The Delirious Cinema: Their Later Films Vol. 4

Argento's colorful career in horror/thriller cinema began with the violent murder mystery The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, which ignited a wild fever for post-sixties (post-Bava) giallo films in Italy and made Dario Argento an international filmmaking star. Riding a hugely impressive creative high beginning with Deep Red (Profondo Rosso) and Suspiria (1975 & 1977) and continuing through Inferno, Tenebrae, Phenomena (Creepers), his work in the flashy and exciting giallo genre arguably peaked in 1987 with Opera (Terror at the Opera). Well, whether one believes Opera to have been Argento's creative peak or not, there is no denying that his lush style and over-the-top camera trickery was toned down in his subsequent films, Trauma and The Stendhal Syndrome. For me personally, I believe Argento's creative genius continued up until The Stendhal Syndrome (1996), it was this film that marked the last in Argento's reliable cinematic era, and following this, his films became more and more subdued and/or erratic, in the context of his overall giallo catalogue. Of course many fans maintain the point where his creative train was diverted to a diffident set of tracks was his work post-Opera, and fair enough, stylistically Opera is a force to be reckoned with.

Post-Stendhal Syndrome, though, we have a myriad of weird misfires and comebacks from the man once dubbed the “Italian Hitchcock”. Sleepless was primed to mark a creative comeback for Argento in the new millennium, Sleepless celebrated the style, the sexuality, and the bloodletting of Argento's best gialli from his glory years, and fans would hope for this success to continue, creatively speaking, as the prolific filmmaker continued to get his genre films produced in Italy. On fortunately, this was not to be the case, and to follow Argento's next series of gialli would be like riding a dizzying rollercoaster. From the appallingly pedestrian The Card Player to the successful Do You Like Hitchcock?, which was made for Italian television, it was getting harder and harder to get a grasp on the filmmaker's later body of work. While all three are no doubt giallo films, Sleepless, The Card Player, and Do You Like Hitchcock? couldn't be more stylistically apart from each other. And at this point in the director's career, Do You Like Hitchcock? (2005) would mark the end of the second chapter, artistically speaking, before he moved onto more television projects with Mick Garris' “Masters of Horror” series, where Argento would direct two stunning one-hour films, Jenifer and the gory Pelts, seemingly back to his old creative self once again. In fact, while returning filmmakers John Landis and John Carpenter were toning down their second entries in the “Masters of Horror” series, Argento was ramping his blood and thunder up. Argento's “Masters of Horror” episodes were segues into his third, and most dividing chapter in his cinematic works.

Dario Argento's latest films, Giallo, The Mother of Tears (The Third Mother), and Dracula 3D, have had most fans feeling luke-warm – far from his best works, his last three films aren't exactly terrible, but when compared to his films from the seventies and eighties, we start to wonder how much of his stylistic decline is the fault of the creator, and how much lies with the changing, and likely frustrating demands of Italian and international film and television expectations. Indeed Argento himself has spoken about the diminishing lack of style in his own films in relation to the anti-cinematic requests of the studios producing his films in the later years, beginning with The Card Player. One key thing about the latest of these films, Dracula 3D, is that it reunited the actress-daughter with the director-father, on the tip of Asia Argento's retirement from acting altogether. Prior to this, The Mother of Tears (which also starred Asia Argento) was actually a fast-paced, gory, and exciting apocalyptic supernatural horror tale, mixing the best of Argento's Inferno, Demons and The Church – until it wrapped up an a mind-boggling ridiculous turn... and the purposely-designed giallo vehicle titled, well, Giallo, was nowhere near as bad as the majority of fans and critics had made it out to be. As said, not his best work, but there are still many merits to Agento's final giallo film, including some fantastic art and production design and attractive performances by international actors Adrien Brody, Emmanuelle Seigner, and the lovely Elsa Pataky. If anything lets this films down it's Argento's cinematic portrayal of the antagonist – the killer seems like he'd be more at home in a William Lustig movie. Not exactly a coordinated opera of photographic style and blood & gore like the films from Argento's early-to-mid career, I would still highly recommend Do You Like Hitchcock?; meanwhile Giallo and Mother of Tears might not be as bad as some fickle audience members might have us believe – after all, weren't we far more forgiving as an audience, and as fans, to Argento's cinematic quirks and stylish blunders in the 70s and 80s?

--V.

(Sleepless)