants to be, a strange balance of cruelty and the absurd. Absurd is the right word. Argento has a clear bombastic ridiculousness to his work, sincere but winking. The same here. The spectacle of the first act, where a prostitute inadvertently gets involved with the killer and an incriminating blue file, shows the director's virtue of the elaborate. A prolonged set piece on a train. Two women involved. An inherent creativity to Argento that, dare say it, was found up to Giallo for all its failings. This is of course the film where Goblin, the Italian progressive rock band that created haunting scores for Argento's most well known films, came back together in some form to create another. The title theme sends shivers up the spine with the guitar lick that carries it, but again it proves great metaphor for an intentional, mischievous pomposity in Dario Argento's work. Music to shake the ground with but embracing excess like a starving man to food.

From http://www.mondo-digital.com/sleepless2big.jpg

The problem with Sleepless, if any, is not to do with the film's story or structure. His best work, including Suspiria (1977) and Inferno, is full of lengthy dialogue scenes and expedition. Odd tangents with no connection to the main plot. My original boredom with a lot of his films was because he got more excessive with this sort of thing, which I didn't go in expecting when I wanted lean, taught thrillers. The implausible nature, the lashings of said exposition, all the tangents, and it's clear, especially here, that Argento is in adoration of this as much as making the most stylish or tense work possible. I cannot but suspect, as we have scenes of Sydow by himself and his pet tropical bird figuring out old information on the murder case, explaining it to himself and us the viewers implausibly, that the director adores and fetishes the junky, over explained tones of a pulp paperback as much as their heightened tones and the mystery. Once you jettison the conventions of "good" narrative writing, it's obvious Argento loves the clearly implausible, the pointless, the all-the-sudden, the inane, and far from a detraction, it actually here is shown to be one of his best auteurist traits once you embrace it.

The real problem with this film is seeing how it occasionally looks daub visually. Thankfully this film has the style of the older films. But I have to get through the obvious flaw that, from around this point, and The Stendhal Syndrome, something was clearly an obsacle he put up as a director or outside groups forced upon him where his films lost their lustre from the past films. Not surprisingly it mirrors how  horror cinema became more and more obviously treated like the fast food of the medium, which effected many of the old auteurs' films. Yes, films were churned out in the days before I was born, but its feels even more obvious within the last few decades when directors known for distinct personalities in their work are minimal. Moments in this film, there are the troubling signs of how cheaper his films were becoming at least in look if not budget, clearly a compromise from the films of decades before. When you're a director known for style and elaborate camera movements, a restriction in making the films is not a good thing. The good news is that, while it would unfortunately begin to really undermine his films from The Card Player*, the style of the earlier films is still here, such as a lengthy tracking shot following along a carpet to an event that is magnificent. What has to bared in mind is that, when he started, Argento was working with Vittorio Storaro as his cinematographer, who the same year as The Bird With The Crystal Plumage did the same task with Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist. This is the same in other areas of the film's production, with Ennio Morricone as the composer. The older eras of horror cinema had a fluidity between actors to technicians switching between art and pulp cinema, particularly with Italy and Japan, without bias against either. Unfortunately Argento has to work with what he has now. With this film though he was still able to make material that shines. Considering the cinematographer for this film, Ronnie Taylor, shot his film Opera, it makes sense for the style to be there still. And of course, speaking of acting, there's Von Sydow. Sydow can leave any film with his stoic dignity shining through, as a great actor able to be good in even an awful film, as can be proved in seeing him in Judge Dread (1995) with Sylvester Stallone. The transition from Ingmar Bergman to his later films is surprising, but to bring his gravitas to this film was inspired, and in seeing him add conviction to the sillier aspects, proves why he's such a good actor. In fact no one is bad in the film in a jarring way to be honest. The cheesy English dubbing is far from the worst I've seen and still adds a lot; I'm endured much, much worse.

