At a glance
| Born | September 7, 1940, Rome |
| Known for | Deep Red, Suspiria, Tenebrae, Opera |
| Active | 1960s–present |
| Role | Director, screenwriter, producer |
Overview
Dario Argento is the Italian director who treated murder scenes as set pieces. Deep Red (1975) and Suspiria (1977) are the films the reputation rests on: a pianist hunting a killer, and a dance academy run by a witch. The color is part of the plot. Red is not a grading choice. Goblin, the band, scored several of the films, and the music is as identifiable as the lighting.
He started as a critic and a screenwriter. Once Upon a Time in the West lists him among the writers. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) was his first feature as director and the start of his giallo run. He is also the father of Asia Argento, who acts in several of his later films, and he worked with George A. Romero on Dawn of the Dead as a producer and editor of the European cut.
Career
The early gialli — Crystal Plumage, The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971), Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) — are murder mysteries with a witness who has seen something wrong. Deep Red is the one that still plays as a complete film: David Hemmings, a child’s drawing, and a killer whose identity is a structural trick. Suspiria dropped the mystery structure and became a supernatural film. Inferno (1980) and Mother of Tears (2007) are the other two parts of the Three Mothers trilogy. They are not equal to the first.
Tenebrae (1982) is a return to the knife and the flashlight. Opera (1987) puts pins under a woman’s eyelids so she has to watch. Those two are the late peak. Trauma (1993), The Stendhal Syndrome (1996), and The Card Player (2004) are the films after the peak. Dracula 3D (2012) was received as a mistake. He has kept working. Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018) is a separate film, not a shot-for-shot remake, and Argento was not the director.
His style is easy to imitate and hard to copy: primary colors, a killer’s gloves, a score that arrives before the cut. American slashers took the gloves and left the color. The Italian films that followed him in the 1980s took both and rarely matched the staging.
Notable credits
- The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) — director, writer
- Deep Red (1975) — director, writer
- Suspiria (1977) — director, co-writer
- Dawn of the Dead (1978) — producer on the international cut; editor of that version
- Tenebrae (1982) and Opera (1987) — director, writer
- Inferno (1980) — director, writer
Trivia
- Suspiria’s school was shot in a German studio and a closed dance academy. The exterior is the whale-house in Freiburg.
- Goblin’s Suspiria score uses a Greek-language whisper and a drum machine that was unusual for 1977.
- He co-wrote Once Upon a Time in the West with Bernardo Bertolucci for Sergio Leone.
- Asia Argento stars in several of his 1990s films. She has also spoken publicly against him. The family record is not a simple credit list.
- The European cut of Dawn of the Dead carries his name because he helped finance and reshape it for Italy.
- Deep Red’s Italian title is Profondo rosso.
Related on this site
Suspiria and Deep Red do not have pages here yet. The connection that does: