Title: Art of Darkness - The Cinema of Dario Argento
Author/Artist: Ed Chris Gallant
Publisher: FAB Press
Media: Book
Reviewer: James Marriott
In a recent interview, Alejandro Jodorowsky revealed that he’d been approached by producer Claudio Argento with a view to making the film that became Santa Sangre. The producer had told Jodorowsky that he wanted to make something different from the Dario Argento films he’d been producing, which featured little more than women being slaughtered in a series of stylish set pieces. And kind of film what, asked Jodorowsky, did the producer want him to make? One in which women were slaughtered in stylish set pieces.
Santa Sangre’s a long way from an Argento film, but Jodorowsky’s sniffy comments are unjustifiably reductive. Sure, Argento’s films feature women being slaughtered in stylish set pieces, but there’s a lot more going on. And even if there wasn’t, the set pieces are so jaw-droppingly inventive that they’d be worth the price of admission alone. For gratuitous, misogynistic violence against women watch a Brian de Palma slasher; for bold, innovative violence against women you’re better off with Argento. And if you don’t fancy seeing any violence against women at all you probably won’t like his films, or indeed this book, full as it is of stills of luxuriously coiffed women in various forms of distress. But gender politics in Argento’s films are never straightforward enough for the misogynist label to stick well, despite the bloodshed, as various of the (all male!) critics in this book are ready to point out.
This isn’t the first critical study of Argento’s films; Maitland McDonagh’s Broken Mirrors, Broken Minds came out in 1991 and stands along with Carol Glover’s Men, Women and Chainsaws as one of the most insightful treatises on modern horror cinema ever written, a long way from the gore celebrations of mid-80s fanzines which first drew my attention to Argento. In fanzine terms, this book is far closer to Eyeball than to Deep Red, academic without being too heavy-going, and willing to put the boot in when it’s deserved, as with the execrable Two Evil Eyes.
It contains a number of fascinating general essays on Argento’s themes by editor Chris Gallant and analyses of each individual film from a range of critics, including Eyeball editor Stephen Thrower and Kim Newman. The different writers make for a welcome mix of styles, although Mitch Davis’s account of Inferno sits uneasily among the other essays, perhaps lacking the meat that makes the book as a whole indispensable.
As well as the essays it contains full reference details (filmography etc), information on video/DVD releases and what must be easily the most impressive collection of Argento stills around, lurid stills, artwork and admats galore. Every FAB Press book I’ve seen has been beautifully presented and this is no exception.
Argento’s representation in the UK has come a long way from the days when I used to buy pirate tapes from a gentleman in Manchester who was equally ready to sing the praises of Cannibal Ferox as Tenebrae. Pristine copies of uncut Argento films - if not all of them - are now readily available on DVD and London’s NFT had a major retrospective to tie in with the release of The Stendhal Syndrome in 1996. With the director’s well-liked recent return to the giallo genre with Sleepless, this book is a timely and lavish reminder of the director’s unique skills.
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