From http://hotdogcinema.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/sleepless-backstage.jpg

The modus operandi of the story is how a pretty nasty nursery rhyme penned for the film by Asia Argento, the director's daughter and actor/director in her own right, and from the very Grimm end of children's literature, infects someone enough to carry out a series of murders inspired by it against women. It's bizarre, but Argento has revealed in the bizarre plot ideas for four decades or so now. Taken seriously, as a director criticised for his violence, the notion of a work corrupting someone both returns back to the plot of Tenebrae (1982), and the result here becoming a playful nod to the more exaggerated of stories that does nonetheless reflects on this issue even for a lurid plot thread. Argento did consider the notion of the dangers of a piece of creative art at least with his work. The dwarf character blamed for the original murders becomes more of a tragic figure, ostracised for what he looked like when, frankly, the killers with the exception of Phenomena have been normal people hiding corrupted minds. And, without spoiling Phenomena, even that film is a lot more complicated, for an intentionally silly film, on that matter too. It says a lot of where the director/co-writer's heart lies in his preferred stories when this character is said to have been a pulp thriller writer who read aloud his latest creations gladly to the neighbouring children, the mix of the sick and the fun apparent especially here in Sleepless. Length and structure wise, the film does feel stretched, but it escalates quickly and, surprisingly, closes out its epilogue with end credits playing over the footage. Abrupt defiantly, but at the same time, it befits the material as much that it ends with the macabre jolt and soon after finishes so that it stays in mind.

It's unfortunate Dario Argento's work has dropped in quality over the years, but it's somewhat of a parody that, the further a director's career is, the more divisive and in danger of compromise it is. Its less that directors loss their creativity, too variable in individual cases for me, and I'd argue that with Argento, though he may be guilty in his compromise, that clearly the effect of less resources have plagued these films too. The circumstances to get these films made were likely to have had a drastic effect on what we would see. It's clear here as well that the intentionally silly and fun side of the man, even for the sadistic violence, was made more pronounced in a film like this. Maybe Giallo, with Adrian Brody sucking a whipped cream can nozzle at one point within it, was actually meant to be a comedy, and Argento wasn't covering his tracks? I'll see Dracula 3D when it's possible to acquire it, and be baffled by why a giant CGI mantis was included, but unless he has completely gone mad, I can't help but think he must have found that mantis people were able to see in a leaked production trailer to be funny as well as what he wanted for the scene. It comes apparent that, as well as the potential problems in making these films that is inherent in the industry, the knowing absurd of the man's work that has always been there has made itself more obvious as the films continue. As fans we've probably taken Argento's work too seriously in tone when they may have been ultraviolent romps in plot twists and abrupt surprises as Sleepless is. It makes complete sense of great moments from his first films that were nonetheless strange. He started with an extended dialogue scene whose punch line was that someone was sustaining themselves by raising cats to eat, and that should remind us of this side of the director that we've ignored, and realise its been in all the films he made afterwards.

Note: * Which makes no sense since Benoît Debie, of Spring Breakers (2013) and Enter the Void (2009), was the cinematographer. I'm baffled by this despite actually liking the film.

From http://www.dvdactive.com/images/reviews/screenshot/2009/7/sl2.jpg

Representing Italy: Four Flies On Grey Velvet (1971)

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh07nq7S_PGLOGEH-MOIe91H10OTdusSPkZBVUoWyx54k63269K1rEz57mXVjfPKajHTHBlmjlgSvC-iGiAVNbh2p8KWSKKKuyGU4w_M4TOzREiqM8eXby3JXSIgOTzB663-Jiqc3tyEEoN/s1600/four+flies+poster.jpg

Dir: Dario Argento

To watch a giallo, which Dario Argento impacted with his debut with the power of an electric bolt, is to expect the unrealistic. Its fantasy. A tricky knotting string of narrative. It only works as it does in form by being as absurd as it is as well as logical to some extent. The giallo, as I come accustomed to it, is a subgenre that could only make sense in cinema, willing to jump to unexpected places as abruptly as possible as well as have real logic to them. Befitting Argento the former film critic, giallo even when its middling is all about the lack of a clear vision, lost in the web of narrative for the protagonist and the viewer. Red herrings are there, one of them or someone else entirely behind the murders. A "gimmick", a McGuffin, or a nagging aspect for the person trying to solve the crime is always there, and the resolve is far from the original placement of one's expectations. In most other subgenres, it's possible that going to A to B hasn't even gotten past A by the end credits. Giallo on the other hand, unless it's so bad you don't care, feels like a journey.

