Deep Red
(Profondo rosso, 1975)

Dario Argento

Italy

126 min, color, English (Italian in some scenes, English subtitles)

Review © 2006 Branislav L. Slantchev

Most Argento fans consider this to be the Holy Grail of his oeuvre, and for good reason. Deep Red is not only the most coherent and tightly scripted of his films (a great deal of credit for this should go to the co-writer Bernardino Zapponi), but it probably changed the entire giallo genre by introducing the supernatural element that Argento himself would go on to explore in greater depth (and much success) with his Suspiria, Inferno, and Phenomena. Add to this the unforgettable score by Goblin and the inspired camera work utilizing weird angles, expansive spaces, and primary colors---and you get a true classic. This is not just one of the best Argento films, it is also one of the best gialli you will ever see.

The parapsychology conference	She sees evil

This is not to say that the film does not suffer from weaknesses. It is marred by uneven acting. Whereas the leads David Hemmings (as the English ex-pat pianist Marcus Daly) and Daria Nicolodi (the sometimes annoying but always intrepid reporter Gianna) are very well matched, with obvious chemistry between them---despite the regrettable extended scenes, more on which I will have to say later---the rest of the cast is so-so at best. Perhaps the main offender is Eros Pagni who plays inspector Calcabrini but who looks as a stupid comic relief that is never funny and is occasionally grating on one's nerves. Even the major secondary character Carlo is portrayed somewhat unnervingly by Gabriele Lavia (who would later be killed off very early in Inferno) who never seems to be able to pull off a convincing inner turmoil, whether as a somewhat jealous colleague or homosexual who cannot quite reconcile himself to his "deviance" or as a man with a terrible secret that threatens to destroy the people he loves. Some of it can be attributed to dubbing, but as a whole the post-dub here is pretty decent, so it must be the actors themselves.

Maybe someone's getting raped?	The original glass impalement

Before going into some of the other pluses and minuses of the film, a synopsis is in order. The memorable opening sequence sees a shadow of someone viciously stabbing another person, all of which is set to a disturbing children's tune (I swear you will never be able to listen to a children's song in quite the same way ever again). The bloodied knife is then dropped on the floor, and a kid's feet show up next to it. This establishes the basic fact that the film would deal with some serious childhood trauma, something that is not new to Argento. The director, in fact, seems to prefer this sort of psychological explanation for most of his killers who have somehow been abused either as children or adolescents (one is reminded here of Tenebre, where sexual rejection and a savage beating have pushed the man over the brink, or of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, where an attempted rape at knife point has twisted the main character and lain dormant until a painting triggered the memory causing the victim to become a murderous villain). The idea of a suppressed memory, a psychological scar violently expressing itself by driving the character to do something beyond his control is pervasive in Argento's work. On one hand, he would insist that people are defined by their memories. On the other, however, these memories can prove to be their undoing by rendering them dysfunctional.

Italian inspectors moonlight as comedians	Gratuitous shot of Daria Nicolodi

Although it is not revealed to the audience, it is pretty clear that the next scene takes places years later. A para-psychology conference in Rome has three speakers, one of whom is Helga (Macha Meril), a woman who can read or sense thoughts. During the demonstration of her supernatural abilities, she detects the twisted thoughts of an audience member. "You have killed," she shouts to no one in particular, "and you will kill again!" Needless to say, this sort of thing tends to dampen the enthusiasm in the rest of the audience, and so the conference is quickly brought to a halt. Helga has the misfortune of not being all that bright, announcing to her friend Professor Giordani (Glauco Mauri) that she knows the identity of that killer. The prowling camera shows that unseen person's POV and we know that she has been overheard.

Perfect use of widescreen and architecture	Male ego deflated

A little later on, she is in her apartment writing down her notes about the evening when the killer shows up to eradicate the danger her skills have put him in. The murder is vicious: Helga is butchered with a cleaver until the last strike pushes her through the window pane, she breaks the glass and is impaled on the shards. It is true that Argento would make repeated use of this glass mayhem (in Tenebre and Phenomena, to name two examples, with the trick appearing twice in the latter), but in all honesty this is just the beginning of bloodletting in a film where the deaths would be increasingly brutal and painful. Before the final credits roll, we shall see a person drowned in boiling water, another one has his teeth repeatedly smashed against a fireplace mantelpiece and then a desk, and another one is dragged down a street by a truck until he crashes his head against the sidewalk and then, just after regaining consciousness, has it flattened by a car tire. But even if this window death will become routine later on and despite the clearly visible mannequin who is forced through the glass (somewhat ruining the impact), the scene remains among the most unsettling ones in this film, not the least because the gruesome scene is witnessed by a passer-by.

