Suspiria (Synapse, Blu-ray) The Cat O’ Nine Tails (Arrow, Blu-ray+DVD Combo) Deep Red (Arrow, Blu-ray) Opera (Scorpion, Blu-ray) The Church (Scorpion, Blu-ray)
Dario Argento was the master choreographer of the distinctly Italian art of horror known as giallo, was a baroque, often sadistic kind of slasher movie that favors intricately-designed murder sequences and aesthetic beauty over logic. Call him the pop-art fabulist of the slasher movie set. Combining Hitchcockian camerawork, lush, over-saturated colors, rollercoaster-like thrills, and at times surreal situations, Argento could overcome the sadism and misogyny in his gallery of sliced and diced beauties with the sheer cinematic bravura and beauty of the sequences. In his best films Argento delivered murder as spectacle with razor-sharp execution and turned horror cinema into a dream-like spectacle with a dash of sexual perversity. Which may be why his films have a cult following but little popular interest in the U.S., where audiences are more interested in literal explanations.
Synapse Films
Suspiria (Italy, 1977) was his only American hit, a stylish, surreal, downright puzzling piece of seventies Grand Guignol weirdness. Jessica Harper is an American ballet student in a creepy European dance academy run by Joan Bennett and Alida Valli, who seem to preside over a series of bizarre murders as well. The story has something to do with witchcraft and a coven that has made its home in the sinister school, but then plot was never Argento’s strength. Suspiria’s fame comes from operatic set pieces of lovingly choreographed violence—one young woman dropped through a stained glass ceiling until a rope around her neck breaks her fall (among other things), another swimming through a room filled (for no explicable reason) with razor wire (the first Saw borrowed this idea)—and Argento’s dreamy cinematography and vivid, full blooded imagery. He never really made sense, but in an era filled with masked brutes hacking up kids and co-eds, Argento brought a grace to the vicious business of murder and a dream logic to terror. Watch for Udo Kier in a supporting role.
[Originally published in The Weekly (Seattle), December 14, 1977]
It’s getting harder and harder for a movie to just happen anymore. I’m not talking about the ways movies get made (although, to be sure, that’s become an extremely messy business), but the ways movies and audiences get together. In the absence of a vast public that simply “goes to the movies,” film-selling has become a matter of creating Events—Events that may or may not live up to the induced expectations but which in any, er, event have an uphill fight to stay alive and spontaneous. Close Encounters of the Third Kind is having a harder time than most. It’s a $20 million film that a lot of people are anxious to recover their money on. It’s a film in a genre, sci-fi, variously blessed and burdened with an enthusiastic/rabid following whose specialized requirements for satisfaction do not necessarily have much to do with a film’s being good as a film. It’s a film in a genre, moreover, that has recently given the cinema its Number One Box-Office Champ, Star Wars, and hence become newly embattled among critics and commentators who deplore the preeminence of “mindless,” two-dimensional, feel-good flicks on the top-grossing charts.
Writers and critics have likened the experience of watching movies to dreaming with your eyes open for almost as long as moving images have been projected in front of audiences in dark rooms. But in reality the dreams that movies show are more like the stories we tell ourselves or the fantasies we imagine in our waking lives. When filmmakers attempt to actually recreate the nocturnal odysseys churned up from anxieties and obsessions and the residual thoughts and images scattered through our unconscious minds, they are more like expressionist theater pieces or symbol-laden action paintings. Think of Spellbound, with its Dali-designed sets and loaded Freudian symbolism representing the unprocessed issues of our troubled hero. These films satisfy our idea of “dream” or “nightmare” but don’t actually capture the experience or texture of those twilight journeys which seem to make sense in the moment as they slip from one idea to another but confound us as we try to piece them together when we awaken. If movies are dreams, they have been tamed and rewritten to fit the demands of narrative storytelling.
That’s one reason why I love David Lynch’s waking nightmare Eraserhead and Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s haunted-house fantasia House (a.k.a. Hausu). They recreate dream logic in ways that almost no other films do. Is it coincidence that both films first saw the light of a theater screen in 1977? Creative serendipity or primeval synchronicity? Lynch might appreciate the idea of some sort of Jungian breakthrough in such different cultures. They are, after all, the feature debuts of two filmmakers who learned to express themselves cinematically in the world of experimental film. The similarities end there, however. Each of these films spins its own unique dream in its own crazily weird way.