From http://hotdogcinema.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/four-flies-mask.jpg

This was the missing piece in the puzzle of Argento. There are other films that were obscure, but Four Flies On Grey Velvet was the noticeable absence. Notable because it's in the beginning of his golden period of giallo and supernatural horror films. Notable because it was the final film in the unofficial Animal Trilogy, including his famous debut The Bird With The Crystal Plummage (1970) and The Cat O'Nine Tails (1971). Now available officially, the only truly obscure film in his filmography is The Five Days (1973), his sole excursion outside of horror and mystery thrillers, a historical comedy of all things. Four Flies On Grey Velvet certainly crams a drastic amount of shifts and pulls of subjective reality as it goes along. The drummer for a band Roberto Tobias (Michael Brandon) finds himself accidentally killing a stranger in a theatre, a mysterious figure above them capturing the incident on camera and using it as blackmail. However the figure doesn't want money. As he resists, Roberto tries to figure out what is going on, realising that blackmail isn't enough to explain what is going on, and so much more is taking place behind his back, not at least bodies that are slowly piling up. It plays with its form, but it's not the bombastic camera tracks and stylistic lighting of the later Argento films. Its sly, playful; after the great, but simple and economic first film The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, he suddenly raids every technical idea he could come up with to test himself. The heavy prog rock by Ennio Morricone, in contrast to his previous scores for the first two Animal Trilogy films, is very much a mirror for the film as a whole. This is a Mr. Bungle song sat at the end of two considered jams in this unofficial trilogy. The plot is even more ludicrous than the other two, its title from a gimmick later in the narrative that borrows from the history of mystery fiction, but feels even more ridiculous for being so suddenly introduced near the end of the film. The playfulness of the film is signaled immediately in the opening credit prog jam when there's a first person shot from inside a guitar that's there for the sake of it. Even next to the fantastic and bravado shots or images from the likes of Suspiria (1977), Inferno (1980) and Opera (1987), this film is the closest to a quirky film in his filmography, with how it presents itself, while still being a full blown giallo.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVjLxTQWtu-QYt87FgCv3p1rbzHCbziM_RJIR9J0E2zeI-2N0WwSmR5DSHRuRr3DJP8uolSau_aGMiVkSsV8HL-O2rg4yRk8BEV6ng6Ngp_fcCLZSc7gt_bs4h3VZiVC9fI8-U-eQ6uy-4/s1600/2.jpg

The whole film feels so different from a lot of his early and later films. Another character instead of Roberto does the investigation of the leads. There's romance between Roberto, already married, and his wife's sister that isn't actually frowned on or highlighted as a grand plot push. The characters around Roberto are broad and intentionally exaggerated, from a downtrodden postman who keeps delivering porn to the wrong house, to a friend (Bud Spencer) who is nicknamed "God", introduced with a chorus singing "Halleluiah!" that drastically differs from anything in Argento's work barring the bawdy orchestration that follows Daria Nicolodi out a door as she teases David Hemmings in Deep Red (1975). Argento's films can be very fun, and there's comedy in others, but most of them are played deathly serious. The entirety of Four Flies On Grey Velvet feels more knowing of itself, more openly silly. Clearly in trying to reach a new level of experimentation he could implement for his films afterwards, Argento made a film here that took some risks that he wouldn't attempt again. It's not part of his supernatural films, which even Deep Red is partially of, but how does that explain where the reoccurring images of a beheading leads to in its meaning? It sets up tropes that would be ran with in later works, but there are things that are never continued in the ones I've seen. Our protagonist never looks into the case for himself, completely lost barring clues others find for him. Its everything around him that shifts without much of his influence, and results of it completely take him down.

From http://24.media.tumblr.com/9b6e17e68fa653bd9718c6c121abe4e5/
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As Argento films go, it's good because of this and because it's still very much a rock solid giallo. Its full of clever, eye popping uses of the camera and the Morricone score is great. The last moment of the film may be one of the director's best for just knocking the viewer out. And the story is good as what a giallo usually is - it's not the mystery that's of interest, it's how it done and how things such as coincidences are welcomed rather than rejected for only logical explanations. Its full of pulp uses of psychological babble as other giallos, the same obsessions with clues and sociopaths, and in this film the added playfulness takes them to a different tone and makes the film stand out separately from the others. To Argento's credit, all of his films, from what I've seen, have been different from each other, never wanting to repeat himself in tone and presentation even if continuing with similar ideas. Finally accessing Four Flies On Grey Velvet not  only completes a key part of his career for me but also adds a new layer to how distinct he can be.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAvs-Y0R3N0yNqtSLODRagUTe_WrJDjDbk9RyKOX7k7UiFMtZkvc978ZXo79uU3lcAeJ1QMv6bsEqXpep01_1q32U4FfY5LXMS4BsdyiRwD5LI27cY4agtW3SGrbR7GfvrRWrqF8AMl5Q/
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Cinema of the Abstract: Inferno (1980)