I can't believe she wants to TALK	Battle of the sexes

It is Marcus who unwittingly gets involved in the dark dreams of the murderer. He sees Helga's death and rushes to her apartment (something that most normal people would probably never do). He walks through a hallway with paintings that would give H.R. Giger nightmares and finally makes it to the body, which is by now a lifeless corpse. Something having to do with these paintings, however, keeps bothering him. An elusive image in his subconscious that is the clue to the murderer's identity. If this reminds one of the The Bird with the Crystal Plumage protagonist's attempt to reconstruct the crime he witnessed, then it is because the two are very close. Just like the older film, by the time Marcus discovers what it was that bothered him about the gallery, it will be almost too late. After the reporter Gianna writes up an account according to which Marcus can identify the killer, Marcus himself becomes a marked man.

Aaaaaaaaaah! I mean, wrong apartment	Drunk self-proclaimed fag

The rest of the film deals with Marcus and Gianna's attempts to uncover the secret behind the murders, which begin to multiply as Marcus gets close to some clue that promises to reveal what is going on. Many leads thus lead to nothing except the offing of a person involved. The killer always seems to be one step ahead of Marcus and even though he is careful not to divulge what he has learned, he never seems to be able to increase the tempo of his investigation enough to overtake his opponent. He does find out that his friend Carlo is leading a double life in which he's an alcoholic pianist by day and early evening and a closet homosexual by night and weekends. Carlo is quite upset by his own inability to decide what he is and although he once tells Marcus that perhaps that flitting memory probably signifies something important, he warns his friend that this investigation may be too dangerous for him, which it quickly does become.

Those snooty Europeans	Unorthodox decor

Rather than continue with the plot, I will discuss several interesting aspects of it and its execution. First, one would be remiss not to mention that the death scenes, although not all that brutal by giallo standards, are actually quite unsettling because the writers have devised ways of dying that one can actually relate to. Stabbing, shooting, hanging, and assorted mayhem of the flesh that is the usual fodder of these films comprise ways of dying that are quite clinical no matter how spectacularly filmed. The reason is that most of us have never experienced stabbing (minor cuts are not quite the same). We have not been shot and have not suffocated with a noose around our necks. In other words, we cannot relate to the pain when death comes like that. However, most of us have been scalded by boiling water, so we can readily imagine what it would feel like if we are dunked into a bathtub until the flesh on our face is swollen and the skin begins separating from it. We can also imagine all too well what it would feel like to have our teeth broken by a hard object. (I will never forget the painful scene in American History X where the protagonist forces a man to open his mouth and bite a sidewalk only to then smash his head against the sidewalk.) In that respect, the scenes are much more than spectacular, they feel very real, which makes the suffering of the victims all that more full of impact because it somehow humanizes it.

Loss of motor skills	It does take a Ph.D. to rub it

This brings me to the other aspect, which is simultaneously disappointing and exhilarating. I am talking about the extended sequences having to do with character development. Before this 126-minute version, I used to have a VHS copy that ran about 15 minutes shorter. This is how I had seen Deep Red originally and how I have always envisioned it. Anchor Bay brings the longest print in existence and, unfortunately, the film suffers tremendously because of it. Most of the additional scenes have to do with Gianna and Carlo. Although something positive can be said about fleshing out the latter character, which brings him into focus much more sharply and improves on the logic of the film, the footage with Gianna should have remained on the cutting-room floor. In the shorter version, her relationship with Marcus is delightful. She is playful and willful, a strong emancipated woman who takes no shit from anyone, even the guy she obviously likes quite a bit. Marcus is a bit overbearing with his male superiority complex, which turns out to be nothing but a sham---witness how helpless he is when he actually confronts the killer. This masculinity is a facade reinforced by the same society that has twisted Carlo into feelings of shame and guilt on account of his homosexuality. It is no accident that the men in this film are actually weaklings even if they brutalize women with actions or words. Perhaps they need to assert their domination over women precisely because they are too weak to compete with men.

