After the lackluster reception of Inferno, the second entry in his supernaturally inclined Three Mothers trilogy, Dario Argento pivoted back to the giallo genre that he’d helped put on the world-cinema map with the release of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage back in 1970. Not content to merely “return to form,” and plagued by some personal demons of his own, Argento unleashed the supreme meta-giallo Tenebrae, an endlessly reflexive murder mystery about the solving of murder mysteries.
The notion that Tenebrae is primarily concerned with the conditions of its own making is signaled straight away. The first thing we see is a copy of a book also called Tenebrae. A voiceover narrator declaims a passage that describes murder as a liberating, creative act. What’s more, the scene introduces two of the most elemental bits of giallo iconography: the black gloves worn by the killer and a shiny cutthroat razor. All art, in the dreamily unreal world Argento fashions here, is decidedly dangerous.
This is further underscored when inveterate shoplifter Elsa Manni (Ania Peroni), who has just attempted to purloin a copy of the novel, is quite literally forced to eat its words before being murdered. The film’s first half then follows the efforts of Detectives Germani (Giuliano Gemma) and Altieri (Carola Stagnaro) to uncover the killer, who targets people associated with the book’s author, visiting American novelist Peter Neal (Anthony Franciosa).
In keeping with its metatextual nature, Argento’s film abounds with references to crime novelists. On the flight to Rome, we see Neal reading a copy of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mystery The Hound of the Baskervilles, and later on he advises Germani by quoting Doyle on the improbable versus the impossible solution to a crime. In an ironic reversal, Germani, who’s not particularly adept at guessing the murderer in mystery novels, figures out the culprit of Neal’s latest in the first 30 pages. It’s doubly ironic, then, that the identity of the killer he’s seeking for real remains unknown to him until it’s far too late.
The autobiographical aspect of Argento’s film crops up in several ways. The increasingly threatening letters left by the killer for Neal or his solicitous assistant, Anne (Daria Nicolodi), to discover refer to a series of phone calls Argento received from a deranged fan on one of his trips to Los Angeles. Charges of misogyny leveled against Neal’s work by his former protégé, journalist Tilde (Mirella D’Angelo), repeat claims frequently made about Argento himself.
Argento responds rather cheekily by having Tilde and her bisexual lover, Marion (Mirella Banti), dispatched in one of his most flagrantly bravura set pieces: In a single dizzying crane shot, the camera slowly crawls up one wall of the house, slides across a shingled rooftop, and scurries down another wall, only to reveal the killer gaining entry to the premises via bolt-cutters. The resultant razor work usually graces the film’s promotional artwork.
In Tenebrae, Argento cannily subverts a trope he’d employed to brilliant effect in both The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Deep Red: The protagonist is haunted by the idea that he’s seen something that will resolve the mystery but can’t quite put his finger on it. Here it’s young Gianni (Christian Borromeo), who witnessed something during the murder of the film’s initial killer, TV interviewer Cristiano Berti (John Steiner). Regrettably for Gianni, the revelation of his buried memory results not in the crime’s prompt solution, but in Gianni’s imminent demise.
Doubles and doubling provide the film’s underlying structure and one of its abiding themes. Characters mirror each other: Peter Neal and Cristiano Berto, Anne and Detective Altieri. Objects and events reverberate. The most remarkable example doubtless comprises the two artworks that decorate Neal’s hotel room and the hideaway retreat used by his estranged lover Jane McKerrow (Vernoica Lario). Both are metallic and perilously angular.
The first is the target of a seemingly unmotivated camera movement that pans back to it once the room’s occupants have departed so as to catch an ominous glint off its metallic edge. Not coincidentally, this marks the moment where the narrative’s onus of guilt shifts from Berti to Neal. The second artwork famously features in the film’s blood-soaked finale. But not before one more dazzling display of doubling: Detective Germi disappears from frame only to be replaced by Neal standing directly behind him. This uncanny effect has been often repeated, perhaps most memorably in Brian De Palma’s batty Raising Cain.
Tenebrae is Argento at his most assured and playful. However many times you’ve seen it, there are new details to notice, little grace notes to savor. Adding immensely to the film’s success is the stunning cinematography of Luciano Tovoli, who, in collaboration with Argento, determined on an unusual visual scheme that’s diametrically opposed to the deeply saturated colors and chiaroscuro shadow-sculpting of Suspiria, their previous collaboration.
Here scenes often feature flat, bland TV lighting to emphasize the theatricality of their blocking, or else they’re overwhelmed by harsh floods of light that leave no shadows for characters or viewers to hide in. There would be other giallo films, of course, imitators and late bloomers, remakes and “remixes,” but Tenebrae remains the apotheosis of the genre.
Image/Sound
The new 2160p UHD transfer of Tenebrae looks fantastic. The color palette is impressively rendered: The creamy whites of interiors, lush greens of foliage, and those all-important splashes (and occasional spouts) of red, all look vibrant and deeply saturated. Garishly lit nighttime scenes strongly register fine details and reveal some depth to the image. Audio is available in either Italian or English Master Audio 2.0, both of which clearly convey the dialogue, while ambient effects, and, most importantly, the ridiculously propulsive disco-rock score by three members of Goblin, really pack a discernible punch.
Extras
The folks at Synapse Films significantly up the ante on bonus materials for Tenebrae compared to their 2016 Blu-ray release. Carried over from that disc are a terrific commentary track from Maitland McDonagh, author of Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento, some odds and ends like trailers and alternate credits, and the feature-length documentary “Yellow Fever: The Rise and Fall of the Giallo,” an Argento-centric exploration of the genre that features a veritable who’s who of talking heads.
New to this release are two additional audio commentaries and a slew of on-camera interviews. The commentary track from Argento expert Thomas Rostock provides an exhaustive examination of the film’s themes and visual motifs, while the track from authors and critics Kim Newman and Alan Jones (who also wrote an excellent book on Argento) leans heavily on production anecdotes, so they constitute a perfectly complementary pair.
Highlights from the interviews include Argento going into the personal origins of the story, actor John Steiner discussing his lengthy career in Italian genre cinema, actress Daria Nicolodi revealing the source of that harrowing final scream, McDonagh offering further insights into the film, and composer Claudio Simonetti talking about the career of Goblin in the early 1980s. The featurette “Voices of the Unsane” includes further contributions from cinematographer Luciano Tovoli, assistant director Lamberto Bava, and actress Eva Robins.
Overall
Argento’s playful meta-giallo gets a sterling 4K restoration and a slew of excellent extras.
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On Synapse’s website, they say the blu-ray disc of the 4K set has “all the same content as Disc 1.” For that to be true, I’m hoping that means they didn’t just include the original blu-ray scan/transfer I already own. There were moments there I genuinely thought could be improved upon. (Though I thought the same with Criterion’s 4K scan of Altman’s The Player for blu-ray.)