Dario Argento

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perkizitore
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Re: Dario Argento

#26 Post by perkizitore » Fri Nov 27, 2015 8:54 pm

Any reviews of the Australian The Bird with the Crystal Plumage blu-ray? I am hoping that it's almost a port of the OOP Blue Underground disc [-o<

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Adam X
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Re: Dario Argento

#27 Post by Adam X » Fri Nov 27, 2015 10:20 pm


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colinr0380
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Re: Dario Argento

#28 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Mar 06, 2016 5:03 pm

Watching the Arrow set of Deep Red I'm still struck by how interestingly strange and jagged the film is with the fractured editing and scenes beginning part way through or fading out in the middle (and it plays around as much in its soundtrack as with its editing, moving from distant to hyper-close up within scenes). Its very strangely constructed to disorientate and overwhelm the audience as much as the characters, perhaps most obviously in the final explanatory flashback reverie getting literally cut short by the murderer wielding their hatchet! And do many jazz bands practice in mausoleums in Italy? They're making enough noise there to wake the dead!

Also I particularly like the way that many of the extras in the scenes in the bar, or particularly in the walk that Carlo and Mark make from Ricci's apartment, are stood posed like (art deco) mannequins in order to create the sense of people in conversation or a street with pedestrians in it, more than the actual real thing! The posing of the extras along with the jazz seems to add to that almost late 20s-early 30s-style sense of jaded distance, or decadent ennui, too! It also helps that most of the extras are smoking or at least holding cigarettes as well, that keep smouldering and smoking even while their owners are oblivious and still as statues!

It was also interesting to see tiny elements that seemingly got expanded on in Argento's later films, for instance the introduction to the telepathy conference talking about insects having that kind of telepathic communication crops up again in a much bigger way in Phenomena. And I sort of like to think that the portable garotte/guillotine device in Trauma is a call back to the final death here

(Spoiler for Trauma)
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(particularly in the way that it is another killer mother getting her comeuppance! There's also a death by lift in Trauma too, with POV shot of the decapitated head as it falls down the lift shaft!)
The character that Daria Nicolodi plays feels to be one of the most vibrant feeling ones almost in any of Argento's films, one of the few who feels like they have their own independent life beyond the film rather than just existing to service the (spectacular) plot mechanics. I'm also not sure if there are any other giallos which take such an insistent diversion into screwball comedy odd couple banter betweeen our two leads! However I wonder if Nicolodi's character Gianna is a little too freewheeling and impetuous, driven too much by infatuation with the rather ineffectual male lead. After all she is spending quite a lot of time alone with Mark, who is looking more and more like the killer to everyone else as the story progresses, even taking his word that he just stumbled into a murder scene just after the crime was committed! And even to the extent of making plans to escape the country with him when it seems as if Mark has no ways left of proving his innocence (making me feel she is a little in the same vein as the character Anna Massey played in Hitchcock's Frenzy)! Perhaps it is inevitable that she ends up in great danger when she breaks into the school after dark with Mark! But in a way the presence of Gianna is what keeps the tone of Deep Red much more upbeat and hopeful in a way than it should, especially in a film otherwise defined by brutal murders! Just Gianna getting non-fatally stabbed at the climax feels more wrenching than any number of the previous murders.

I think that for as much as the film keeps raising psychiatric or psychotic killer-based reasonings for the killer's motives, and the Professor's pseudo-psychiatric musings on the killer's compulsion to kill are central to this, I get the impression that the film keeps suggesting this is too flowery an interpretation to put on things. After all the killer has spent decades 'out of the hospital' without murdering anyone until their dark secrets are uncovered and they have to start, brutally, covering their tracks! (Maybe the child's toys and playthings being used as totems become less about someone trapped in a compulsive cycle that they cannot escape, as they perhaps had escaped it at one point, and more about someone having to use these items in order to amp themselves up in order to commit the murders, as well as unnerving their victims) OK, so the murderer is rather dumb and at fault as much as anyone for stupidly going to a parapsychology conference about telepathy, which might have suggested that their secret would be uncovered, but I don't see them as blindly lashing out but more focused and targeted, but only on those people that Mark is about to unearth (people like the author who might have had the answers all along but otherwise were not killed until the investigation started in earnest). In a way Mark is perhaps as much responsible for killing the supporting characters by getting them involved when otherwise they would perhaps have remained safely ignorant!

