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Why Dario Argento’s Deep Red remains a trashy masterpiece

25 Oct 2021

Words by Anton Bitel

Two individuals embracing, silhouetted against a warm, glowing backdrop. Vibrant colours and dramatic shadows create an intimate, emotive scene.
Two individuals embracing, silhouetted against a warm, glowing backdrop. Vibrant colours and dramatic shadows create an intimate, emotive scene.
The Ital­ian director’s 1975 gial­lo clas­sic is being re-released in a new­ly restored, longer edit with addi­tion­al scenes.

A sweet children’s song, a Christ­mas tree in a cosy domes­tic set­ting, sil­hou­ettes on the wall show­ing one per­son vicious­ly stab­bing anoth­er, and then a blood-stained knife falling to the floor, by the shoes of a stand­ing child. This is the pro­logue to Dario Argento’s Deep Red, and also its pri­mal scene – the source of a trau­ma that keeps resur­fac­ing over a decade lat­er. It is also a piece of shad­ow play in the the­atre of a dis­turbed mind, lead­ing us to draw cer­tain con­nec­tions and infer­ences, while being open to more than one interpretation.

Indeed, much of Deep Red will involve the dis­cus­sion and read­ing of minds and art. Real­ly, that’s good, very good,” pianist and music teacher Mar­cus Daly (David Hem­mings) tells jazz band in the present scene that imme­di­ate­ly fol­lows the past pro­logue. Maybe a bit too good. Too clean, yes, too pre­cise. Too… for­mal. It should be more trashy.” Here Argen­to may as well be lay­ing out the aes­thet­ics of his own film, which comes metic­u­lous­ly craft­ed, oper­at­ic even in its baroque man­ner­isms, but which is nonethe­less aim­ing low.

For the direc­tor is still work­ing with­in the trashy sen­sa­tion­al­ism of the gial­lo genre in which he had already estab­lished his name and sig­na­ture style with the ani­mal’ tril­o­gy The Bird With the Crys­tal Plumage, The Cat O’ Nine Tails and Four Flies on Grey Vel­vet. Deep Red was orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to belong to this series, and its work­ing title was the more bes­tial-sound­ing The Sabre-Toothed Tiger. But even if the film was briefly rere­leased in Amer­i­ca dur­ing the ear­ly 80s as The Hatch­et Mur­ders, Deep Red even­tu­al­ly stuck.

After recog­nis­ing that there is a twist­ed mind” with per­vert­ed, mur­der­ous thoughts” in her audi­ence, Lithuan­ian telepath Hel­ga Ulmann (Macha Méril) is lat­er killed in her apart­ment. Her screams draw Mar­cus, her upstairs neigh­bour, to the scene, but he is too late. When ques­tioned by the police he becomes con­vinced that one of the macabre pic­tures he saw in pass­ing on Helga’s walls is now mys­te­ri­ous­ly miss­ing. Maybe,” fel­low pianist Car­lo Man­ganiel­lo (Gabriele Lavia) sug­gests to Mar­cus, that paint­ing was made to dis­ap­pear because it rep­re­sent­ed some­thing impor­tant.” Yet as Mar­cus tries to remem­ber, the mys­te­ri­ous killer wants a past crime to remain for­got­ten, and com­mits many more mur­ders to cov­er a bloody trail lead­ing all the way back to the pri­mal scene.

It is not just a paint­ing that must be found, but a sup­pos­ed­ly haunt­ed house, and a miss­ing win­dow (with a miss­ing room behind it), and var­i­ous infan­tile repro­duc­tions (whether on paper or fres­co) of that first killing, all to piece togeth­er the iden­ti­ty of the killer. Bare­ly helped by the incom­pe­tent police, Mar­cus reluc­tant­ly joins forces with ambi­tious jour­nal­ist Gian­na Brezzi (Daria Nicolo­di), and as they become both inves­tiga­tive part­ners and lovers, the chau­vin­is­tic pianist learns the price of under­es­ti­mat­ing women. Much of this couple’s rela­tion­ship was excised by Argen­to him­self for the film’s orig­i­nal 100-minute the­atri­cal ver­sion, but has been rein­stat­ed for a 126-minute edit whose addi­tion­al scenes have nev­er been dubbed into English.

A person lying on a desk with a dagger through their head, surrounded by objects.

It is well worth watch­ing them. For while these scenes’ com­ic tone may sit odd­ly with the rest of the film, there is some­thing about the sight of Mar­cus sunk into the bro­ken pas­sen­ger seat of Gianna’s bare­ly func­tion­ing lit­tle car, that per­fect­ly encap­su­lates the fol­ly in Marcus’s pos­tur­ing mas­cu­line supe­ri­or­i­ty. Here it is Gian­na who is both posi­tioned above her male pas­sen­ger, and very much in the driver’s seat – and from this a more gen­er­al les­son can be drawn about the film’s inver­sion of gen­der norms, at least accord­ing to the sex­ist Mar­cus. Men and women are dif­fer­ent,” he will tell Gian­na, Women are del­i­cate, frag­ile.” Yet the film will repeat­ed­ly chal­lenge his assump­tions and prej­u­dices about woman’s capabilities.

Deep Red was a tran­si­tion­al film in Argento’s career, bridg­ing the gap between his ear­li­er gial­li and his lat­er lean­ings towards the super­nat­ur­al in fea­tures like Sus­piria, Infer­no and Phe­nom­e­na. Indeed, much as Hel­ga has the uncan­ny abil­i­ty to read minds, in one scene here, her col­league Pro­fes­sor Gior­dani (Glau­co Mau­ri) describes the tele­path­ic pow­ers of insects, and in so doing, prac­ti­cal­ly pre­dicts a key point of Phenomena’s plot­ting, a good decade before it was made. All the grotesque­ly bloody mur­ders of Argento’s pre­vi­ous detec­tive sto­ries are here present and cor­rect, while this is the first in a long musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ital­ian prog rock­ers Gob­lin and their front man Clau­dio Simonetti.

As both Mar­co and the killer try to recon­struct the pri­mal scene in their dif­fer­ent ways – the one to solve a crime, the oth­er to recre­ate its cir­cum­stances – Argen­to pulls off a gen­uine coup de ciné­ma by reveal­ing the killer’s face remark­ably ear­ly in the film, but in such a way that if you do not know what you are look­ing for, you will not see it, even though Argen­to plays entire­ly fair in the rel­e­vant sequence and the face is most cer­tain­ly there. This film is very good, but also dis­tinct­ly trashy, as the ele­gant art gallery in a Helga’s home hides a cleaver-wield­ing pres­ence deter­mined to paint and repaint every­thing deep red.

Deep Red is released on Lim­it­ed Edi­tion 4K UHD Blu-ray, DVD and sound­track CD from 25 Octo­ber via Arrow Film.

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