Born in Rome in 1940 to legendary film producer Salvatore Argentno, Dario Argento is one of Italy's most famous and world-renowned filmmakers. As a director, he quickly achieved the rank of cult status, having been effectively brought up on the likes of Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock and the writing of Edgar Allen Poe and Thomas de Quincy. As with many post-war European directors, Argento began his career writing reviews for the Rome newspaper Paesa Sara before becoming a screen writer, penning the scripts for westerns like Une Corde un colt (Cemetery Without Crosses, 1969). It was his work on Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in The West that garnered him the attention of Gofredo Lombardo, the head of the Titanus Distribution company. Argento would then pen the screenplay for what would become his first film, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage(1970)
Although wrongfully categorized as a "horror" film, Crystal Plumage was the first of Argento's giallo films, a term that refers to the yellow dust covers that adorned the popular detective novels in which the films were inspired by, each one detailing the fate of average joes turned amateur detectives who find themselves compromised by their involvement in a crime and, as a result, are forced to go outside of the law to mount an unofficial investigation in order to prove their own innocence. It was here that Argento implemented his trademark themes and motifs that would forever define his distinct giallo style. Crystal Plumage would also mark the first film in his initial trilogy, commonly called the "animal trilogy." His following films, The Cat O' Nine Tales (1971) and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1972), were largely dismissed by Anglo-American critics, who felt that Argento's brand of detective fiction abandoned rational methods of deduction in favor of near-fantastical and cine-stylistic lead excess -- clearly, Argento had his own way of doing things. For instance, both films displayed the complex constructions of cinematic time and space normally associated with art cinema.
His next film, Deep Red (1975) was very much a transitional film in terms of development both as a director and in cinematic style. The film is relentlessly ambitious, with its onscreen splatter being framed by winding long takes, ambiguous point of view camerawork and radical splits between sound and image tracks -- easily his most technically sound film. While certainly a giallo, Deep Red also houses the supernatural elements that would encompass Argento's later films, which ended up being most famously pronounced in his sprawling masterpiece, Suspiria (1977).
Here, this preoccupation with discovering the identity of a brutal murderer is spliced into the theme of a coven of witches dominating a German dance academy. Although the film's supernatural setting signified a radical departure from his earlier giallo productions, Argento retained his favoured theme of ineffectual men who are dominated by aggressive women. In characteristic Argento style, the most cinematically charged sequence is the opening murder scene, which is saturated with primary colours and a near-hysterical soundtrack. Both of these features are so overpowering as to distract the viewer from the gory activities that the scene details. The unnerving force of the scene is once again testament to the director's ability to manipulate every aspect of cinematic technology in his quest to expand the boundaries of horror cinema. It also holds on of cinema's all-time greatest taglines: "The only thing more terrifying than the last 12 minutes of this film are the first 92"
Despite an admittedly uneven latter career, Argento remains not only one of the greatest horror directors ever, but one of cinemas most mesmerizing craftsmen. Most directors go through entire careers searching for their "voice", while there's no mistaking an Argento film -- the characteristic colors, camera work, and music of his trademark are altogether unmistakable. Few directors have ever, or will ever, grace the screen with as much style as him.