[Originally published in Movietone News 57, February 1978]
A spacecraft angles into frame from above our heads in “Star Wars”
• Archetypal cinema: the opening of Star Wars. The foreword plunges us, in media res, into the serial of our moviegoing lives. Then the camera drops its field of view, a planet heaves into sight to lend scale to the universe, and a spacecraft angles into frame from above our heads. A breath-long pause, and the screen is invaded, engulfed, and enlarged by the pursuit ship of Lord Darth Vader….
• Kings of the Road: in the depth of a rainy night, on an island in the Rhine, Bruno (Rüdiger Vogler) pries up the doorstep of his childhood home and sorts through the treasures of his youth….
• The friendly closeness, clarity, and availability to event of the sky above Barry Guiler’s prairie home—CloseEncounters of the Third Kind…
• “Oh, God!”: Diane Keaton’s introduction as Annie Hall, and her hilariously horny litany while seducing her seducer, Looking for Mr. Goodbar…
• Aguirre, the Wrath of God: a warhorse, in full livery, left behind on the Amazon shore: as the camera draws inexorably away with the conquistadors’ raft, the animal is lost to view-the first and last of its species to inhabit this strange land….
• The passionate integrity of Jane Fonda’s performance in Julia: you can tell that, standing in the kitchen slicing onions, she’s thinking about The Play….
• “Verdi is dead!”—1900…
• Cross of Iron: the slowmotion image and sound of an ammo clip being ejected, after the dawn skirmish with the Russian patrol …
• Scowling and bucking through sheets of rain, the “face” of the rumbling truck like the visage of an Indian god—Sorcerer…
• A dialogue that never occurred: in Welles’ F for Fake, Elmyr de Houry and Clifford Irving uneasily accuse each other and excuse themselves in a hilarious montage of swallows, grunts, and sidelong glances….
• “There are no midgets in the United States Air Force!” General Dell (Burt Lancaster) defends his careerist pride against the imagined innuendo of his convict accomplice (Paul Winfield)—Twilight’s Last Gleaming…
• Slap Shot: The gung-ho exuberance of the Hanson brothers is too much for poor Allan Nicholls, who, leaving the lockerroom, turns to another team veteran with a beautifully pained “Fuckin’ embarrassing!” …
• Aguirre, the Wrath of God: gun flashes across the river punctuate the Amazon night; the morning will disclose that the men on the whirlpool-trapped raft have made the only possible escape from the circle….
• The first apparition of fabled Uncle Ottavio (Werner Bruhns), 1900, as the shadow of a ship moving above the young Alfredo’s bed…
The Hawaiian-shirted Jimmy Doyle (Robert DeNiro) pauses to watch a sailor and a girl jitterbugging silently under the EI—NewYork, New York….
• Porque te vas?”: the girls making up, dressing in adult clothes, and rehearsing the comedies of grownups—Cria!…
• The Cardinal (Paul Henreid) unwrapping himself from his carapace—Exorcist II: The Heretic…
• Bob Balaban goes on translating for François Truffaut even though the latter has shifted into earnest English—Close Encounters of the Third Kind….
• Pardon Mon Affaire—Horseman Jean Rochefort retains his poise as his mount swims him past a fisherman on the park lake….
• Nino Manfredi’s first sight of Stefania Sandrelli, etherealized by the steam from a cauldron of pasta—We All Loved Each Other So Much…
• Bond, the Pyramids, the Sphinx, and Jaws: The Spy Who Loved Me…
• Twenty years of love and rage erupt in a lowdown ladies’ brawl—TheTurningPoint….
