Classic Movie Review Opera

Opera (1987) 

Directed by Dario Argento 

Written by Dario Argento, Franco Ferrini 

Starring Christina Marsillach, Urbano Barberini, Daria Nicolodi

Release Date December 19th, 1987

Published February 6th, 2024

The most captivating moment of the new Shudder documentary on director Dario Argento comes during an interview with his former leading lady, Christina Marsillach. Marsillach starred in 1987's Opera for Argento and the two had a deeply fraught relationship. In her interview in Panico Marsillach starts out talking about Argento as a father figure before taking her reminiscence in a decidedly different direction. Slowly she begins to talk about Argento's passive aggressive style in which he would not give her direct instructions but would have other members of the crew speak to her. 

Marsillach goes from painting a picture of a shy fatherly figure to portraying Argento like one of the villains of his movies, a tyrannical figure bent on getting his way at all costs. She appears to want to speak kindly of the director but then, in recalling her actual experience on the set of Opera, we get a short term psychodrama, a battle of wills between actress and director that she was not winning. It's captivating, there is no other way to describe it. I believe everything Marsillach is saying, based on what we see of Argento in behind the scenes footage, and yet her account of her work on Opera is oddly dramatic, not unlike an Argento movie, serene on the surface until everything comes to a boil.

Opera unfortunately is a wildly inconsistent piece of work. It's a slasher film set in the world of Opera with all of the pomp and circumstance of that world. The film stars Marsillach as a young diva who gets a shot at the big time after a big star walks out on an Avant-Garde take on Verdi's MacBeth. It's portrayed as a temper tantrum but it become quite serious when the Opera diva is struck by a car and is most assuredly not returning to the stage. Thus, a call is made to Betty (Marsillach), the diva understudy who now must step up and become a star. 

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Classic Movie Review Bird with the Crystal Plumage

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) 

Directed by Dario Argento 

Written by Dario Argento 

Starring Tony Musante, Suzi Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno 

Release Date June 24th, 1970 

Published 

I find the simple tools of visual filmmaking to be incredibly moving. When used in the right way something as simple as a good edit can excite my love of film. Case in point a very early, very simple edit in Dario Argento's 1970 thriller Bird with the Crystal Plumage. The film is a thriller about a serial murderer in Italy. The simplicity of this moment, mere minutes into the film, demonstrates that you do not have to have the biggest budget or the showiest of modern camera technology to make a great movie. Sometimes, you just have to show the audience a pair of images next to one another to tell them all that they need to know. 

In this case, we've seen a man make a note to pick someone up and follow them to a particular location. Cut to a woman walking alone along a busy street. A light, airy soundtrack, she's oblivious to everything but her attendant location. She's unaware that anyone is following her. Cut to, a darkened room. Hands covered in black leather gloves, a man in a black leather jacket. A striking red handkerchief is lifted to reveal a set of knives of different shapes and sizes, displayed in a red velvet case. The implication is clear yet subtle, these knives are special, they hold a specific purpose. The gloved hands select one, examine it, and the scene changes. 

The visual link from the woman walking down the street, unaware that she is being watched and photographed and the man with the dangerous looking set of knives is made simply by the edit. Unconsciously, from this simple visual link, you know that this unnamed woman is in grave danger. The man with the knives has ill intent and the next steps in this story may or may not include her being attacked and possibly killed using this chosen implement of death, a long, lovingly caressed steel blade. The simplicity of this visual filmmaking is its secret genius. Great directors like Dario Argento understand this kind of simplicity. 

It's a shame the rest of Bird with the Crystal Plumage isn't quite as strong as the opening moments. The biggest flaw is the fact that this is murder mystery in which a witness and potential victim is given all the tools to investigate the murder that he witnessed. Tony Musante stars in Bird with Crystal Plumage as Sam Dalmas, an American writer who is finishing up his time in Italy. Or, at least, he was finishing up. When Sam witnesses a woman being attacked in an art gallery, and nearly watches her die after he becomes trapped between two glass walls, Sam is first a suspect and then, through convoluted means, becomes the lead investigator. 

