Dario Argento

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Dario Argento (2007)

Dario Argento (born September 7, 1940 in Rome ) is an Italian film director and screenwriter . He is considered one of the defining creators of the Italian Giallo and has had a strong influence on modern horror and slasher films .

biography

Argento and his daughter Asia at the 1993 Cannes International Film Festival

Argento is the son of producer Salvatore Argento and Brazilian model Elda Luxardi. His relationship with the actress and screenwriter Daria Nicolodi comes from his daughter Asia Argento , also an actress and director.

Argento first wrote film reviews for daily newspapers. He wrote his first screenplay, together with Bernardo Bertolucci , for Sergio Leone's classic Spaghetti Western Spiel mir das Lied von Tod .

His first own work as a director fell into the field of Giallo. These include The Secret of the Black Gloves (L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo, 1970), The nine-tailed cat (Il gatto a nove code, 1971), Four flies on gray velvet (4 mosche di velluto grigio, 1971) and above all Rosso - Color of death (Profondo Rosso, 1975).

Famous works

In addition to his work on the Italian thriller, one of his better-known works is the horror film Suspiria (1977), which works in a modern setting with elements of Gothic horror , horror romance and witch's tale. For the intensive color design, Argento has used Technicolor material that has already become rare . Suspiria is conceived as the first part of a trilogy about three witch houses that control world fate at central points on earth. The second part of the series, Inferno , was published in 1980. The color and lighting of both films, which are designed to this end, are clearly inspired by the work of Mario Bava (especially his Bloody Silk ). The last part of the trilogy was published in 2007 under the title La terza madre .

Furthermore, Argento gained fame through his participation in the horror film Dawn Of The Dead by the American director George A. Romero from 1978, which was released in Germany under the title Zombie . Argento was a producer and script consultant . He also took care of the European cut of the film and, together with the band Goblin , the soundtrack for this version of the film released in Europe, which differs from Romero's American cut in that it is shorter and more action-packed than the original.

Other works

After Inferno , Argento got involved with psychological thrillers like Tenebre - The Cold Breath of Death (1982), Terror in the Opera (Opera / 1987), Aura (Trauma / 1993), Das Stendhal Syndrome (1996), Sleepless (2001) and The Card Player - Deadly Poker Games (2004) turned back to the Giallos subgenre. Exceptions are Phenomena (1985), who plays with aspects of the supernatural, and his version of Phantom of the Opera (1998). In 2005 he made Do you like Hitchcock? . This homage to the " Master of Suspense " was a production for Italian television. In 2005 and 2006, respectively, he contributed two 60-minute feature films titled Jenifer and Pelts to the American television series Masters of Horror .

Argento often works with the Italian band Goblin , whose characteristic progressive rock has a strong influence on Argento's films and contributes significantly to their mood. Argento is usually heavily involved in the process of creating music for his films.

Regarding the state censorship of his work, he stated in one case: “It was funny. Just for me, it was obviously not that funny. "

From August 3rd to 5th, 2012 Dario Argento and his composer Claudio Simonetti ("The Goblin") were guests at the 1st Cinestrange Film Festival in Dresden, where he was honored with a comprehensive retrospective of his films. There he received the Cinestrange Award for his life's work.

Stylistic features

Typical of Argento's work are above all formally extravagant stagings (which could appear dramaturgically and narratively unmotivated to a classical understanding of film ), a mostly incoherent plot design, which often gives his films a dream-like character, and the usually intoxicating staging of spectacular murders. In terms of motivation, psychosexual pathologies are often in the foreground, although their explanatory patterns do not go beyond vulgar psychological models. In general, it can be summarized that Argento's cinema does not depict any psychological or logical reality , but rather designs a film cosmos that obeys rules inherent in the genre or work and in it gives its director auteur quality.