• “Does the Pope shit in the woods?”—an unanswerable riposte by Lily Tomlin, The Late Show…
• A Bridge Too Far: Edward Fox’s exhortation to the troops, rightly likened (by Jack Kroll) to Henry V at Agincourt—a moment of authentic passion and complexity in a film otherwise lacking much of either…
• A man denies that the poisoned arrow in his leg is a poisoned arrow in his leg—Aguirre, the Wrath of God…
• Richard Dreyfuss’s excited garbling of “Aurora Borealis”—Close Encounters of the
Third Kind…
• The two suns of Tattooine—StarWars…
• Julia: Vanessa Redgrave’s great horse-y excitement, bearing down on us through the arches of Oxford…
• Terry’s (Diane Keaton’s) giddy “I don’t believe it!” after her first pickup has left—Looking for Mr. Goodbar…
• Dersu Uzala: Dersu makes repairs of a forest lean-to while the childlike blond soldiers pop their heads out through holes in the bark and chronicler Arseniev sits making notes at screen right—one of many whole-time-and-space events in Kurosawa’s intimate epic….
• 1900: a Twenties interlude (with Robert DeNiro, Dominique Sanda, Werner Bruhns) that captures more sense of the period than all of Russell’s Valentino…
• Kings of the Road: Bruno lounges in the cab of his van and watches this car just roar down the road and leap straight into the river …
• The Marquise of O…: The ebullient Count (Bruno Ganz) departs, the Marquise (Edith Clever) flicks a spray of holy water in his wake, and her brother reaches up to dab a drop from his eye….
• The terrified grin of Captain Stransky (Maximilian Schell) each time a nearby shell blast interrupts his reminiscences of the French Occupation—CrossofIron…
• Any time John Travolta hits the dancefloor in Saturday Night Fever…
• Headlight, then “headlights” in the rear window of Roy Neary’s truck—Close Encounters of the Third Kind…
• The descent from the mountain—Aguirre, the Wrath of God…
• Nino Manfredi and Stefano Satta Flores find the tearful photos of Stefania Sandrelli in the picture-taking booth—WeAll Loved Each Other So Much…
• George C. Scott to his youngest son after the big fish has got away: “God only knows how much I love you!”—Islandsin the Stream…
• Sorcerer: Scanlon (Roy Scheider) walks away—but only temporarily—from an image of his destiny: a column of water rises from a snapped-off hydrant as the wounded gangster staggers down a New Jersey alley….
• L ‘affaire Picasso—F for Fake…
• A pan across time and identity, Cria!: Ana the child (Ana Torrent) seeks out her mother’s “poison” as Ana the adult (“mother” Geraldine Chaplin) reflects on the event….
• Ragged claws scuttling across the kitchen floor of memory: Woody Allen, the lobsters, and Annie Hall…
• Racing the sun—DersuUzala…
• Roberts Blossoms’ superb “I saw Bigfoot once”: no hope for further indulgence by the military, even if he did probably see Bigfoot once—Close Encounters of the Third Kind…
• Maggots in your comb—Suspiria…
• Jet plane as locust—Exorcist II: The Heretic…
• Diahne Abbott doing “Honeysuckle Rose” in New York, New York…
• The operatic crane over peasants, soldiers, and the aristo duckhunters in the fog—1900…
• Kathleen Quinlan’s feisty joy at feeling pain—I Never Promised You a Rose Garden…
• Slap Shot: Reggie (Paul Newman), leather-suited and cool as shit, strutting it for the widow woman who owns the hockey team…
• Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness) convinces the Imperial Guard that “these aren’t the people you’re looking for”—StarWars…
• Dersu Uzala: The song of birds has told Dersu (Maxim Munzuk) that the rain is about to stop. He leads the Russians out of their shelter and out of the frame. A moment later, a rainbow marks their passing….
