"There is a fascination surrounding murder and I try to use my fantasy to explore it"
- Dario Argento
Horror movies have many influencers and filmmaker Dario Argento is surely one of them. Introducing Italian giallo slasher films to a worldwide audience as well as his own unique style of horror has been met with both critical praise and a legion of fans.
In his latest interview by filmmaker and folk horror maven, Adam Scovill, Argento discusses his work and its place in horror film history.
DARIO ARGENTO INTERVIEW
By Adam Scovell | 17th May 2023 | BBC.com
The Italian filmmaker has been a horror legend since the 1970s. As a major retrospective of his work takes place in London, he talks to Adam Scovell about his nightmarish visions of murder.
Hands adorned with black leather gloves wield a vicious looking knife towards an unsuspecting victim. The killer's eyes can't be seen as they're wearing sunglasses indoors. The knife is soon to create bloody carnage; a vision straight from a surreal nightmare.
This heady, visceral scenario perfectly typifies the world of noted Italian director Dario Argento, and reoccurs in many of his terrifying classic films.
Beginning his long and celebrated career as director in the 1970s, Argento took Italian horror cinema to new heights, while successfully exporting it to a growing international audience. In particular, Argento popularised the style and content of the Giallo genre; a rich Italian blend of crime thriller and horror film, often stalked by gloved killers hell bent on the goriest of violence. Also featuring a puzzle box mentality to narrative, Argento's cinema is at once atmospheric, mysterious and enigmatic: Italy never looked so strange or Gothic.
From his debut thriller, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), to his celebrated supernatural masterpiece Suspiria (1977), and most recently 2022's Dark Glasses, Argento has showed horror and crime to have the same potential on screen as the most avant-garde and high-minded of subjects. Whether focusing on leather-clad killers, conspiring witches, psychic insects or creepy dolls, Argento has been adept at milking the visual potential from any type of situation. In Argento's hands, such unusual genre tropes became something more than illicit thrills or dark pleasures, but unique artistic evocations that few directors in the field have matched since.
This May sees a vast retrospective of Argento's work screening at the British Film Institute in the season Dario Argento: Doors into Darkness, with the premiere of seventeen new restorations of his classic films undertaken by the Italian studio Cinecittà. BBC Culture sat down with the director himself to discuss his long and influential career.
BBC Culture: You are known firstly for your relationship to Giallo cinema. How would you describe Giallo and your role in it?
Dario Argento: Italian Giallo cinema sits somewhere between horror and thriller. There were other directors who created it [Mario Bava in particular], but I had my own style and take on it, starting with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. I simply gave the genre my own signature.
BBCC: You have mentioned Alfred Hitchcock in previous interviews; someone who is clearly a key influence on both you and the Gialli. What is your relationship to Hitchcock?
DA: I am passionate about Hitchcock. I think he is one of the greatest directors in history, especially for his way of storytelling. For example in Psycho [1960], the script is not that new. But the way Hitchcock shot the movie made it genius, along with the music of Bernard Herrmann, of course. What was really incredible was the way he intensely shot every single scene. There was an immense rhythm to it, and that was brand new. It produced exceptional results.
BBCC: Murder is a key part of your films and the Giallo. What is it about murder that draws you to it as a subject?
DA: I don't know what attracts me to murder. What I do know is that I try to tell the stories surrounding them in a fascinating way. There is an aspect of fascination surrounding murder and I try to use my fantasy to explore it and make it appealing on screen in a way.
BBCC: With so many films of yours being restored for the retrospective, is there one that you feel distils your creative vision the most?
DA: When I was in New York in June, there was a season there at the Lincoln Center. Cinecittà have presented the new restorations in New York, Paris [at La Cinémathèque française] and now here in London. But, in New York, there was a professor from Columbia University who came in and said that I shot more Giallos than John Ford shot Westerns! I don't think this is true but I shot a lot of Giallo, so there is not one particular movie that I can choose out of them all. I feel attached to all of them.
BBCC: Let's go back to the beginning with your debut The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. The film famously played for several years straight in Milan. Why do you think it was so popular?
DA: I think it was because it was the first time psychology and psychoanalysis was put into a Giallo movie, and that went beyond the normal Giallo movies at the time. Most of them didn't have many layers. I added a psychological depth to it. It is probably the reason why it was so popular and also why it was so imitated by other directors afterwards.
I was very influenced by American movies from the 1950s and 60s in that regard, in particular those produced by Val Lewton. He used to produce very low-budget movies. The distribution companies used to screen them as B-movies or second movies in double bills. But Lewton allowed directors like Jacques Tourneur, Mark Robson, and Robert Wise to make low-budget films with incredible, psychological stories.
BBCC: The score for The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was by the famed Ennio Morricone. You are known for your detailed relationship to film music, in particular with the experimental rock group Goblin [who scored Suspiria and a number of others], as well as taking a role in it yourself. How is working with a singular composer and a band different?
DA: It's totally different. With Morricone, he had to create a symphony for long scenes and long shots to create an atmosphere. A band like Goblin has the freedom to go crazy, really crazy in fact. The score that the band creates for a single scene has to be instantly explosive so the relationship to composition is different.
BBCC: With your thriller Deep Red [1975], there entered into your cinema a more supernatural element, as opposed to the straighter murder-led thrillers and Giallo films. Do you distinguish your straighter Giallo from your more supernatural films such as Suspiria and Phenomena [1985]?
DA: I don't make such a distinction myself as my inspiration does not come from my mind but my soul. I am never able to predict which films will have more supernatural elements than thriller elements, or vice-versa.
BBCC: Architecture is important in your films. How do you choose your buildings and locations?
DA: Sometimes I have cities in mind that could fit into my films, so I drive around them looking for buildings. Sometimes I already know buildings that could work well in particular places, too. I really like to drive around and search for the right atmosphere until I know the city and its buildings well enough to decide.
BBCC: Suspiria, your tale of witches haunting a German dance school, is arguably your most famous film. It's also one of the most visually striking films ever made. How did you achieve its stark array of colours?
DA: That required a long study for me and cinematographer Luciano Tovoli. We wanted to have the same colours of those early Western movies shot in Technicolor. So colourisation and finding a colour palette was the first thing we decided together; inspired by the colours of the red sunsets, the blue uniforms etc. in those early Westerns. We also watched the colours of early Disney animations like Cinderella [1950]. That was so we could get the colours just right.
BBCC: After Suspiria and Inferno [1980], you returned to the classic Giallo form with thriller Tenebrae [1982]. What was it about the 1980s that you felt made it right to revisit the genre?
DA: Times were definitely different. The feel of the 1980s required me to change the colours of my movies as well. For example, Tenebrae had the same cinematographer as Suspiria, but the latter had bright, flamboyant colours and contrasts. For Tenebrae I wanted almost a black and white feel, so we focussed on the beige, greys, whites as I felt the 1980s were colder.
BBCC: And finally, with all of the restored films being screened as part of the season, which film would you like most people to go and see on the big screen if choosing one, and why?
DA: It's difficult! But maybe Opera [1987]. It's an explosion of invention, many ideas and sensations and feelings all at once. It was a very hard job for me. I took many elements into Opera and I really think that film is the one that absolutely needs to be seen on the big screen.