BIOGRAPHY – Dario Argento

Published on: 24th September, 2009

BIOGRAPHY - Dario Argento  | read this item

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Dario Argento was always destined for show business. His father, Salvatore Argento, had become a key figure in the industry throughout the 1950’s, being instrumental in the international success of many Italian films through his public relations role at Unitalia, a government-funded body that helped bring attention to the country’s movie industry. After gaining experience working under Dino De Laurentiis, Argento moved into production on various Italian films in the ’60’s. His wife, Elda Luxardo, was a member of the famous Studio Luxardo that had been founded by her father, Alfredo, upon returning home from Brazil in 1928, where his three children were born. Dario Argento grew up on the various film sets that Salvatore would be working on, as well as constantly visiting his mother’s studio. Falling sick at a young age, Dario spent a large part of his childhood in bed and so often took books from his father’s library to keep himself entertained. Becoming engrossed in the likes of Shakespeare and Edgar Allen Poe, he would become obsessed with death and the occult, something which would appear in his later work. Whilst at Catholic school in Rome, Dario began writing for a fanzine, which would fuel his artistic talents, and when he graduated he immediately started work for Paese Sera, a daily newspaper that sold around forty to fifty thousand copies a day, though the age restriction of twenty-one forced the young hopeful to have to lie to get his foot in the door.

During his time at the paper, he interviewed a filmmaker who would help give him his first big break, Sergio Leone. Having already scored international success with the Clint Eastwood spaghetti western ‘Dollars‘ trilogy, Leone had become a highly respected artist and this proved to be a major chance for Argento, who would spend the next six months crafting a treatment together with Bernardo Bertolucci. When their story for C’era una volta il West (Once Upon a Time in the West) had finally been submitted, Dario was disappointed to only be paid a mere $800 for all his hard work, though he appreciated what an opportunity it was to work on such a project. Bertolucci approached Argento with a story by Fredric Brown called The Screaming Mimi that he urged the young writer to read. Despite changing the main plot points, Argento kept the essence of the book and began develop a thirty-page treatment whilst on the set of Armando Crispino’s Commandos in 1968. As supportive as ever, Salvatore formed Seda Spettacoli Company and agreed to produce his son’s feature, though it would take a further eighteen months to raise the necessary $500,000 budget. L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo (The Bird With the Crystal Plumage) was released in Italy on 19th February 1970 and was an unexpected success.

CCC Kunst, the German distributors, approached Argento about directing another murder mystery in a similar vein, and thus Il gatto a nove code (The Cat O’ Nine Tails) was born. Argento had recently read an article on how scientific research had revealed how criminal behaviour can be effected by their genetic makeup, with the usual chromosomes of XY for male and XX for female being replaced by the uncommon XYY. The concept would be adapted into a screenplay by Dardano Sacchetti, who would also write Bava’s Reazione a Catena (Twitch of the Death Nerve) the same year, and Luigi Collo. With a budget of approximately $1m and barely breaking even at the box office, The Cat O’ Nine Tails was a disappointment for everyone involved and Argento decided that he would make one more giallo to please his loyal fan base before taking his career in a new direction.

Feeling the pressure of not only his rising success but also of the various filmmakers that had begun to emulate him, Argento knew that he had to improve his repertoire if he was to stay ahead of his contemporaries. With the unique premise of a murderer’s image being caught on the victim’s retina at the time of death, Argento crafted his screenplay for 4 mosche di velluto grigio (Four Flies on Grey Velvet). Unsure of what direction to take next, Argento was offered the chance to produce a four-part thriller series for television after his father had negotiated long and hard with the network, RAI Uno. Prepping whilst still working on Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Argento created La porta sul buio (Door into Darkness), which would see each of the four episodes helmed by a different director.

Retreating to his parents’ country house near Rome to develop his next story, Argento returned with the premise for Deep Red (Profondo rosso), his next giallo effort that he hoped would revitalise his flagging career. Collaborating with Bernadino Zapponi, who had enjoyed success with renowned filmmaker Federico Fellini on such classics as Roma, Argento wrote a complex and detailed screenplay that would perfect the elements he had used in his first three thrillers. Deep Red would mark his first collaboration with Daria Nicolodi, an actress and writer whom he would begin a complex relationship with, resulting in the birth of a daughter, Asia, on 20th September 1975, just six months after the release of the movie. Despite Deep Red proving to be his greatest success so far, Argento knew that he had to stay fresh and constantly reinvent himself and so decided to try his hand at the supernatural. As a sick young boy, he would spend his hours in bed reading various books on the occult and had developed an interest in witches, eventually becoming convinced that his headmistress was one who wanted to eat him. Nicolodi would tell him about her grandmother, Yvonne, who had discovered whilst studying at an academy that her teachers practised black magic. Intrigued by the concept, the two of them would write the screenplay for what would become Suspiria, a nightmarish and bizarre supernatural thriller that would become Argento’s greatest success to date. Soon after completion, Argento heard that a sequel was in development for the 1968 zombie classic and that its director, George A. Romero, was looking for funding. Inviting him over to Rome to discuss the project, the two eventually agreed that in return for Argento co-financing the feature he would own the European distribution rights. Recutting the film, adding a new score by Goblin and retitling it Zombi, Romero’s Dawn of the Dead became a major success all around the world and gave Argento even more recognition within the industry.

