Dario Argento
Il Gatto A Nove Code

The unexpected and considerable success of both critics and audiences for "L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo" created a reputation around the young Dario Argento as the Italian heir to Hitchcock. It also sparked the Italian giallo genre, which was until then considered a B-category genre, and importantly polarized the expectations of Titanus producers for the next feature film by the (more than) promising Roman director.

A year after his debut, "Il gatto a nove code" ('70) was a major box office success, surpassing the earnings of Argento's previous movie, receiving decent critical feedback, composing the second piece of the animal trilogy already in progress, and inspiring many other titles—more or less improbable—of animal-themed gialli.

Despite all this, it's interesting to note how "Il gatto" was soon removed from the collective memory of Argento's fans and genre enthusiasts. It quickly aged and is often relegated to a lesser episode of the director's filmography. In various interviews, Argento admitted to not loving this film, and essentially, not considering it truly his own. The oblivion that fell over the film seems, however, rather unjustified, as it represents one of the most interesting episodes of Argento's cinema, deserving not so much a reevaluation, but rather a more in-depth look at the virtues of the feature, besides its flaws, which are indeed present.

A brief summary of the narrative plot might be useful for those who haven't seen the film: the blind puzzle solver Arnò—helped by his little niece—collaborates with journalist Giordani in the search for the mysterious murderer of some doctors from the Terzi research center, where they study—along Lombrosian lines—the criminal predisposition of some subjects with the xyy chromosomal triad. Before discovering the culprit's identity, it will even be necessary to desecrate the tomb of one of the victims, culminating in a rendezvous on the rooftops of a spectral Turin.

Let's start with the film's strengths.

The complex plot of "Il gatto," which I've only outlined here, is developed by Argento with a right and balanced alternation between dramatic moments and more relaxed moments (with a touch of irony), making the relatively long film flow well overall. The casting choice is excellent, with standouts like Karl Malden, Tino Carraro, Aldo Reggiani, Tiberio Congia, the young Cinzia de Carolis (later a successful voice actress in the 1980s), the then-intriguing Caterine Spaak (though in an unpleasant topless scene), and the wooden James Franciscus.

The murder scenes are, in my opinion, among the most beautiful and tense of the director's entire career, in their own variety: harsh and distressing is the murder scene at the station, unsettling the photographer's strangulation, extremely realistic and disturbing, among others, the murder inside the apartment. In my opinion, only in "Profondo Rosso" did Argento surpass the standards set in this film. The nocturnal cemetery incursion and the desecration of one of the victim's tombs also deserve a separate mention, immersing the viewer in a macabre atmosphere and impending terror, building anticipation for an attack that will make you jump out of your seat and suspect everyone.

The choice of locations is also very effective, making "Il gatto" an intriguing urban thriller, featuring car chases, night incursions into bourgeois homes, details of squares, staircases, elevator shafts, rooftops, and all that contributes to defining the metropolitan anxiety of much of Argento's cinema, where, as the author himself admitted, the city is the true stepmother (in contrast to the bucolic horror of an Avati, for example).

My analysis, however, would not be complete without addressing the film's flaws, unfortunately surfacing here and there.

The first point pertains to the excessive crowding of characters animating the story, rendering the plot rather fragmented. In "Il gatto," we do not witness a descent into the protagonist's infernos, striving to reconstruct a reality fragmented by his perception of things (as in "L’uccello" and especially in "Profondo Rosso"), but rather a more common parapolice investigation, where the occasional investigator and the police have the opportunity to collaborate in uncovering the culprit. This discovery does not rely, as in many Argento films, on recomposing reality through the well-known reconciliation of the "missing detail," but, in adherence to the American hard-boiler tradition, on the event's development itself, or, if you will, on the "action" of the investigator and the "reaction" of the killer.

In this perspective, "Il gatto" seems to me to be a "scientific" giallo, not only for the setting and context of the story, and not just for the reasons driving the culprit to crime, but also, and above all, for the overall rationality that permeates the story's unfolding and the cause-and-effect chain of events leading to the identification of the assassin.

This, in the final analysis, perhaps deprives the film of the occult charm found in much of Argento's cinema, the suspended atmosphere of his best features, the irrational aspect accompanying the action of the killer in question, and, notably, the total surprise evoked by the unmasking of the culprit. A surprise that is not absent here but hinges solely on the fact that the killer was just one of the nine potential culprits, one of the nine tails of the cat, just to close the circle.