Profondo Rosso

Young generations might find it hard to believe ,but most of Argento's works were greeted by poor receptions when they were first released.Critics dismissed them as gaudy ,flashy,showy,you name it.

And now we are in 2005 ,and thirty years after,with hindsight ,that most fruitful part of Agento's works which begins with "Ucello della piume di cristalli"(1967) and ends -roughly- with "opera" (1987)shows how the frequently demeaned director was ahead of his time.Argento's work is art-house film!If Mario Bava or John Carpenter are,he is too.

Influenced by the former (color,lighting effects,depth of field,baroque settings),he had a strong influence on the latter,particularly for his use of music,which may seem trite at first listening but literally grows on you and leaves you completely panting for breath.

There's really an Argentesque geometry,a non -Euclidean one,and few other directors ( Alfred Hitchcock , Roman Polanski ) know how to depict a place and make it threatening for his characters.Argento,who certainly read Gaston Leroux ("le fantôme de l'opera" ) when he was young,loves the opera houses(or theater)."profondo rosso" begins on a stage where some kind of medium (Macha Meril) sees horrible things.People who have read Hergé's adventures of Tintin will notice the similarities between this scene and those pages in "the seven crystal balls" where Tintin and Haddock are watching Mrs Yamilah in a music hall."Opera" 's first scene also would take place in a theater as if the director told us "it's only a movie,do not worry" before treating us to the delight of the best scene with birds since Hitchcock's eponymous movie.

The sense of space which Argento displays is mind-boggling: depth of field,high and low angle shots,impressive lighting effects.His characters become Tom Thumb lost in the huge forest:think of the ballerina ,running away through the corridors ("Suspiria" ),James Franciscus in the graveyard ("il gatto...) ,Tony Musante in the lighthouse (Ucello ...),or Irene Miracle in the basement (Inferno).Here it's a true anthology:almost every place is memorable,from the corridor where the drama is resolved to the house where bad things happened long ago ,from the isolated house in the country -where Argento uses condensation as only a Conan Doyle,a Gaston Leroux or an Ellery Queen could have done it- to the school where weird drawings might be the final clue.To top it all,there's a sensational scene in a corridor ,which recalls Orson Welles' "lady from Shanghai.A "they do it with mirrors" trick which is still very impressive today.

Not only Argento creates fear with his disturbing settings ,but he makes us also ill-at-ease with his supporting cast:the gay with the androgynous face,the little girl who seems to be out of Fellini's "Toby Dammit" (1968),and of course Clara Calamai who was famous in the fascist years (Visconti's "ossessione" from "the postman always rings twice").

What about the screenplay?Well,like all Argento's movies I mention ,it's far-fetched and derivative ("psycho" ,"Marnie" for the final flashback).But it's delightfully far-fetched and smartly derivative .When today's horror flicks screenplays consist of one page (maybe two)of clichés ,Argento's ones have always been painstaking and labyrinthine .

It is one of the best works in Argento's much debated but absorbing filmography.No horror movie buff can ignore him.

Italian cult director Dario Argento, master of arty gore, brings this eerie and stylish story plagued by depraved gore murders, it concerns about a composer(David Hemmings) who observes a chilling assassination of his neighbor, an Occultist-medium (Macha Meril). When he gets clues , the musician visits a woman and discovers that she has been cruelly killed , as well. The composer along with a reporter(Daria Nicolidi, wife to Argento and mother of Asia) start following the tracks on a strange mansion.Other key roles are his friend Carlo(Gabriele Lavia) and the psychic's assistant Doctor Giordini.

One of the best ¨Giallo¨with oneiric,effective esthetics packs lots of gore, guts and twists plots. This is a trademark terror work for the Horrormeister Argento with high tension quotient and equally high suspense by means of an ever-fluid camera that achieves colorful shots similarly to Giorgio De Chirico paintings. Noteworthy for intelligent edition work that tightens the mystery, glimmer use of color and distinctive utilization of shock images. Sometimes weak screenplay is added by nice but gory special effects by Carlo Rambaldi(ET).Screeching musical score by Goblin with stereophonic whispers combining to fortissimo soundtrack which help achieve incredible creepy moments.The terror pieces are well staged with eye-opening flair-play and contain obscure tracks to the denouement of the script.As trivia, Argento appears as murderer's hand. The motion picture is originally directed by Dario Argento, one of those film-makers(other examples are Mario Bava and Riccardo Freda ) who set off simple for frightening us to death. His period of biggest hits were the 70s when he directed the animals trilogy: ¨Four flies over gray velvet,The cat of nine tails, Bird with the crystal plumage¨, after he directed ¨Suspiria, Inferno, Tenebre¨ and of course ¨Deep red¨. This bloody fun plenty of graphic gore and weirdness may not be for all tastes but to be liked for Argento connoisseurs especially.

What's the big damn deal with this film? I've got five words about Dario Argento: Don't always believe the hype. I know I'm not the only horror fan that thinks Argento is a tad too overrated. It seems like the Argento films I enjoy are the ones that aren't so well received by everyone else. And the ones I hate, are the most well known and well loved. This movie is the strongest example of this. Deep Red is confusing, terribly hard to follow, and just plain boring. The pace crawls along l-i-k-e...t-h-i-s. Just like Suspiria, this movie starts with a bang and slowly dwindles away...along with your sanity. It's sad when I'm watching the DVD counter waiting for a film to end. I hated this movie. I think I'm going to start a scale based on how many fingers I would chop off just to never see this crap again. On the fingers scale, Deep Red gets a 7. That may sound harsh, but it's my honest opinion. But, my comments are to no avail because, just like I did, you will probably ignore the two negative comments and listen to everyone else and rent this movie.