• One on One: Smalltown kid Robbie Benson moving rapt in the monumental gym of Western University; the mechanized bankboards tilting down to salute him…
• The teary reunion of parents and daughter, The Marquise of O…
• Ana “killing” her sisters while playing hide-and-seek—Cria!…
• Tom’s (George Scott’s) awareness-a feeling at the back of his neck-that his oldest son has been killed—Islands in the Stream …
• Twilight’s Last Gleaming: the near-hysterical intensity of the kidding between the President (Charles Durning) and his military aide (Gerald O’Loughlin), during which they manage to prepare each other for the eventuality that the President could be going out to get killed …
• A marriage proposal under the wheels of a taxi cab-New York, New York…
• Woody’s teachers revisited—Annie Hall…
• A ship in the treetops–Aguirre, the Wrath of God…
• After the world-rending chaos of a tank battle, Steyner’s platoon bursts into the lush green silence of an unspoiled field—CrossofIron…
• The split-second cut away from the collapsing bridge the instant Sorcerer‘s tires catch solid ground…
• The swing across the” gorge”—StarWars…
• The Tiger of the New Year leaps—DersuUzala…
• A reunion far from “Naked Girls and Machine Guns,” TheLateShow: Harry Regan’s (Howard Duff’s) last smile for Ira Wells (Art Carney) is full of blood; Ira curses him, but finds himself conceding “You were real good company”…
• A red cherry in an untouched drink in the middle of Jimmy Doyle’s reel-long first come-on to Francine Evans (Liza Minnelli)—New York, New York…
• Saturday Night Fever: Tony Manero (John Travolta), knowing he has lost one point too many by not being impressed at the name “Laurence Olivier,” suddenly remembers “Oh, yeah! Oh, he’s good!”…
• Terry’s glee in stripping off James’ (William Atherton’s) condom—Looking for Mr. Goodbar…
• Julia: Dash (Jason Robards) comes down the beach to tell Lilly “It’s the best play anybody’s written in years,” but she has to know: “Are you sure?”…
• The dancing in the trees—1900…
• A head that goes on counting after it has been severed—Aguirre, the Wrath of God…
• Annie Hall getting shed of all those books with “death” in the title: “That’s a load off my back!”…
• A comrade’s passionate kiss that shocks the raving soldier back to his senses—CrossofIron…
• NewYork, New York: the hospital parting: Jimmy must weep into Francine’s bed sheet because he can’t spoil his only handkerchief….
• Sorcerer: Bruno Cremer’s life changes utterly at the moment when, walking away from his partner’s car, he hears the strange musical pop that means the man has committed suicide and left him in the lurch….
• The late Vittorio DeSica resurrected via film festival footage and cut in among the living players of We All Loved Each Other So Much…
• The old couple (John Cromwell, Ruth Nelson) making love in Millie’s bed as Millie (Shelley Duvall) peeps through the door—3Women…
• Images from Dersu Uzala: men boating in the branches of a tree; snow flowing like a river; walking on a lake of fire…
• The luminous reactions of Barry Guiler (Cary Guffey) to the offscreen extraterrestrials who have come exploring in his kitchen—CloseEncounters of the Third Kind…
• Pardon Mon Affaire: Jean Rochefort inadvertently brings his mistress-to-be (Anny Duperey) face to face with his wife (Danièle Delorme). Pal Claude Brasseur saves the day by showing up to reclaim his “date.”…
• Does your deodorant enhance your potency? Filming the Mitchum commercial with Shake Tiller (Kris Kristofferson) in Semi-Tough…
• The girls’ cumulative storymaking—a narrative principle for Julia…
• The rebels’ attack fleet takes off, StarWars: the juxtaposition of jungle, sentinel, and the trajectory of the cruisers locks into a brilliant expression of the primal thrill of adventure storytelling…
• The ending of Exorcist II: The Heretic a lot of people didn’t see: a thrilling Albert Whitlock pan that moves us from the mythic vision of a ravaged civilization to the strobe-flashed chaos of a contemporary street where only one person “understands”…
• Aguirre as King of El Dorado, on a raft swarming with spider monkeys…
• 1900: the axis of the world established between the two patriarchs, peasant (Sterling Hayden) and landlord (Burt Lancaster), as they toast the births of their grandsons…
• Welles’ reminiscences in a park, F for Fake: a man for all seasons…
• Lilly’s last meeting with Julia: Julia’s goodnatured direction of the scene; Lilly’s face when she hears the name of Julia’s daughter…
• The paths of Bruno and Robert (Hanns Zischler) intersecting a last time, Kings of the Road: Bruno in his van sees “Kamikaze” on the train, but preserves the other’s fiction that they cannot see each other….
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Roy (Richard Dreyfuss) fell asleep in darkness and silence. Now he is awakened in an auspicious yellow glow, and the TV murmurs offscreen. Have They come again? Looking around, he sees that night has merely performed the small miracle of becoming day, and his daughter is watching the Saturday morning cartoons. “Are you gonna be mad?” she asks. No, he isn’t. But he’s a little disappointed….
A spacecraft angles into frame from above our heads in “Star Wars”