(And that also fits in with the Carlo subplot, which keeps throwing up suggestions that he is tormented by his homosexuality or even mother issues, but really just seems to be about someone who is actually tormented by the idea that he is going to have to sacrifice himself to save his mother at some imminent point. The film leaves it unclear as to whether Carlo was an alcoholic long before the first scene we see him or whether this is a new thing, but it could also be that his mother has just told him that she is about to go up and murder Helga, and he can only respond by getting blind drunk and staying that way throughout the rest of the film. He's already talking fatalistically about death in that very first scene, and perhaps he knows that he hasn't got much of a future ahead of him in quite literal terms as the secret from his childhood is finally getting unearthed. And of course that fits in with his political comment - he's the proletariat who is going to suffer real consequences for the impulsive actions of the bourgeoisie!)

I also found it really interesting to note this time around the way that the mystery investigation branches out into a complete (and literal!) dead end for a couple of characters once Mark finds the book about the myth of the screaming child in the house. He tries to track down the author of the book who will have a concrete answer as to who owned the house and where it is, but that trail goes up in smoke, and indeed perhaps Mark is responsible for then getting the Professor killed by asking him to go to the author's house and investigate to see if she left any clues behind, which perhaps more than anything else is what causes the Professor to get targeted by the killer! And these last two murders occur completely unnecessarily in narrative terms (though their filmic existence is perhaps justified for their spectacular murder scenes of course!), as Mark has in the meantime found the house by other means (the type of plants growing in the picture of it from the book) and his own successfully conclusive narrative branch is proceeding from there.

I had never really thought about it before, but all of the structural seeds of the 'informational relay race' of Suspiria and 'tree trunk single investigation with branching dead ends springing off from it' of Inferno which we discussed a while back already seem to be there in Deep Red! Along with a general amusing suggestion that 'book learning' is never very good for your health!

Also I kind of love that the medium takes pains to describe herself not to be a magician or trickster in the opening conference scene, and then our heroine gleefully immediately talks of her being "some sort of magician" in the crime scene after her murder! Even the medium has lost control of how her life is being presented!

nolanoe
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Re: Dario Argento

#29 Post by nolanoe » Mon Mar 28, 2016 2:54 pm

Most certainly Argento's best yes.

It's funny you would say the last two killings only exist for the "film". I thought almost 99% of Tenebrae was done that way. :-k

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colinr0380
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Re: Dario Argento

#30 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Mar 28, 2016 4:13 pm

Its difficult to talk about that without major spoilers but Tenebrae's sort of a 50/50 split!
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Part of what makes it so good is that the actual psychotic with a particular axe to grind (or wield!) gets replaced by a copycat mid-way through, imperfectly continuing the work for different ends!

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Dario Argento

#31 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Mar 28, 2016 6:22 pm

I think Tenebrae plays a rather good trick on the audience using a common structure of giallo victims. What tends to happen is the first few victims are somewhat tangential to the story and chosen somewhat arbitrarily; but once the hero is drawn (or inserts himself) into the murderer's plot, the victims take on increasing personal significance to the hero and/or killer.
SpoilerShow
That precise structure happens in Tenebrae, but we are lead by the expectations implanted in us by the genre to miss the crucial significance of this switch to increasingly significant victims: that we're watching a new killer with different motives. Tenebrae uses our complacency as genre viewers against us.

nolanoe
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Re: Dario Argento

#32 Post by nolanoe » Sun Dec 11, 2016 11:40 am

OK, so... what is happening with that Suspiria Blu-Ray that was supposed to happen last Halloween?

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Adam X
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Re: Dario Argento

#33 Post by Adam X » Sun Dec 11, 2016 9:07 pm

Do you mean the Synapse edition? That's not been promised for any specific date as of yet. It's still being worked on for a potential 2017 release.

black&huge
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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#34 Post by black&huge » Mon Jun 04, 2018 12:03 pm

I never thought Argento's was the masterpiece everyone thinks it is especially compared to his other films from 75-85 and I even appreciate Inferno a lot more these days but this looks amazing.

