Dario had some cracking films in his season but also plopped out a major duffer. Let's see how he fared in The Battle of the Seasons. In reverse order: 10. The Luc Besson Season = 2 (Average rating for the entire season)
(The Mark Dacascos Season is placed above The Buddy Movie Season due to it having five films in it, compared to The Buddy's three.) Mid-table obscurity then for Dario. Shame really due to the quality of his three big hitters, Suspiria, Tenebrae and my new favourite, Deep Red. After the success of Doccortex's Luc Besson season, he's decided to have another crack at this most auspicious chart. Find out what he's gone for in the new year. evlkeith
Not wanting to show favouritism, especially after the frankly pathetic Luc Besson Season, I've decided to opt for a later effort by Dario Argento to complete his season of films. I hadn't seen this before, but I can't say that I had high hopes; I would have been happy with anything approaching average. Let's see whether The Card Player approaches that lofty target or will it skip away squealing like a rotund fellow in mountain man country.
Anyone following the career of Argento will have probably guessed that it's the latter. It barely feels like an Argento film. The bad dubbing and bad acting combined with highly dubious character motivations and dodgy dialogue are all in place as usual, although here they just give it an amateur feel rather than adding to the overall fun and enjoyment as in his earlier productions. But - and this is the important bit - they had atmosphere and style on their side (and even a bit of substance occasionally). This doesn't. The trademark Argento style is virtually invisible. The deaths in particular should be the pinnacle of stylishness. Nope. Nothing memorable.
The story actually sounds vaguely interesting at first glance. A serial killer kidnaps an unlucky passerby then plays a game of online poker against the police to decide the fate of his unwilling victim. If the police win the kidnappee goes free. If not, it's razor blade meets neck time. To make matters worse the police have to watch the murder on a webcam. Not too bad an idea is it? (The story, not the murdering of members of the public. That's plain anti-social.)
In practise, it's dire. Anyone who has played any poker will just be shouting and ranting at the screen during the card scenes. The game they play is so simplistic and short that it is pretty much entirely based on luck. Even the greatest poker players wouldn't be able to win more than fifty percent of their games. Yet the characters beat themselves up regularly over their lack of skill (or congratulate themselves on their prowess). It also suffers from the usual flaw of poker films: the quality of the hands they pull out of the bag. In a best of three hands situation, most will probably be won by a pair. Not here.
The music is by Claudio Simonetti. Ooh, you're thinking, that must bump the rating up a bit. No. It doesn't. The score just doesn't fit with the style of the film and feels like a separate entity. It's not even very pleasant in its own right. A big disappointment.
The only positive is the inclusion of Liam Cunningham as a disgraced cop. His performance here is nothing compared to the performance Poliakoff got out of him in Shooting the Past but he's easily the best thing about the film. When he's on screen The Card Player gets close to being watchable. He adds an actorly weight to the proceedings that no-one else comes close to.
So it's a down ending to The Dario Argento Season (think yourself lucky that it wasn't The Mother of Tears though) but let's not forget all the great films he's made. His final average score will be revealed soon, but for now this poor effort gets a lowly: 2/10 evlkeith If you like this you could also try: Rounders, The Cincinnati Kid.
The violence in Suspiria has to be seen in context. Imagine a young evlkeith, brought up on a diet of tame and/or butchered horror films, where 18 rated films would barely register as 15s now, and suddenly Suspiria drops into his lap. Within the first quarter of an hour, a brutal stabbing followed by a quick ride on a noose-ended rope was certainly enough to make me sit up and take notice. When I finally got to see the uncut version including the heart piercing, (round at a dodgy mates who had access to some highly specialist titles) Suspiria became one of my favourite horror films.
But time has passed and now it's the violence in Suspiria that seems tame. Surely there's more to this classic horror. The story perhaps? Nope. It's virtually non-existent. Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) wanders around a ballet school and discovers that someone entirely unpleasant runs it. That's about it, really. The big plot surprise is actually given away very early on by a whispered word on the soundtrack.
So it's not particularly violent and it hasn't got a story. Not much left is there. Apart from style and music. And this is where it shines. Literally shines.
The lighting produces such intensely saturated colours that it looks as though the television screen is about to burst under the strain. It really is glorious. The cinematographer, Luciano Tovoli (who also worked on Tenebrae) developed a style that suited Argento's desire to represent a fairy tale nightmarish vision. Supposedly a lot of mirrors and coloured gels were used to create the intensity of colours. The end sequence, awash with deep blacks and shining golds, is Tovoli's favourite part and it's easy to see why. Guillermo del Toro obviously loves it too. (Although Dario borrowed too from other directors, see if you can name the film and director this shot was a homage to.)
