Die Halunken

Dario Argento wanted to do something different after completing the Animal trilogy. He wanted to do a film that got away from the confines of the giallo and was for the Italian viewer only. Dario decided for this kind of film to be a period piece called Le Cinque Giornate/Five Days in Milan(1973). Dario's work on the excellent Once Upon a Time in the West(1969) played a big part in the making of the movie.

Five Days in Milan(1973) shares many traits with a Sergio Leone film known as A Fistful of Dynamite(1972). The story takes place during the Italian Revolution of 1848. It tried to copy the style of The Wild Bunch(1969) without the same results of success. The story by Dario Argento is not as good as some of the stories for his best Giallos.

The acting is average and the acting of the lead actor is not very good. The director did this film because of a feeling that the Giallo had run its course and was done. Argento tried to do a remake of Frankenstein before embarking to do another Giallo that would be better then the three previous ones of Bird With The Crystal Plumage(1969), Cat O'Nine Tails(1970), and 4 Flies on Grey Velvet(1972). Five Days of Milan(1973) is an unique film by Dario Argento that is for Dario Argento fans only.

I have been aware of this film for many, many years now. Yet I always used to forget it existed when I thought of Dario Argento's filmography. I guess he is such an auteur that it seemed really bizarre that he would direct a historical comedy. Having said that, he did seem to have a penchant for including comedy into most of his gialli and horror films. But with the odd exceptions such as the comic interplay between David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi in Deep Red, I have to say that his attempts at humour always seemed really clunky. So for this reason, I never really made any attempt to seek The Five Days of Milan out. As it turned out, a fellow IMDb user kindly sorted me out a copy of the film and I was finally able to check it out for myself.

During the final days of the Italian revolution a thief escapes from jail in the chaos. He hooks up with a baker and they travel the streets of Milan together witnessing the historic events. Unfortunately, the idealism of the revolution quickly turns to hypocrisy, rape and murder.

As it turned out this was Argento's only film to move away from the giallo/horror genres. It wasn't successful seemingly but it isn't necessarily difficult to understand why. It has a wildly varying tone that veers from slapstick to brutal rape. This must've been quite disconcerting for many at the time. The comedy isn't particularly funny to be perfectly honest; although this didn't really surprise me too much given my experience with Argento's other films. But the more sober and serious material is quite effectively handled at times. And the film does seem to have pretty decent production values and does look pretty good as well. Argento's stylistic approach is massively reduced to fit the period film aesthetics, which is a shame in some ways but probably sensible overall. It's a movie that has very Italian specific subject matter and was no doubt only ever conceived of serving the domestic market, so from a non-Italian's point-of-view it doesn't fully make a connection at times. Nevertheless, I have to say that it was a movie that I found more rewarding and interesting than I ever thought I would.

It's admirable to see Dario Argento direct something this unexpected at this early stage in his career, as this is a historical dramedy, and though it can be violent, it's far from a traditional horror movie. I was on board with it for the first few scenes, kind of liking the odd tone and the unique way it was handling a story within a recounting of events that, to some extent, actually happened...

...But it gets less engaging as it goes along, and its two-hour runtime felt a good deal longer to me. It makes it probably for the best that Argento returned to the horror genre and kept at it, developing his signature style further and then arguably peaking in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

This is a strange and somewhat interesting detour within his filmography, but I wish it had been either a bit less repetitive or a good deal shorter, because it's very one-note for something that runs as long as it does. And not that two hours is always long for a movie, of course - it's just here, you feel that two hours more than in many other films of a comparable length.