You can't have my first edition of Gibbon	David Hemmings in apartment renovation show

At any rate, Gianna challenges Marcus repeatedly, even going so far as to defeat him at Indian Wrestling in a hilarious scene that has some immediacy for me---my wife beat almost all of her male Computer Science colleagues at the same competition; I have to train daily just to make sure we don't forget who wears the pants in our family, metaphorically speaking, of course, since she actually wears pants almost all the time. So it is funny and it is well done. When the irate Marcus first declares her a cheat (she did lift her elbow off the table but so what) and then just wants to walk out in embarrassment, it just adds explicitness to what had earlier been made implicit in the other delightful scene where he is the passenger in her tiny car with a broken seat that forces him to sit on the car floor, head barely sticking above the dashboard. The post-wrestling scene puts him in the subordinate position even as the car scene did that on a technicality. The cut I used to have ends the scene there but the extended version continues with Gianna suddenly becoming all womanly, being insecure about her looks, wanting to know if she's too ugly for him, and being so needy that she actually becomes off-putting. The whole point of the earlier scenes is suddenly lost as if she is afraid to stay in the place she has so successfully staked out for herself. In a later scene in her car (where he demands a macho drink despite having to sit on the floor yet again), she even becomes jealous. The whole dynamic between the two changes and from a strong independent woman in the shorter cut she becomes this shrill and possessive shrew that is neither appealing nor particularly memorable. I wonder what made Argento agree to restoration of the cut footage. This was a definite mistake on his part.

Audience member waiting for clues to pan out	This deodorant stick really works

In the end, I have to declare the shorter version a definite winner when it comes to watching an ultimate cut of this film. It is amazing how often directors who are left to their own devices run amok and create scenes the undermine their films in ways that a more controlled environment would not allow. Given my utter respect for the auteur theory, this is a major problem one has to deal with. The simple truth appears to be that often directors have only a vague idea about what makes their films successful. Very few seem to be able to produce a masterpiece if allowed an uninhibited freedom to do whatever they like. (Just remember George Lucas.) Films are group endeavors in ways that sculpture, painting, poetry, and music are not, and as such one should approach them very carefully especially if one wants to detect the director's "vision." It is not an easy task to craft a film that is visually arresting and dramatically appealing. It would appear that creativity erupts in full force only amid tight constraints imposed by budgetary and production considerations. Paradoxically, it is probably much better to tie the hands of a good director to force him to become a great one. Deep Red is a good example of this, as the two cuts clearly demonstrate.

Something to do with a painting	Merry Christmas!

The Anchor Bay DVD is nothing short of amazing. Hands down, this is the best video transfer of any of Argento's films I have seen. The video is presented in anamorphic widescreen, at 2.35:1 aspect ratio and is simply luminous. The colors are stable, the darks are truly black, and I could detect no artifacts of any sort. As I said, this is the full 126-minute cut that may please completists but is actually a disappointment from a dramatic perspective. To top it off, the additional scenes were apparently never dubbed in English, and so you must watch them in Italian with English subtitles. Given that the characters clearly speak English, I would have to say that the 'original' language of the film is English too even though everything is post-dubbed. I actually preferred the English dub to the Italian one as well, mostly because of lip-sync issues. At any rate, you can watch the entire thing in Italian (Dolby Digital 5.1 or stereo) or in English but in the latter option, you will have to contend with dialogue that abruptly switches in Italian mid-scene, which can be a bit confusing and irritating. This is not Anchor Bay's fault, of course, although I would have preferred to have the option to watch a shorter English-only cut, either by having a separate version (like Blue Underground did with the Tombs of the Blind Dead) or to have seamless switching. The English subtitles are optional (except for the scenes in Italian when watching the English dubbed version) and are excellent as well. The extras are limited to a 12-minute documentary which has interviews with Argento, Bernardino, and Goblin, talent files, and trailers.

January 8, 2006