As with all Dario films, he loves to experiment with camera moves and new technology. In Suspiria he attached a camera to a wire and sent it zooming down towards an actor in the middle of a deserted square. It took a few attempts, due to camera smashage, but it looked pretty impressive when I first saw it. Nowadays, it's not quite so shiny. But there are plenty of other moments that are great even now; little things, like the shot of the sliding door mechanism as Suzy leaves the airport at the start. Dario's certainly a creative soul.
The production design also deserves a big mention in terms of the style of the film. I can't say that I'd ever want to go to ballet school - my hamstrings aren't that stretchy at the best of times - but I wouldn't want to set foot in this one. The wallpapers are so excessively busy and the colours so gaudy that gip projection would quickly ensue. But they perfectly suit Suspiria's lighting style and atmosphere.
The other major player in the atmosphere is the music. Written and performed by Goblin it has to be one of the finest and deliriously unsettling horror soundtracks. It also must be one of the loudest. If you set the volume of your audiovisual unit whilst listening to dialogue at an appropriate level to listen to, when the music kicked in your head would vibrate so hard, it would fall off.
There is one scene in the middle where the atmosphere dissipates and the exposition goes on and on, slowing everything down to a standstill. A film without a story really doesn't need exposition even if it is delivered by Udo Kier. The whole section could be cut and the film wouldn't suffer.
When I started this Dario Season, I was expecting Suspiria to still be my favourite, but I think that it's been usurped by both Deep Red, and to a lesser extent, Tenebrae. In a film that relies so heavily on its style and the atmosphere it creates, whether you love it, like it or hate it depends on the effect of that style. For me, I still like it, but it's power has diminished.
(As for talks of a remake, why bother? Even if Natalie Portman might be attached to the main role.) 8/10 evlkeith
Film three in our season of all things Argento is Tenebrae, a return to the giallo genre after his dalliance with the supernatural in Suspiria (review coming soon). When I had my first Dario obsession in the early nineties, I was more enamoured by his fantasy supernatural offerings. But now I tend to lean more toward his gialli.
Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa) is a popular crime writer whose most recent novel Tenebrae inspires a killer to go and do killings. Neal gets together a Scooby gang consisting of his assistant Anne (Daria Nicolodi) and plucky golf jumper wearing freak Gianni (Christian Borromeo) to help him solve the case. The police become involved when Neal begins to gets threatening letters from the killer. Black leather murdering gloves, a knife, a razor and an axe all feature prominently from there on in. Excellent.
At some point in the not too distant past, I had a minor rant about nobody being interested in finding out who the killer is in a giallo, and that the mystery is only there to provide some lovely murders. Which is fine by me. But here, the identity of the killer is pretty intriguing. There are some blatant red-herrings, but the possible list of candidates is high. Until they all get slaughtered. I don't want to spoil it if you haven't seen it, but there is a moment in the final third when something a little on the unbelievable side happens, and the old spidey-sense is definitely tingling. Although on watching the film a second time, the identity of the killer is fairly obvious due to some recurring themes and images, one of which is directly linked to the killer. It's cleverly done though and rewards repeat viewings.
Along with a nifty mystery there are some (obviously stylish) gruesome murders that build in intensity. The first half seems pretty tame by today's standards but things soon get going and the red stuff flows. Or sprays. Everywhere. There are a fair few iconic images in Tenebrae but surely the most well known is of a lady being slashed as the camera looks through a large hole in her shirt. Logic goes out of the window to enable this legendary shot. The lady in question is rather nervous - there is a killer on the loose after all - and she senses that someone is lurking about in her house. So she changes her top. If ever someone breaks into my house in the middle of the night and starts stalking me with a slashing razor, I'm going to try that tactic. It works on the basis that the murderer won't want to get blood on your freshly washed and ironed shirt. This may work if the killer was my mum, but apart from that...
Tenebrae has a look that you don't get now. The film stock used produces a rich feel to the colour, even when the colours are pale and muted. You may expect that the cinematography would involve lots of shadow and dark recesses, it is a giallo after all. But no. The electricity meter must have run out numerous times during the making of this. Even exterior night scenes are brightly lit. There is nowhere to hide. It all adds up to a gorgeous looking film.