Recurring content-related and formal characteristics of the director: A recurring content-related theme of the director already appears in his early work "The Secret of Black Gloves": The protagonist Sam Dalmas sees something only fleetingly and does not recognize the real core of what happened. When Sam Dalmas passes the Ranieri gallery, he sees the supposed attack on Monica on the gallery, the black figure seems to threaten the red-haired beauty with a knife, then a fight breaks out. Throughout the whole story, Sam thinks about the fact that he noticed something that he couldn't place at the time, namely that Monica wielded the knife and not the attacker, which he didn't remember for a long time because of the contradictions. In “Rosso - Color of Death”, Marc Daly, and with him the viewer, sees the killer in a mirror image for a few fractions of a second, as she hides from an eerie image full of ghost faces. In “Suspiria” Susy Banyon has just reached the Freiburg dance academy when Patricia escapes from it. Although she hears that Patricia knows the key to the witch's convent, the "blue lily", Susy has not known what to do with it for a long time. In “Tenebrae” Gianni has to watch the ax murder of Christiano Berti, but until shortly before his own death he cannot remember his confession to his murderer “I killed them all!”. Shortly after Gianni's selective amnesia resolves, the perpetrator strangles him. In “Aura”, Aura Petrescu means to have seen the hooded murderer with the two separated heads of their parents. In fact, the perpetrator used a skillful masquerade, and Aura only recognizes the deception at the end of the film. Another formal characteristic is the view of the victim through a (key) hole. In “The Secret of Black Gloves” the killer drills his way into Giulia's apartment and watches her through the hole. Giulia looks through the hole and tries to injure the attacker with scissors. In “Rosso - Color of Death”, Marcus finds the decayed corpse of Carlos' father behind a hole in the wall. In "Tenebrae" the murderer slits Tilde's T-shirt, which she is pulling over her head, so that you can see her horrified look through the hole in the fabric. In “Terror in the Opera”, Mira looks at the supposed police officer through a keyhole, in a shocking twist he shoots Mira through the eye through the keyhole. In “The Stendal Syndrome”, the murderer Alfredo shoots a girl through the cheeks in front of another female victim, you can see Asia Argento's horrified look through the two wounds. These scenes are also found in “Suspiria” or “Phenomena”.

Another formal fetish is Argento's preference to let the victim fall through a pane of glass or something similar: In “Rosso - Color of Death” the killer beats his victim Helga with a cleaver through a window glass. In "Suspiria" the hanged Patricia cracks through a skylight made of Tiffany glass . Sara in “Inferno” has a screen made of gauze in her apartment , through which the blood-soaked girl falls. In “Phenomena”, the director intended Argento's daughter Fiore to fall through a pane of glass into the Rhine Falls in Schaffhausen .

Another recurring theme from the director is murder as a deadly art. In "The Secret of Black Gloves" the protagonist is a writer, the setting for the first murder attempt is an art gallery, an oil painting is a key clue to the identity of the perpetrator and his motive. In the finale, Dalmas is squeezed in the gallery under a monstrous sculpture and harassed by the murderer. This constellation recurs again and again:

  • In “Rosso - Color of Death” the protagonist is a musician. The reflection of a painting the killer is hiding in front of is a key clue.
  • In "Suspiria" the main character is a ballet dancer. The settings are highly artificial: an Art Deco house with its MC Escher wallpapers in which Patricia and her friend die; the Gothic palace, in which the ballet school acts as a camouflage for a witches' convent; a mural is a key clue; In the finale, Susy uses the razor-sharp point of a peacock feather from a glass sculpture to defend herself against the witch.
  • In “Tenebrae” the protagonist is again a writer. The 12 murders are perfectly choreographed and stylized , e.g. E.g. when Jane splatters the blood like an action painting in her white kitchen after the ax attack . In the finale, the murderer is pierced by a metal sculpture.
  • "Horror Infernal" is almost an allegory of art: Mark is a music student, and we hear an excerpt from " Nabucco " in the Rome episode. The writing is represented by the fateful book about the three mothers and the Kazanian who deals in ancient books. When Rose dives into the witch's underground refuge , she sees a large oil painting of her mother there in a golden baroque frame. There are references to alchemy - sara is almost scalded with a witch's brew in Rome when she looks for the book - to Gothic art - Mater Tenebrarum resides in a dream made of Gothic tracery .
  • In “Terror in the Opera” the main character is an opera singer. The murderer's motive is the morbid love of art; The main setting is a baroque opera.

Filmography

Director

Screenwriter

literature

Web links

Commons : Dario Argento  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ guardian.co.uk
  2. ↑ David Kenny: An interview with Dario Argento. (No longer available online.) In: www.darkdreams.org. Archived from the original on February 25, 2009 ; Retrieved on March 21, 2009 (English): "It was funny, but obviously for me it was not so funny" Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.darkdreams.org
personal data
SURNAME Argento, Dario
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian film director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH September 7, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Rome