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DEEP
RED
7/10
(Profondo
Rosso) : Italy 1975 : Dario Argento : 85-120m
Deep
Red marks a crucial transition in Argento’s career: a move away from
conventional ‘giallo’ mystery-thrillers into more a more experimental
mix of art film and splatterfest horror. While the results are often messy,
not just in terms of onscreen bloodshed, this is the most fascinating
kind of failure, a necessary stepping-stone to his masterpiece, Suspiria.
Waving
farewell to giallo, Argento pushes the genre to its limits, piling
up spectacular murder sequences around a confusing tale of madness, violence
and revenge. Marc (David Hemmings), a jazz pianist and composer, witnesses
the murder of Helga (Macha Meril), a psychic who’d previously detected
the presence of a ‘twisted mind’ during a public display of paranormal
powers. Though Marc can’t recall seeing the assailant’s face, he knows
he saw something vital - vital enough to attract the attention
of the police, shapely journalist Gianna (Daria Nicolodi), and the killer.
In
Deep Red, everything is taken to extremes - to the edge of parody.
Viewers of the two-hour version may be surprised by the amount of comedy
sprinkled among the shock-filled suspense - there can be few non-spoof
thrillers with so much broad humour. Argento never tires of gags involving
Gianna’s wonky old car - its defective passenger-seat drops Hemmings down
almost to the floor. Everything involving Gianna is played for laughs,
right from her absurdly perky entrance, flouncing into the crime-scene
at Helga’s flat with a cheap flash-camera.
But
there’s a point behind everything Argento does: the car-seat slapstick
ties in with the serious theme of weak masculinity cowed by dominant women
– Marc, who regards the case as ‘a challenge to [his] memory’, turns out
as useless an ‘investigator’ as Hemmings’ Thomas back in Antonioni’s Blow
Up.
Nevertheless,
many viewers will find Deep Red suffering from wild tonal shifts
between laughs and shudders. It’s hard to laugh when we’ve just watched
a man’s head bashed in on the corners of a desk, or a woman scalded to
death by being dunked in a red-hot bath (as another critic
rather mildly put it, “pretty harsh.”)
Argento
doesn’t need to strain for comic effects - he’s amusing enough when he’s
being ostensibly ‘serious.’ The script is dotted with his trademark deadpan
absurdities: at the paranormal display, a professor notes telepathy is
common among “butterflies, termites, zebras…” Zebras?! Much of
Deep Red operates on this nonsensical plane. Argento and his co-scriptwriter
Bernardino Zapponi have cited the old chestnut about attempting to replicate
the disorienting craziness of nightmare - with most directors, this is
a weak, catch-all defence. But Argento justifies it with the breathtaking
audacity of his outrageous ingenuities.
During
one tense killer-stalking-prey sequence, a door flies open and in strides
a child-sized, cackling robotic dummy: this gadget makes no rational sense,
and adds nothing to the plot, but it isn’t half disturbing – not to mention
entertaining. When Deep Red is good, as here, it’s great: Argento
does some staggering things with the camera, including hyper-real closeups
of bizarre knick-knacks in the killer’s lair.
But
when it’s bad, it can be murder. Even worse than the unwelcome comic relief,
Argento’s pacing deserts him around the middle, allowing one’s mind to
drift and pick apart what is, beneath all the virtuouso visuals, a pretty
basic plot. As Gianna remarks during a moment of crisis, “All this… for
a lousy story.”
It’s
always best to give Argento the benefit of the doubt, however, and he
does know exactly what he’s doing. The film opens with Marc interrupting
a rehearsal and asking the musicians to be “Less formal… it should be
more… trashy.” As Deep Red oscillates between extremes, it’s understandable
that the rough edges occasionally get out of hand. The eclectic score
music is generally superb, a radical departure from familiar usual horror-movie
music - the way it’s deployed when Marc and Gianna wordlessly explore
a spooky old school is nothing short of brilliant. But the improvisations
veer self-indulgently haywire when Marc visits a ‘haunted house,’ the
soundtrack erupting into incongruous, woozy electronica.
There’s
much that doesn’t work in Deep Red and it can be, on first viewing,
difficult to sit through – for several reasons. But stick with it: the
climax is simply sensational, much better seen than described. There’s
a long, conspicuously music-free tracking shot, then a cut to a final
freeze frame. This reviewer defies anyone watching on video (or DVD) to
resist immediately rewinding and marvel at the sequence a second time.
Critics and aspiring directors will be in danger of wearing out the tape.
The preceding two hours’ unevenness is swept away by a stunning display
of cinematic bravado. Only a genius could do it – only, in fact, Dario
Argento.
24th
July, 2001
(seen on DVD, Jul-22-01)
by Neil Young
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