A slaughtered psychic sets the scene, a vicious killer that can't be seen, but Marcus Daly's on the case, to unmask the villains face, it takes some time to follow clues, more red spills in shades and hues, an author takes an unplanned facial, it leaves her feeling far from glacial, a haunted house near derelict, it's still not easy to predict, help from Gianna and her small car, the end reminds of abattoirs.

Disgraceful lizard torture scene aside (appalling if we're honest), this takes you on a fine old ride, with doubts aplenty about whodunit, the slices, cleaves, slashes and head splits. As engaging today as it ever was (apart from the lizard, which was always wrong).

In the early 70s, Italian director Dario Argento took the world by surprise with the release of his first three movies, three excellent entries in the "Giallo" genre that had been growing in popularity across the 60s. In only two years, the success of "L' Uccello Dalle Piume Di Cristallo" ("The Bird with the Crystal Plumage"), "Il Gatto a Nove Code" ("The Cat o' Nine Tails") and "4 Mosche Di Velluto Grigio" ("Four Flies on Grey Velvet) turned Argento into the new rising star of horror, and his "animal trilogy" into classics of the Italian thriller. However, after this huge success he decided to move away from the Giallo for a while, and in order to explore something different, he made two TV dramas and a comedy named "Le Cinque Giornate" ("Five Days in Milan"). While this offered him the chance to try something new, it also allowed him to prepare his return to horror with what would be known as one of the best Giallo thrillers ever made: "Profondo Rosso", known in English as "Deep Red".

The film is the story of Marcus Daly (David Hemmings), a British piano player who is spending some time in Italy as a music teacher. One night after work, as he walks towards his apartment, he watches through the building's window and notices his neighbor Helga (Macha Méril) struggling with an unknown man. Helga, a psychic, gets brutally killed in front of Daly's eyes, who runs towards the apartment in a futile attempt to save her. After being interrogated by the police, Daly notices that he could have seen the killer's face among a group of portraits on the wall, but he can't truly figure out what's missing. This thought becomes an obsession and Daly decides to investigate the murder of the psychic with the help of reporter Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi), however, his obsession becomes dangerous as he becomes the killer's next target.

Written by Bernardino Zapponi and Dario Argento himself, the film's plot revolves around the solving of the mystery while putting special attention to Marcus' obsession with the missing clue he may have caught the night of the murder. While Argento is famous for preferring surrealism to logic when writing his screenplays, the story in "Profondo Rosso" is carefully constructed and takes advantage of every element of the Giallo genre to tell it's mystery. And mystery is the key of the film, as the secret of the killer's identity is exploited to the max in order to create wonderful set pieces of suspense and horror. The care taken to develop the characters is another of the things that make "Profondo Rosso" to stand out among similar films, a not only Daly's obsessions are explored, but his relation with Gianna becomes an interesting source of romance, some comedy, and lots of suspense.

By the time he directed "Profondo Rosso", Dario Argento was already a master of his craft with a defined style, and the whole look of the film demonstrates it. With his excellent visual composition and inventive use of the camera (with cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller), Argento shows that he knows how to build up suspense and tension in the audience; and together with the excellent make-up by Giuliano Laurenti and Giovanni Morosi, Argento creates some of the most amazing murder scenes ever put to film. Giallo films are famous for making an art of their murder scenes, and in "Profondo Rosso" Argento takes that idea to the next level. The effective score by Giorgio Gaslini and the band "Goblin" is the icing on the cake, as it completes the unnatural haunting atmosphere that the whole film has.

Leading the cast is David Hemmings as Marcus Daly, in what seems to be almost a reprisal of his role in Antonioni's 1966 film, "Blowup" (which was another of Argento's inspirations). Hemmings is excellent in his role, and effectively portrays Daly's own descent into darkness as he gets more involved with the killings. Argento's regular collaborator Daria Nicolodi stars as Gianna Brezzi (in her first work with Argento), an interesting role because the character demands her to downplay her beauty in favor of the awkwardness of the role. Nicolodi is charming, and very natural, making hard to not fall in love with her character, the typical wisecracking reporter of mystery films. The rest of the cast includes many interesting characters (everyone is a suspect here), and the supporting actors do a very good job. Gabriele Lavie is specially great as Carlo, making probably the most likable character of the film.

While definitely one of the best Giallo films ever made, "Profondo Rosso" is not exempt of flaws, at least in my humble opinion. The most noticeable I found was the fact that at times the plot kind of drags, wasting too much time in details that do not advance the plot. This makes the long runtime feel even longer than it should, and due to this some audiences may feel the film is boring. Fortunately, this doesn't happen too often and it's more a minor quibble than an actual flaw. Another detail that bothered me was the bad dubbing the film has, and I don't mean the English dubbing, the original Italian work of audio is really bad, and diminishes the value of many of the performances due to bad synchronization between audio and voice work.

As one of the modern masters of horror, Dario Argento's career is one of enormous value for horror fans, and among his many works, "Profondo Rosso" is an essential one. A remarkable work of style and technique, "Deep Red" is a movie that simply grabs you and doesn't let you go until it ends, making an excellent experience and a good companion piece to Argento's follow-up, the masterpiece "Suspiria". Without a doubt "Profondo Rosso" is one of the best murder-mystery films ever made. A true jewel. 9/10