My Dark Places
Think of Italian cinema and the roll call of masters is often predictable: Fellini, Antonioni, Bertolucci, Leone. Yet no less deserving of international acclaim is Dario Argento, master of the horror genre. Alan Jones talks blood, gore and family ties with ‘the Italian Hitchcock’ on the set of his new film
Federico Fellini, Michelangelo
Antonioni, Bernardo Bertolucci and Sergio Leone may be the first artists thought of when discussing Italian movies. But there’s one largely unsung director who beats them all when it comes to profitability and brand name global reach. The reason you may not have heard of Dario Argento, despite his tireless activity over 35 years, is because he makes horror films. Not just any old horror films, but gore-soaked shockers consistently pushing the boundaries of charnel house violence into thrilling areas few have dared follow. And that includes Quentin Tarantino, John Carpenter and Martin Scorsese, to whom Dario Argento is legendary.
In genre circles a new Argento is an Event. On his home Rome turf, where his name on posters looms bigger than the title, his films consistently out-perform Hollywood imports. For he has the rare knack of being able to combine outré auteur sensibilities with canny commercial acumen that defies all business logic. His latest splatter platter is about to be released in the Eternal City after world premiering at the prestigious Toronto Film Festival. And it’s the one every Argentophile has been desperately waiting 30 years to see. Because it returns the writer/director they call ‘The Italian Hitchcock’ to the scene of his signature horror landmark,
Suspiria, considered one of the top 10 horror films of all time.
“I like women, especially beautiful ones. If they have a good face and figure, I would much prefer to watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man. I really don’t care what anyone thinks or reads into it.”
Argento has been my numero uno horror icon ever since his debut 1970 feature
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. That glossy psycho thriller was a late reward to the former
Paese Sera newspaper film critic for co-writing, with Bertolucci, Sergio Leone’s epic Spaghetti Western
Once Upon A Time In The West (1968). The chic Jack the Ripper saga marked a sea change in Italian film production because it popularized the giallo picture. Giallo is the Italian for yellow, the colour of dust jackets on Italian mystery novels. Argento became the undisputed master of this new genre, one purposely making the murder sequences of key stylistic importance above any tangled plotting. One graphic highlight - a female victim subjectively raped by a knife - not only set the cutting edge seal on his meteoric career, it also began the critical attacks over misogynistic sexual violence he must fend off to this day.
“I like women, especially beautiful ones”, says Argento, in some kind of defense. “If they have a good face and figure, I would much prefer to watch them being murdered than an ugly girl or man. I have also killed a lot of men in my movies but no one mentions that. I don’t know why I have to keep justifying this through my life. I really don’t care what anyone thinks or reads into it.”
Argento followed his initial mega-success with
The Cat O’Nine Tails (1971) and
Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) before directing his giallo masterpiece
Deep Red (1974), which entered history books for its score by the Italian band Goblin. It set an international benchmark for soundtracks by using high decibel progressive rock music. It was the visually ornate, super-shock sensation
Suspiria (1977) however that brought Argento world cult status and credit for impacting on the modern splatter genre.
His tale of witchcraft in a Black Forest ballet school was influenced by Disney’s
Snow White and inspired by Thomas De Quincey’s semi-autobiographical 1822 classic
Confessions of an Opium Eater, particularly the evil
Three Mothers of Sighs, Darkness and Tears myth. Once seen
Suspiria is never forgotten, especially the opening 20-minute set piece featuring ballerinas’ hearts gorily exposed and stabbed and their faces split by falling glass.
“I wanted to start the way most horror movies end”, Argento says. “That way audiences remained on edge not knowing how much further I would go”. Elsewhere Argento’s startling camerawork, striking technique, visual flair and another superior Goblin soundtrack added untold lustre to his first fantasy and milestone primal scream.
Argento has fought
Suspiria’s reputation ever since. The comparison backlash began with the first unsuccessful sequel
Inferno (1980),
Tenebrae (1982),
Phenomena/Creepers (1985) - starring a young Jennifer Connelly - and
Opera (1987). Yet the last grisly opus contains Argento’s keynote image - a victim forced to watch torture scenarios with her eyes kept open by needles taped under her eyelids - a reflection of the experience watching his own oeuvre.
It isn’t just his own career Argento has focused on either. In 1978 he produced George Romero’s groundbreaking
Zombies: Dawn of the Dead and launched the future talents of many an Italian kingpin with productions like
The Church (1989). He teamed up again with Romero for the tribute to his favourite writer Edgar Allan Poe,
Two Evil Eyes (1990) before embarking on a trilogy of terror with his actress-turned-director daughter Asia
: Trauma (1993),
The Stendhal Syndrome (1995) and a very Italianate remake of
The Phantom of the Opera (1998).
“At this point in my acting career I had worked with every other Italian director apart from my own father,” says Asia. “I thought he hated me! After being stripped naked, raped, tortured and brutalised in those movies I ended up even more convinced...”
Argento’s more recent and variable output,
Sleepless (2001),
The Card Player (2003) and the TV movie
Do You Like Hitchcock? (2005), has done nothing to shake his enduring pole position as Italy’s export saviour either. It’s the reason why, after two decades of being scared to death of the enormous expectation, he finally bit the bullet and directed the long-awaited conclusion to the spellbinding saga of his
Three Mothers creation.
