Ah, the giallo. A subgenre so distinct it gets its own name. The origin is Italian, and the films are characterized by unsettling atmosphere, abrupt audio cuts, insane quick-zooms into random objects, and of course, lots of blood. There are three directors that can be referred to as something of a holy trinity of giallo: the Father, Mario Bava, the Son (Lucio Fulci), and he who must be the Holy Ghost, Dario Argento.
Tonight, I consumed Argento's most famous film, Suspiria, the story of an American ballet dancer coming to study abroad at a prestigious academy in Italy. Almost immediately, strange things start happening. I'd go on, but that's literally all the plot we get. The tip on Argento is that he "puts the 'gore' in 'gorgeous'", and boy does this film ever deliver. The start of this film is not the story (watch the trailer, it has nothing to do with the film whatsoever), but the luscious, dazzling visuals. The opening sequence alone is such a sensory explosion; it has so many striking color schemes clashing with each other and somehow working that set decorators and cinematographers could study it for an entire semester. Almost never is naturalistic light utilized, and every scene is bathed in a different synthetic, supernatural light that the film manages to provide almost nothing of substance and still be extremely disquieting.
Then suddenly a blind man is inexplicably murdered by his dog, and the film downshifts into a simultaneous combination infodump/slasher movie, as the mystery was made clear and the film started endlessly killing off cypherous side characters no one cared about. I was still interested in the film, but it was no longer the rapturous, offputting sensuality the film was pumping out by the gallon earlier on.
Italian horror is one of the few areas of the film universe where I am still sorely lacking, so I'm glad to have seen another, and Suspiria was a clear improvement over my first Argento, his underwhelming, diffusive debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. I've seen the handful of really big, famous, obvious ones now, but oddly enough, the best giallo I've seen BY FAR was the least heralded: Pupi Avati's marvelous The House with the Laughing Windows. So that's my hope for this review: If nothing else, I hope it intrigued you enough to see that excellent, underseen flick. Then, if you like that, maybe you can move on to Suspiria.
But get that one first.
{Grade: 8.25/10 (B+/B) / #10 (of 22) of 1977}
Tonight, I consumed Argento's most famous film, Suspiria, the story of an American ballet dancer coming to study abroad at a prestigious academy in Italy. Almost immediately, strange things start happening. I'd go on, but that's literally all the plot we get. The tip on Argento is that he "puts the 'gore' in 'gorgeous'", and boy does this film ever deliver. The start of this film is not the story (watch the trailer, it has nothing to do with the film whatsoever), but the luscious, dazzling visuals. The opening sequence alone is such a sensory explosion; it has so many striking color schemes clashing with each other and somehow working that set decorators and cinematographers could study it for an entire semester. Almost never is naturalistic light utilized, and every scene is bathed in a different synthetic, supernatural light that the film manages to provide almost nothing of substance and still be extremely disquieting.
Then suddenly a blind man is inexplicably murdered by his dog, and the film downshifts into a simultaneous combination infodump/slasher movie, as the mystery was made clear and the film started endlessly killing off cypherous side characters no one cared about. I was still interested in the film, but it was no longer the rapturous, offputting sensuality the film was pumping out by the gallon earlier on.
Italian horror is one of the few areas of the film universe where I am still sorely lacking, so I'm glad to have seen another, and Suspiria was a clear improvement over my first Argento, his underwhelming, diffusive debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. I've seen the handful of really big, famous, obvious ones now, but oddly enough, the best giallo I've seen BY FAR was the least heralded: Pupi Avati's marvelous The House with the Laughing Windows. So that's my hope for this review: If nothing else, I hope it intrigued you enough to see that excellent, underseen flick. Then, if you like that, maybe you can move on to Suspiria.
But get that one first.
{Grade: 8.25/10 (B+/B) / #10 (of 22) of 1977}