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#35 Post by beamish14 » Mon Jun 04, 2018 12:23 pm

black&huge wrote:
Mon Jun 04, 2018 12:03 pm
I never thought Argento's was the masterpiece everyone thinks it is
Same here. Nice production design and performances, but it never really grabbed me or "worked" on a visceral level.

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tenia
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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#36 Post by tenia » Mon Jun 04, 2018 12:30 pm

Putting Inferno, Tenebrea and Phenomena atop of Suspiria would probably be against the current current, but I'll only speak for myself and write that Suspiria, to me, is the last truly good Argento movie. While I probably can find Opera OK, I found most of his other later films mediocre at best and probably otherwise laughable. I saw Tenebrae in theaters a few years ago and the whole room spent the whole screening laughing at the movie. It could be understandable given how outrageously theatrical and grotesque the movie is, but it definitely felt that this over-the-top aspect was counter-productive and that the whole room really was laughing at the movie, not with it. I've learnt to appreciate it for this reason since, however, but I'd have a hard time finding it good in a first degree manner.
I hated Inferno, which I found absolutely a drag.
Almost the same for Phenomena, though it fared a bit better.

But I'm amongst those who prefer his earlier movies (especially The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) so I might be apart in my views on these movies.
beamish14 wrote:
Mon Jun 04, 2018 12:23 pm
it never really grabbed me or "worked" on a visceral level.
I always found it beautifully haunting and I also kinda like these twisted fairy tales - like movies, so I guess I probably was enclined in making it work for me, but otherwise, it certainly can be hard to be fascinated by it.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#37 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Jun 04, 2018 2:19 pm

I had the good fortune to see the recent Suspiria restoration in theatres and it did nothing but reaffirm my enchantment with it. Tenia's feelings are my own: it's a haunting, beautiful kind of fairy tale made out of an excess of creative energy. There is something discombobulating about the effect of casting adults in roles logically meant for children. This is one of the few Italian horrors where I buy the claims that the illogic coming from the wonky screenwriting actually lends the film the atmosphere of a nightmare.

I guess my Argento tastes are pretty conventional: the period from Deep Red to Opera is uniformly excellent. Everything after runs from boring to unwatchable (I haven't even seen his last two). I'm not fond of his earlier films, except The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, which is the rare example of a filmmaker appearing fully formed. There are some astonishing moments in that one. As an artist, Argento expanded rather than developed.

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#38 Post by Lost Highway » Mon Jun 04, 2018 2:38 pm

That‘s pretty much exactly how I feel about Suspiria and the rest of Argento‘s films. I like Inferno almost as much as Suspiria, if anything it feels even more dreamlike. Deep Red is probably his best film and though its look is more muted, it is almost as beautiful as Suspiria.

What’s really odd is how visually drab many of Argento‘s films look after Opera. Sleepless has a few flashes of the old magic and Mother of Tears is so hilariously trashy, it’s almost like the Showgirls of Italian horror but that’s about it.

I haven’t seen Suspiria on the big screen since the 80s but the Synapse BD is among my most treasured titles.
bainbridgezu wrote:
Mon Jun 04, 2018 9:31 am
First teaser trailer. No dialogue or spoilers for those seeking to avoid them. Really digging the look of the film, which could have only failed by imitating the original. Easy to see what Guadagnino meant when he said the visual elements leaned heavily into Fassbinder. Can't wait to hear more of the score. Obviously different from Goblin, which would again have been foolish to imitate. What they've shown here leaves me with a lot to be optimistic about. I say that as someone who considers Suspiria one of the great cinematic experiences and A Bigger Splash one of the best films of the last decade (at least).
I’ve just noticed that Guadadagnino also cast Ingrid Caven who was part of Fassbinder‘s repertory company and his first wife. Pretty amazing cast apart from the leads. Angela Wnkler, one of the stars of the New German Cinema, Renée Soutendijk who was the black widow at the centre of Verhoaven‘s The Fourth Man, Sylvie Testud and of course Jessica Harper. All of them Witches, no doubt.