Twentieth Century Fox, who had distributed Suspiria in the US, were looking for a similar project and so the director suggested making a follow up, to be set in New York. Nicolodi once again provided the story, with Argento developing it into a screenplay, partially inspired by an unpleasant visit to New York. The studio would budget the project at $3m, but their constant interfering during pre-production proved a nightmare for Argento, particularly with regards to casting. The project took an astonishing eighteen months from start to finish, with principal photography commencing on May 21st 1979 for a fourteen shoot that would take the production from Rome to New York. Despite the success of Suspiria, Inferno was not released by Twentieth Century Fox outside of Italy for five years, eventually sending it straight-to-video. Following the disappointment, Argento once again employed the tactic that he had done after the failure of Le cinque giornate (The Five Days of Milan) and returned to the style of his early work. His first giallo since Deep Red, Tenebrae was to once again centre on a foreign artist who becomes mixed up in a confusing murder plot who wears black gloves while carrying out his grizzly deeds. Released during the height of the slasher craze in America (which his earlier had films had played some part in inspiring), Tenebrae was full of sexuality and graphic violence, even more so than his previous work.

Immediately after the release of Tenebrae, Argento began work on his next script, which would predominantly feature insects, something he had toyed with in Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Suspiria and Inferno. Having been fascinated by them since he was a child, it was perhaps inevitable that they would play a major part in his work, and upon reading how they are often used by the police during murder investigations, the pieces for Phenomena slowly started to fall into place. The appeal of Dario Argento could possibly be summed up by one simple image. A shot from his 1987 effort, Opera, featured a young girl (Cristina Marsillach) with nails attached to her eye lids, forcing her to watch horrific images without the option of looking away or closing her eyes. This can be said of much of Argento’s work, as the ‘car crash syndrome’ that many of them exhibit – where their disturbing scenes are so repulsive that one wants to look away but is unable to for fear of missing something interesting – is what makes his films demand a second viewing. His relationship with Nicolodi was doomed and their frustrations had been represented on screen, with each of her characters receiving a more gruesome death than the last, and Opera would see the actress looking through a keyhole, only to be shot through the eye.

Argento had expressed interest in adapting a story by cult author Edgar Allen Poe and had suggested an anthology, with him directing The Black Cat and three other stories to be made by Romero, John Carpenter and Stephen King, respectively, to be released as Due occhi diabolici (Two Evil Eyes). Unfortunately, Carpenter was busy working on his science fiction satire They Live and King was also preoccupied, so Argento managed to raise a $9m budget for himself and Romero to shoot in Pittsburgh (Argento’s first full feature to be made in America). Trauma was Argento’s US counterpart to his giallo repertoire and, he hoped, would allow him his American breakthrough. With money raised from three separate production companies, Trauma was made on a budget of $7m in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, from 3rd August to 26th September 1992, when Asia was only sixteen. Trauma would mark her first nude scene, where she would appear topless, and would co-star Piper Laurie (Carrie), Frederic Forrest (Falling Down) and Christopher Rydell (Mask).

Sadly, Trauma would prove to be another flop for Argento and he returned to Italy where he would remain for the rest of his career. His next two features would both star Asian and mark a major decline in the commercial appeal of his work. The first, La sindrome di Stendhal (The Stendhal Syndrome), was notable as the first Italian film to use CGI, whilst his follow up, Il fantasma dell’opera (The Phantom of the Opera), was a sexually explicit and stylish adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s 1911 novel that failed to live up to its premise and only served to reinforce how the days of Deep Red and Suspiria were long behind him. Once again returning to the giallo formula, filming on Mon ho sonno (Sleepless) commenced from May 15 to July 2 2000 and would see the master of terror working alongside renowned actor Max Von Sydow of The Exorcist fame. His first film to not star daughter Asia since Two Evil Eyes, Sleepless saw a disturbed killer mutilating young girls, as is common with an Argento feature. Proving to be his most well received movie since Opera, the filmmaker finally found his stride again, although his next two projects, Il cartaio (The Card Player) and Ti piace Hitchcock? (Do You Like Hitchcock?), would be less acclaimed.

For the last twenty-seven years, Argento had been under pressure to complete his ‘Three Mothers‘ trilogy, after the success of Suspiria and the underrated Inferno. Despite attempting to write a follow up in the mid-’80’s, Argento had been unable to create a worthy continuation, but in 2003 he announced that he was preparing for La terza madre (Mother of Tears), the third and final chapter of his series. Marking a return for Asia, the script would be full of religious imagery and disturbing sequences, but its delayed release caused a media backlash, with critics speculating that the reason was due to the movie being a disaster. When it was first screened, the audience laughed throughout the film, resulting in Mother of Tears being quietly released to video. One again returning to his most trusted of genres, Giallo enjoyed its debut at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June 2009 to a mixed response. The film was a love letter to the likes of Deep Red and Tenebrae and would tell of a burnt-out detective hunting a serial killer who targets beautiful young women. Boasting an impressive turn by Adrian Brody and a haunting score by Marco Werba, Giallo was a stylish thriller that featured the usual Argento and some truly gruesome sequences. Despite both Mother of Tears and Giallo showing that he still has a few tricks up his sleeve, fans and critics continue to speculate as to whether his glory days are long behind him. But having spent the last forty years dividing his audiences with his incoherent plots and beautifully orchestrated violence, Argento is no stranger to criticism.

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