From http://wrongsideoftheart.com/wp-content/gallery/posters-i/inferno_poster_02.jpg

Dir. Dario Argento

Italy

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlWWbySTR_tFHBkKW0u8oAY4wvJUrpt8fKZOEJ3Xl6ku6w5D8JZb7rbQklosSFwd4juiVZrPmSoMAiOPgfUGq1rSgKlzlYTNzvpTZOtJUc39NzUPIzFU1jtxU3wFA4fBXBCvP7CLn1_mI/s1600/avchd-inferno.1980.720p.mkv_snapshot_00.05.13_%255B2011.03.15_21.42.36%255D.jpg

[It’s been a while since this has been added to a “Cinema of the Abstract” review, but for anyone reading this blog for the first time, this is part of a collection of reviews of unconventional and experimental films that I have been housing on my MUBI profile and will continue to expand. The link to it is here.]

From http://brandonfilm.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/inferno-bluecorridor.png

If there was ever a film obsesses with the shape and enclosure of corridors, secret passages hidden in buildings that leads to dark machinations, it is Dario Argento’s follow-up to his legendary film Suspiria (1977). The characters can only follow along in this film’s locations, a hotel with numerous connecting pipes and air pockets that allow voices to be heard in varying rooms, libraries with rooms full of bubbling pots of viscous liquid, places which show more and more but shrink the presence of the individual within them against everything they encounter. With this film, Argento himself expanded the tone and content of Suspiria by expanding the mythology. With Inferno you have the Three Mothers introduced, three witches of immense evil. The Mother of Sighs, depicted in Suspiria, the Mother of Tears, who is in this film but is devoted to completely in the 2007 film that turned this series of films into a trilogy, and the Mother of Darkness, who is centre to Inferno. Inferno is a mood piece, which caught me off guard on the first viewing even though I had come to expect this sort of tone with Suspiria. It does have a simple story that the film leaps from into this. The information of the Three Mothers’ existence, in old published editions of a diary of the architect who created their homes, is starting to be violently suppressed by the influence of the remaining Mothers, pulling in the brother of a girl who, living in New York, the home of the Mother of Darkness, starts this series of deaths by acquiring a copy of the book.

From http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews53/inferno_blu-ray_/large/large_inferno_blu-ray_6x.jpg

Everything that made Suspiria what it was – the atmosphere, the bright coloured lighting, the methodical pace intercut with brutal deaths – is continued in Inferno but it proved to be a lesser known, even divisive, continuation, probably because it strips the plotting down to its minimum on purpose, and more significantly splits up the film into segments following different characters. On a first viewing, you will not know what to expect with Inferno, especially when individual unexpectedly die. In Suspiria there was a clear protagonist, but here it is the expansion of the mythology which is central to the film and how it is violently discovered is the driving force for everything around it. On this viewing, this presentation was perfect, Dario Argento playing with the tropes of this area of gothic horror while letting himself have the most bravado moments in his filmography in terms of content. Everything is to a high standard – the camera movements he used, the colour lighting and set design, Keith Emerson’s score – and presents numerous moments that are instantly memorable. It’s hard to top this film’s most well known scene that is the first set piece, of a room underwater presented to the screen in a way that is strangely calming before the punch line to it takes place, but the film’s supernatural atmosphere increases as it goes along and the film’s various strands are cut to down to the final reveal of who the Mother of Darkness truly is. A lot of what is Argento’s virtue, which I criminally ignored, is how much his excess style is a stronger foundation for his filmmaking to rest upon than one takes for granted. His seventies and eighties output in hindsight is deliberately unconventional, and a lot better written than people have presumed it to be if it is viewed as a jumping off point for his to craft images from. He is very much a director who explains everything through images unless it’s a giallo mystery story or a key plot point he couldn’t have shown through said images. He uses a simple premise or idea, and expands it through the images and music. The final film onscreen is an intense, haunting romp through this area of cinema.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIx-xYiK6j56iZRL0-_h8uAhDYGb7paMRmXf1Gbmscr-e1fl5QhjEfvbZPOwrrcwl4KEuUm2BYOl925ye8S1KoJDicONJNlHPL98TQjKQFBH5liu4K9EaCYyZYgKWo9H_76V8-IzbzPiyD/s1600/Inferno+(22).jpg

These thoughts apply to all of the films of his I’ve rewatched this year as well, finally *getting* the virtues of his work at their fullest. There’s not more I can actually say than to request all of you reading this review to watch Inferno. If you’re cold on it and haven’t watched it in a while, try rewatching it again with these words in mind.

