Dario ARGENTO
(b. 1940) is a director, producer, screenwriter and
critic. If you read briefly about the history of
Italian cinema, you know that it has been
influential and important. Everyone in the world
knows something about Italian films and most people
can name at least a couple of famous Italian movie
stars. If you read about it too quickly,
however, you may come away with the impression that
Italian films went from the serious and weighty
(though sometimes funny) intellectualism of Neorealism
to a lighter weight kind of film as an antidote to
the misery of WW2. In a way, there is a lot of truth
in that; indeed, some of the same neorealist
directors changed their style when the tide of
history changed. For example, Vittorio De Sica, who
directed perhaps the most depressing film ever made,
Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) (1948)
15 years later came up with Ieri, oggi, domani (usually
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow in English) a
hilarious "anthology" comedy in three parts, all
starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni,
paired in each segment, but as different characters.
Fair enough. But that may be a bit too facile. If
you need a diversion from the agonies of a lost war,
there are films that fit in nicely in the work of
Dario Argento. His influential work in the
horror genre during the 1970s and 1980s,
particularly in the kind known as the giallo,*
made him the "Master of the Thrill" and the "Master
of Horror". His films as
director include the "Animal Trilogy", consisting of
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), The
Cat o' Nine Tails
(1971) and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971);
the "Three Mothers" trilogy, consisting of Suspiria
(1977), Inferno (1980) and The Mother of Tears (2007);
and the standalone films Deep Red (1975), Tenebrae
(1982), Phenomena (1985), and
Opera (1987). He also
co-wrote the screenplay for Sergio Leone's Once
Upon a Time in the West (1968) and was George
A. Romero's script consultant
on Dawn of the Dead (1978).
Giallo (Italian
pronunciation: [ˈdʒallo]; plural gialli) is the
Italian term designating mystery fiction and
thrillers. The word giallo is
Italian for yellow. The term derives from a series
of cheap paperback mystery and crime thriller novels
with yellow covers that were popular in Italy.
In the context of 20th-century literature and film,
especially among English speakers and non-Italians
in general, giallo refers
specifically to a particular Italian thriller-horror
genre that has mystery or detective elements and
often contains slasher, crime fiction,
psychological thriller, psychological horror,
sexploitation, and, less frequently, supernatural
horror elements.
I desist from further critical comment
because I have never watched a whole film by Dario
Argento. I don't like them. I don't like zombie films,
the living dead, guys with nails in their skulls
running around and all of that nonsense. I am
thoroughly unqualified to talk to you
about the merits of such films. I pass. I can only say
that Argento has been highlighted in various
retrospectives by intellectuals with lots of letters
after their names. He used to have some serious
zombie-cred, but in general his reputation since the
the 1980s has declined. No comment.