Sam first becomes interested in clearing himself so he can recover his passport from a suspicious detective. But soon, he becomes obsessed with the case, even as he is nearly killed while heading home from an early investigation. Strangely, the actual lead detective, Morosini (Enrico Maria Salerno), encourages Sam's investigating, even helping him with access to a victim and a currently jailed potential witness. Sam even locates a piece of evidence about one of the first murders in this killer's series that the cops failed to find. 

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Documentary Review Panico

Panico (2024) 

Directed by Simone Scafidi 

Written by Documentary 

Starring Dario Argento, Asia Argento, Guillermo Del Toro, Nicholas Winding Refn, Gaspar Noe

Release Date February 2nd, 2024 

Published January 29th, 2024 

At a particular point in the new documentary Panico, all about the life and work of Dario Argento, actress Cristina Marsillach, star of Argento's 1987 film, Opera, is asked "Who is Dario Argento?" Her response is that she doesn't know. This comes at the end of an interview in which she spoke about working with Argento, enjoying working for him, the struggles of working for a visionary like Argento, and slowly revealing that the two actually rarely talked while on set together. By the end, Marsillach is describing the horror and trauma of working on the film and is in tears by the time she says she doesn't know who Dario Argento really is. 

The natural artifice, the controlled storytelling of a documentary film almost betrays itself in this moment. The journey that Marsillach takes us on in this moment begins to take on the feeling of an Argento movie. It begins to feel like she's back on set and that the whole thing is a movie in which Argento was the antagonist, that mysterious man with a black glove and a cleaver. He's the unseen killer and she's the endangered ingenue. Is this what director Simone Scafidi is intending or is this what I am reading into this portion of Panico? I honestly cannot tell you for sure. I know that I believe every word Marsillach said. 

Marsillach appears remarkably genuine, and her recollections of events mirror the experiences of other actors who have worked with Argento over the past 50 plus years. Argento, though described as quiet and shy, energetic but also a shrinking violet amid the chaos of his sets, can be as cruel in silence as Stanley Kubrick could be cruel in bluster and demonstration on his. As described in Panico, Argento is in charge of all aspects of his films, every light, camera set up, and sound. But he's also a man who has his assistants tell his actress that he'd like her to remove her bra for the scene and is angry when she refuses though refuses to confront her directly. 

Is this perhaps why Argento began working with his daughter, Asia, also featured in the documentary, when she was just old enough to achieve his vision? No one, not Dario, not Asia, or any of his collaborators will say so, but there is a distinct notion that, yes, Dario worked with and directed his daughter so often because they were so alike but also because she was more apt to take his direction. This includes taking his direction in what Asia herself describes as losing her virginity on camera when she filmed a sex scene for The Stendahl Syndrome. 

Argento was roundly criticized in the 90s for filming sex scenes and nude scenes starring his daughter. Asia Argento, in her own words, describes these scenes as playing out, in real life, their own Electra Complex. Indeed, Carl Jung, had he not died before Argento began making films, might have appreciated the psychosexual themes and presentations in a Dario Argento movie, particularly Trauma, The Stendahl Complex or Phantom of the Opera, the most notable movies that Argento made with his daughter. 

But Panico is not about putting Dario Argento on trial, either directly or indirectly. Rather, this is a documentary celebrating his life and work and with his full participation. The documentarian joined Argento as he traveled to a hotel to write his next film. I can only guess that this was 2022's Dark Glasses, though it's never mentioned in the documentary. Argento enjoys the solitude of a hotel though not the expensive and lavish one that the filmmakers have set him up with in Panico. Nevertheless, a late scene does show Argento packing away what appears to be a fully completed screenplay. 

Panico moves in a more or less linear fashion through Argento's career from his childhood spent with Italian movie stars and directors via his famed photographer mother and his producer father, to his brief time in journalism, working as a critic, to his triumphant 1970 debut as a director. A film hailed by none other than Argento's hero, Alfred Hitchcock, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is compared directly with Hitchcock's thrillers and Michael Powell's all time classic, Peeping Tom. High praise indeed. The film was a huge success and from there, the documentary charts Argento's ups and downs. 

Find my full length review at Horror.Media