Shot in Turin and Rome last autumn,
Mother of Tears finds museum art restorer Asia Argento caught up in supernatural carnage after the cruel Mother of Tears
character is revived and gathers her demonic acolytes together for cannibalistic rites, pansexual orgies and apocalyptic catastrophe. What separates
Mother of Tears from its two antecedents is the accent on sexual obscenity.
“Aberrant sex is my new thing!” says Argento. “Sure, the film is gore packed. My fans expect no less. But I’m not competing with
Hostel. I want to create new violent vistas and gross sexual imagery allowed me to do that. The Mother of Sighs in
Suspiria was an old hag. The Mother of Darkness in
Inferno was middle-aged. The Mother of Tears is drop dead gorgeous. And if you were that stunning you’d be insatiable. Well, I would be anyway. Even though we designed a prosthetic appliance to make Israeli model Moran Atias seem like she has no genitalia, she still pisses over her ecstatic worshippers, drinking and bathing in the golden shower at the climactic witch jubilee.
“I just kept adding sex, nudity, anal, incest, homosexuality, lesbianism...” he adds. “I did get concerned about what it all meant psychologically at one point so I told my priest. He said fine as long as they remained just fantasies. Not many directors can say they use their priest for film confession but I do”.
“European film-makers are under the thumb of TV owners these days. They wield such power and dictate much of what you can show on screen for network airing”
Usually on set Argento is off in a corner pacing nervously or a whirling dervish screaming out directions. His attitude towards actors too has been quite astonishing, another reason why he’s tagged with the Hitchcock label, after that other filmmaker not known for suffering talent gladly. The most infamous incident is the virtual fistfight he had with lead
Opera star Cristina Marsillach.
“Everyone seemed slightly suspicious of my mood [on set of the
Mother of Tears],” says Argento. “If I had convinced myself at one point that I was terrified of ending the trilogy, the moment I took that big dive into uncharted waters and started filming, the millstone around my neck disappeared. I felt free to experiment and not get wound up by anticipation. Just like what happened during the making of
Suspiria, I rediscovered my roots, my being and my artistic fury as the purest of filmmaking atmospheres took over”.
Quite why Argento’s attitude has changed so markedly can be traced to directing two episodes of the
Masters of Horror series for American television. Decades of refusing to go Hollywood or even consider working from another writer’s original idea - and Stephen King repeatedly asked - was reversed in the light of helming
Jenifer and
Pelts.
“European film-makers are under the thumbs of TV owners these days”, Argento ruefully points out. “They wield such power and dictate much of what you can show on screen for eventual network airing.
The Card Player got hemmed in by that thinking. It’s a stupid way of working and stifles all creativity. On
Masters of Horror I wanted strong violence. Go ahead, the producers said. I want lots of sex. We like that, they said. I want loads of gore. We’d like even more came the reply. My mind unwound after years of restriction and
Mother of Tears became a firm reality in the unleashed creative rush”.
Film technology has also advanced in key areas to take the main angst out of making a sequel to one of the most beautifully composed horror movies too.
Suspiria used an outmoded Technicolor stock to give the three primary colour palette a vivid, almost 3D, quality. Huge banks of lights and bouncing beams from giant mirrors meant massive organization. “Now everything can be done in post-production”, explains Argento. “The film will be digitalized into neutral negative and then colour enhanced. With today’s technology and CGI it’s an easy recreation job. I didn’t want to slavishly copy the
Suspiria look. Here we begin in cold muted colours, with the
Mother of Tears’ demonic emissaries, almost imperceptible in the dark, and then we gradually increase the deep reds to day-glow scarlet as it progresses towards the Dante’s Inferno finale.”
Playing Asia’s phantom mother, her image summoned by blowing on powder in an enchanted compact, is her own mother, noted stage actress Daria Nicolodi. Famous for their headline-grabbing row over who actually wrote
Suspiria, Asia was caught in the middle of her parents’ vicious fall-out - one that carried on through later movies - and became a custody casualty of the damage control. It’s something she has become increasingly philosophical about over the years.
“They were a nightmare couple, screaming and fighting all the time”, she sighs. “But I don’t want to say they were disastrous at parenthood. My unusual childhood made me strong so I can’t complain. Daria is not an easy mother. It was only when I gave up trying to make her love me that I finally understood she was incapable of giving it. I earned her respect instead. Dario made it clear early on that he loved my half-sister Fiore more. It was only when we worked together a strong bond formed between us. I’m not saying our relationship is now a bed of roses. There is a lot that remains unresolved between us. But one of the reasons I wanted to work with him again is we have always found it easier to deal with each other through the movies. It’s our therapy. We work out our problems on set. Our family always has”.
And
Mother of Tears was very much a family affair for the Argento dynasty as Dario’s younger brother Claudio produced and nephew Nilo was also on the crew. Matched with the long history of the chilling concept and hopes it will return Argento to the pinnacle of his glory days, it’s precisely this blurring of on-screen supernatural fantasy with controversial off-screen reality that makes his canon so unique in the horror firmament. One hard fact is a given though. As Italy’s Pope of Darkness confides, “No matter how good
Mother of Tears turns out, will it ever be considered as great as
Suspiria?”