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Re: Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

#39 Post by Morbii » Mon Jun 04, 2018 3:08 pm

For me, Sleepless was the only one truly worth checking out after Opera, and I quite liked that one. I do want to revisit Stendhal Syndrome though.

I think his worst one is probably Phantom of the Opera, but Dracula 3D was also pretty much unwatchable (I kept it on my kevyip for a few years before I had the balls to even bother).

I still buy his work, if only to offer support due to his wonderful heyday, but I suppose part of me is still optimistic that there might be something redeemable that might come out of him again...

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Big Ben
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Re: Dario Argento

#40 Post by Big Ben » Mon Jan 21, 2019 3:00 pm


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colinr0380
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Re: Dario Argento

#41 Post by colinr0380 » Mon Jan 21, 2019 3:17 pm

Much as I love Argento, I think he is risking people bringing up Mother of Tears in response!

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Adam X
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Re: Dario Argento

#42 Post by Adam X » Mon Jan 21, 2019 5:12 pm

Don’t mention the war.

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Big Ben
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Re: Dario Argento

#43 Post by Big Ben » Mon Mar 11, 2019 8:59 pm

Dario Argento’s Next Project is “A Film Divided into Eight Episodes”.

“We’re working with my screenwriters, but there’s still a little time left,” he added. “We have two or three titles and then we decide. The protagonist will be a woman. Because the company that co-produces it is American… we will shoot it in English.”

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Re: Dario Argento

#44 Post by black&huge » Mon Mar 11, 2019 10:04 pm

I guess all those people who crowdfunded The Sandman got 100% swindled.

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Big Ben
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Re: Dario Argento

#45 Post by Big Ben » Tue Mar 12, 2019 12:18 am

black&huge wrote:
Mon Mar 11, 2019 10:04 pm
I guess all those people who crowdfunded The Sandman got 100% swindled.
I was under the impression that Argento and Iggy Pop were ready to go but the producers just sort of...didn't go forward with anything. So yes? I guess?

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Big Ben
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Re: Dario Argento

#46 Post by Big Ben » Sat Oct 12, 2019 1:22 pm

Dario Argento moving forward with series Longinus.
A brief statement from BIM and Publispei said that Argento will lead viewers inside his “obscure and terrifying” imagination. “Longinus,” described as an “auteur series for the international market,” will be “suspended between the real and the supernatural” and will be set “between the French Alps of Grenoble and the Siena of the Palio.”

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Re: Dario Argento

#47 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue May 31, 2022 11:30 am

“Beware of Dario Argento: A 20-Film Retrospective” to run at Lincoln Center from June 17-29, featuring new restorations, the US premiere of Dark Glasses, and Argento himself for Q&A’s

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dwk
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Re: Dario Argento

#48 Post by dwk » Tue May 31, 2022 12:51 pm

Since this thread got bumped I wanted to mention that Alan Jones tweeted that he shot interviews for US UHD releases of 5 Argento titles that are going to be announced in August.

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Re: Dario Argento

#49 Post by black&huge » Tue May 31, 2022 1:17 pm

Hopefully one of them is Dracula 3D

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mrb404
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Re: Dario Argento

#50 Post by mrb404 » Tue May 31, 2022 6:36 pm

black&huge wrote:
Tue May 31, 2022 1:17 pm
Hopefully one of them is Dracula 3D
Apparently not as it's not part of the 17 new restorations listed in the film retrospective at the Lincoln Center program.

9 of these 4K restorations have not yet been released on home video:
  • Four Flies on Grey Velvet
  • Opera
  • Trauma
  • The Stendhal Syndrome
  • The Phantom of the Opera
  • Sleepless
  • The Card Player
  • Do You Like Hitchcock?
  • Mother of Tears
So my guess is the releases Alan Jones mentioned are 5 of these 9.

Also, not sure what are the mentioned World or US "Premiere of New Restorations" for:
  • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (World Premiere)
  • The Cat o'Nine Tails (World Premiere)
  • Deep Red (World Premiere)
  • Suspiria (US Premiere)
  • Phenomena (World Premiere)
  • The Black Cat / Two Evil Eyes (World Premiere)
These can't be different restorations that the ones that have been just released on UHD by Arrow, Synapse and Blue Underground... or are they?

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