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Dario Argento’s Dreams

Dario Argento’s films are like stained glass windows ready to shatter and slice the unsuspecting spectator.

Suspiria

Dario Argento’s films are like stained glass windows ready to shatter and slice the unsuspecting spectator. He’s known for letting characters squirm within the confines of his fragile mise-en-scène. His violence is quick, intoxicating, and unbearably beautiful. He’s Mario Bava’s runaway acolyte, cut from the same giallo, quintessentially Italian mold, and though he’s been likened to Godard and Fassbinder, Hitchcock and Polanski are more apt points of comparison (his compositions are as spare as they are ornate, and the spells they cast are truly disquieting). But where Bava’s libertine horror chambers were loosely and skittishly scared by the director’s fetishistic lashings, Argento’s gialli are considerably more mannered. His mysteries are psychological puzzles oft-sprayed with grotesque neon blood.

Argento was born four days before Brian De Palma on September 11, 1940. Both are relentless fetishists although it’s difficult to imagine De Palma’s glorious and fiendish magpie cinema existing without Argento’s own. Body Double, Dressed to Kill, and Raising Cain probably wouldn’t exist without Argento’s Tenebre, but while De Palma’s clout continues to grow among cinephiles, Argento remains a shamelessly underground figure. His horror extravaganzas are far from postmodern, doubly damned by their dubbing woes, and so he remains elusive. The maestro has touched some and been humbly spoofed by others (few, though, would be able to spot the shout-outs): Takeshi Miike, John Woo, David Fincher, Luigi Cozzi, Michele Soavi, Wes Craven, Cindy Sherman, Sam Raimi, Lamberto Bava, and so on.

With the exception of 2009’s Giallo and 1973’s The Five Days in Milan, a comic peculiarity in Argento’s career, all of his films have been reviewed on Slant Magazine. Fans can read though with ease. Those new to Argento, though, should proceed with caution, because half the fun of an Argento puzzle is assembling its gloriously colorful pieces.

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1970s

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Cat O’ Nine Tails
Four Flies on Grey Velvet
Deep Red
Suspiria


1980s

Inferno
Tenebre
Phenomena
Opera

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1990s

The Black Cat
Trauma
The Stendhal Syndrome
The Phantom of the Opera


2000s

Sleepless
The Card Player
Jenifer
Do You Like Hitchcock?
Pelts


2010s

Mother of Tears
Dracula 3D

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2020s

Dark Glasses

Ed Gonzalez

Ed Gonzalez is the co-founder of Slant Magazine. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle, his writing has appeared in The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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