Dario Argento
Profondo Rosso

Widely considered among the masterpieces of thriller cinema, Deep Red ('75) is difficult to review without resorting to clichés. There are, after all, dozens of publications and specialized websites where the film has been dissected from various angles, highlighting Argento's directorial skill, the unease that emanates from each frame, the subtle sadism that characterizes the various murders, the effectiveness of the acting by some of the best Italian theater actors employed in the film (Lavia, Mauri), the scholarly revival of the white telephone diva (Calamai), and the anti-hero of Michelangelo Antonioni's related Blow Up (Hemmings), the nuanced and disturbing performance of the excellent Daria Nicolodi. Let’s not even talk about the excellent soundtrack by Gaslini and the Goblins.

Almost everyone knows the film's plot in minute detail, which I briefly summarize here for newcomers: a young musician, an unwitting witness to a murder, becomes obsessed with investigating to find the culprit, while the police remain inert and the same murderer, progressively eliminating anyone who guesses their identity, dangerously approaches him. To uncover the culprit, one must think very carefully about what was seen - or believed to have been seen - the evening of the first murder.

Here are some brief critical considerations on Argento's work, to be read only if you have seen the film, due to some spoilers. Seen for the first time when I was fifteen, but I knew the plot by heart due to stories from some relatives, "Deep Red" impressed me especially for the murder scenes, or, rather, for the slow agony to which the murderer (and the director himself?) subjected the various victims. The locations where the murders took place - mostly dark interiors of bourgeois homes - had something recognizable and everyday that almost automatically induced the viewer to identify with the various soon-to-be victims, emphasizing the film's unease. None of the characters appeared reassuring, given that each of them, including the protagonist, was dangerously borderline in moral ambiguity, attitude, and mental balance. From this perspective, the author continually plays with the binary being/appearing, both in places and people: the beautiful house hides gloomy memories, the seemingly fragile woman conceals sudden strength, the refined pianist hides his neuroses, the murderer hides their identity. The world seems almost like a mirror, but the image it returns is so fragmented and confused that it does not allow one to decipher reality.

Some, emphasizing the film's psychoanalytic and Freudian aspect, have noted how the plot revolves around the figure of the castrating and overprotective mother, critiquing in the background the very concept of the family as a hortus conclusus and safe: in this, the film implies a libertarian message perfectly in line with certain post-1968 culture and exposes certain typically Italian "mammismo," overturning its content (this perhaps explains the film's great and unconscious appeal, and its success particularly in our country, even more so than abroad).

That said, the film is not without flaws, due to some narrative inconsistencies that make the detective story itself weak upon closer examination: however, I do not believe that with "Deep Red" Argento intended to create the classic Ellery Queen-style mystery, a model that has so influenced his cinema over a forty-year career, being more attentive to the suggestions that his camera and photography were capable of creating: in this, "Deep Red" represents the creative zenith of the director, highlighting in a nutshell the limitations of his future work.