North by Northwest may have sprung to mind, a thriller where the hero is chased in broad daylight. And this isn't the only link between that film and Tenebrae. Neal's agent, Bulmer (John Saxon) is waiting for a meeting out in a public square. The scene plays out, without dialogue, as Bulmer watches the people's lives around him. It is shot in a Hitchcock style: the character looks at something, we see that something, then we see the character's reaction to it. But in a twist on the cornfield scene from North by Northwest, people surround Bulmer. Eventually, he turns out to be just as alone as Roger Thornhill. A great scene.
Dario wrote this film to goad his critics who thought that if he can make these horrific films then he must be a sadistic misogynist murdering paedo. The character of Peter Neal could easily be substituted for Dario himself. Although initially Argento's great plan doesn't seem to have worked - the killer goes for attractive ladies after all - but as the plot develops, his dastardly plan is revealed. As a viewer, I'm not sure why I enjoy horror films, (something discussed in Karl Kaefer's Danse Macabre post) but it's something that I should ponder on. I just know that I'm not a murderer. And I doubt Dario is either.
Is Tenebrae as good as Deep Red then? Not quite. But that is down to personal taste. In Deep Red, I love the dark sequencesin the old house, where David Hemmings chips away at the plaster. The cinematography in Tenebrae actually works against it and comes across as cold. Which fits the tone but not my need for atmosphere. Still, it's a great film that improves like a fine wine. Or, if beer is your preferred beverage, a fine bottle of Timothy Taylor's. Now I've finished writing this lovely review, let me just go and shut the dungeon door before a passerby hears that scream. 8/10 evlkeith
Well, I waited and waited. And at no point during the whole running time did a pig flying a plane appear. I was severely disappointed and aggrieved. How I laughed when I realised that I'd been watching Profondo Rosso and not Porco Rosso. (Another similar, but true, story is that I thought Billy Elliott was a football film. I don't know where I got that from but I spent the whole film waiting for him to hang up his ballet shoes and put on some boots and shin pads. Stupid useless film.)
Enough of this larking around, let's get on to the film proper. I saw Deep Red about eighteen years ago in a freezing cold, grimy little house in Hull. It didn't really compare to my other Argento favourites at the time. So I haven't watched it since. Until now, for this special Dario Argento season. I must say that it's way better than I'd originally thought.
Marcus Daly (David Hemmings - looking suspiciously like Rik Mayall) is a pianist who witnesses a murder. He teams up with ace reporter Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi) to discover the identity of the mysterious killer who funnily enough has a liking for black leather murdering gloves and keeping his/her face hidden.
Yep, we're in giallo territory and all of the usual giallo trappings are present and correct: logic that makes less sense than the answers on 3-2-1, the aforementioned murdering gloves, a preposterous central conceit that leads to the final reveal of the killer, great music (by Goblin - their first collaboration with Dario), heightened sound effects and, of course, stylishly shot murders.
It's not the goriest of offerings but it contains the Dario staple of slamming a lady's head through a plate glass window, a woman getting her head par-boiled in a bath and an incident where a mantlepiece meets a poor fellow's teeth at great velocity. The effects are all quite pleasant but the blisters on the face of the scald victim are particularly realistic.
But strangely I don't enjoy it for the killings - although they do help - I like it for two other reasons. The first is the creepy tension filled atmosphere when Marcus enters an old house at night and starts chipping away at a wall to reveal a painting. This scene lasts ages but the score and the slow reveal of the image keep it thoroughly engaging. My other reason is the relationship between the two leads, who are both supremely watchable throughout. At many times Deep Red plays more like a romantic comedy than a thriller. For evidence, look at any of the scenes that contain the tiny Lupin style car. This light-hearted feel adds a different flavour to a film that is very dark on occasions.
Deep Red falls a little foul of Argento's technical giddyness. Just as Opera was marred by steadicam overuse, Deep Red suffers from macro abuse. A few shots are okay but he does tend to overdo it a tad. But this film also shows Dario taking in wider influences (possibly introduced to him by Daria Nicolodi). One scene includes a virtual recreation of Edward Hopper's 'Nighthawks', even down to the way that the characters all sit perfectly still.
One last reason to watch this film: if you've seen Don't Look Now, one scene will be permanently engraved on your brain due to its ability to make the viewer squirm and back away from the screen. Deep Red has a similar moment with a deeply disturbing clockwork child-sized doll.
Deep Red has definitely gone up in the Dario rankings. It will be interesting to see how Suspiria and Tenebrae fare against it. (Inferno was one of my previous favourites but in a bizarre twist of events the uncut version has spoilt it for me. I really don't want to see a cat eating a live mouse. I prefer the cut version for once.) 9/10 evlkeith