From http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film3/blu-ray_reviews52/inferno_blu-ray_argento_/large/large_inferno_blu-ray_8x.jpg

Terror At The Opera (1987)

From http://annyas.com/screenshots/images/1987/terror-at-the-opera-title-still.jpg

Dir. Dario Argento

Italy

Terror At The Opera like actual music is about the vivid images that a song or piece of music generates for the listener even if they don’t make logical sense. Re-seeing the film, I realise that my coldness to the film originally was because it completely goes against the grain of what one expects with this sort of narrative. Since his beginning as a director, Dario Argento’s films have been curveballs which don’t go in unexpected directions – tangents in Deep Red (1975), the abrupt ending of Cat O’Nine Tails (1971), and Suspiria (1977) as a whole – long before the eighties and his more divisive films. They’re the same identical curveballs of his later, divisive films like The Card Player (2004) and Giallo (2009), with only the material around them up to debate. Even The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970), kicking off the giallo genre, has unexpected directions, the kind that would be dismissed as bad screenwriting to some, but are the dreamlike and abstract tones people adore his films, and Italian genre cinema, for. Viewing Opera, without bringing up the music choices, raises attention to an age old question – do we view cinema through the lense of theatre and novels, needing a full narrative, or do visuals and juxtapositions of everything there (visually, audibly, tonally) mean more?

From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_bHSVCs9rX0A/TMsPhJBuccI/
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An understudy becomes the lead in a major operatic performance, only to be the victim of a killer who forces her to watch them murder people close to her. The film does not follow convention. It is various fragments connected into one sum – horror, voyeurism and pleasure, theatricality and the questioning of the protagonist’s state of mind all together in a loose story. It is intoxicated by its aesthetic and cinematic style, an exceptional creation which contains elaborate camera movements and clever use of what we the viewer can and cannot see. It is not mere aesthetic fetishism however, as it is clear, despite the problems he had making the film, that Argento is making the structure purposeful. It is clear we are not that separate from his supernatural films viewing Opera, within the same tone of Suspiria and Inferno (1980). The best of Italian cinema, including auteurs like Federico Fellini, work on a logic of waking dreams and everything connected to them – bright, deep textures and colours, fetishes, sexuality and power, individuals as representations – and you could view it as a cop-out to defend the apparent plot discrepancies, but when compared to awful abstract films from Italy (like Luigi Cozzi’s Demons 6 – De Profundis (1989) which attempted to be a film in Argento’s cinematic world), this seems more purposeful. If so, what does this mean? As a horror film, it is meant to terrify or unsettle you and that is Opera’s main concern. The displacing of what we expect to happen in a narrative like this knocks us out of our comfort zone. That the protagonist can have a cold attitude to just seeing a person killed may suggest that, actually, we’re being steered through the story by a character that is not in a mentally stable internal atmosphere, which Argento pushes, leaving us stranded. The only stable beings in the film are not even human but the ravens that dominate the theatre environment and influence how the murders are settled.

It is stripping down the typical plot line into a sensory effort. The scenes of tension, especially one in an apartment with a discomforting mistaking of identity, are effective if you give yourself up to the tone of the film, visually stunning beautiful grotesqueness, but it is completely abstract. Suspiria, even Inferno, even thought the latter especially is a fully abstracted work, have supernatural tones to make the curveballs and unexpected pulls back and forth more acceptable. Terror At The Opera plays within the same area within the vein of a obsessive killer plot, something we expect to be more conventional and realistic in a pulpy cinematic standard. That his influences, such as Edgar Allen Poe, were as much about the mental states of the characters and how it effects the environments around them help magnify this fact in Dario Argento’s work, making a drastic rewatching of his filmography, and covering up the gaps in my viewing, a necessary thing to do in the future. Hell, even the use of heavy metal music makes sense when you view the film like this.

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