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Promoted in Italy with the catch-line 'Il brivido di Natale'- the Christmas Chill, Dario Argento's latest 'giallo' film opened to big box-office and divided Critical notices.
Regular readers of Starburst will know how much I admire Argento's work for its cinematic purity, bravura technique and eccentric non-narrative construction. When successful, like Inferno, his movies transcend film art in the accepted sense to hover on a knife edged plane where surreality co exists with askance conventionality urging images of such startling originality they rarely fail to move me.
I loathed phenomena/creepers mainly because it was a vanity production giving Argento free rein to misguidedly express his bizarre concepts of life to a captive audience. He felt was ready to accept this side of his personality. Simply put, vast numbers weren't prepared to deal with this cinema fascism within the framework of - even his warped world vision. | The really good news concerning Opera is that the first hour is amongst the finest work Argento has ever created and easily on a par with Inferno although that may be too obvious a connection as both films contain large doses of Giuseppe Verdi's music. Also Ronnie Taylor's sepia tinted ultra-realistic cinematography is breath-takingly beautiful, the camerawork is wondrously eye- popping taking the subjective universe of Argento into new dimensions of undiluted genius and in lead actress Cristina Marsillach he has found the best Interpreter of his subconscious to date.
The bad news is there are too many twist endings for the film's own good and the final one, taking us back into Phenomena territory, is so off-the-wall it tends to under-cut everything Argento has built up so evocatively. But more about this aspect of the film later. Virtually plotless, Opera's story line is nothing more than an excuse to garnish one glittering set-piece after another. |
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Rarely does anything connect in logical terms and these adornments exist solely to highlight Argento's contemporary state-of-the-art on both the technical and personal level. So what else is new? But in suspiria and inferno at least he had the subject of magic and a lyrical gothic ambience to wrap up the dream-like unconscious impulses as an excuse for this. As Opera is rooted in the reality of hard-core violence, the success of the film greatly depends on one's personal ability to handle this brilliantly baroque fractured shorthand outside his usual alchemic web.
On the eve of a Parma opera company mounting a controversial production of Verdi's Macbeth, the leading diva Mara Cecova breaks her leg in a car accident after storming out in disgust over artistic differences. At her apartment young ingenue singer Betty,(Cristina Marsillach) receives a sinister telephone call saying her time has finally come. Almost in bursts her agent Myra (Daria Nicolodi) to tell her the chance of a lifetime has occurred and she will take over the Lady Macbeth role for the premier that night. |
But during Betty's main aria some lights crash down on the audience and an usher is gruesomely impaled on a coat hook which the company all put down to the bad luck syndrome supposedly attached to performing Macbeth. To celebrate her ecstatic ovation Betty decides to spend the night with her assistant director boyfriend thus precipitating the mounting tension and orchestrated horror as Argento revels in gloating sadism with a vengeance.
The unbalanced maniac needs Betty to witness the torture and murder of those near and dear to her as a spectacle of absolute devotion because, in his/her twisted schizophrenic mind, she will then fall in love with her dominator. Bound and gagged, Betty has needles placed under her eyelids and, unable to close her eyes, she is forced to watch one brutal murder after another. The faint-hearted will thank me for not revealing these moments which feature very graphic mutilations - in one instance the camera zooms into a screaming mouth to witness the victim's tongue being pierced by a knife emerging through the throat and besides I really don't want to say too much in case it lessens the film's overall impact.
Mark my words though, what Argento gets up to here in terms of outrageous gore, the 105 minute version now playing to packed houses in Rome will never reach Britain intact especially as Opera is more subversively horrifying in thematic terms rather than just by being bloody sequences which can be trimmed by censors. So who is the warped 'Phantom of the Opera'? Is it Myra, Marco the director, (played by Ian Charleson as a thinly veiled Argento act-a-like), his jealous girlfriend (Antonella Vitale), Mara Cecova furious at Betty's fabulous reviews, her assistant, the police commissioner (Urbano Barberini), or the sundry other red herrings Argento drags before the camera lens to less and less effect as the movie hurtles its way to the final pay-off? Don't bother trying to work it out as nothing stands up under close scrutiny. And yet this is precisely why Opera is unadulterated Argento at his most obsessively individual.
The colourless ciphers passing as actors are the puppets in his self-limiting hi-tech universe where only the camera is the true star. And Argento has nothing short of a love affair with it. The camera moves into impossible angles - even upside down in one amazing case, it vibrates - an Argento innovation, it's blurred with eye drops in the most daring cheat of all and it's blindfolded adding even more resonance to the basic Peeping Tom voyeuristic allusions behind the focal point of what Opera is truly about. But its the incredible louma crane shots which paralysed me into sheer subjugation at the alter of Argento's craft. Marco hatches the 'brilliant' idea of letting loose a flock of ravens during a performance as The Birds, used for intensified dramatic effect in the opera, know who the killer is as they watched him/her tear Betty's costume to shreds backstage. As 'the camera becomes the lead raven, and Argento lines up all the suspects in the auditorium it swoops in, circles from the top of the opera house over the heads of the assembly to finally peck out the eye of the killer. Forget how lame the device is to make it happen, just watch this stunning display and boggle at the dazzling technical achievement which is too thrilling for words.
Opera is really an Argento 'Greatest Hits' compilation as references to all his other films are contained within the aria of violence structure. There's the crawlspace from Inferno, the black gloves from the bird with the crystal plumage , too many images from suspiria to mention, the gold chain from deep red - the film opera resembles most, the microscopic attention to detail reminiscent of tenebrae and the slow motion bullet from four flies on grey velvet used to even more spectacular effect here.
And now hack to the ending, which I promise will be cloaked in mystery as so many of you were furious about my revelations concerning the climax of Phenomena so far in advance of release. Suffice is to say that Argento has seen fit to provide a voiceover accompanying the closing images of Cristina Marsillach in Switzerland picking flowers embracing a grass verge and rescuing a lizard. Spoken by himself, what Argento says are words to the effect that we should all love one another, the trees, the wind, the rain and nature. Open your eyes to the beauty surrounding you, he says, and the world will be a better place. With what Marsillach has forcibly had to watch, this naive, vaguely hippie, treatise really does stick in the throat considering the horror that has preceded it. I saw Opera four times with a cinema audience and at each performance the audience booed and screamed with laughter and threw empty popcorn containers at the screen while this unfolded. No matter how sincere his intentions, Argento is merely a horror director after all and most definitely not Rod McKuen! This ending, and the fluffed Sergio Stivaletti brain special effect, which was supposed to make us privy to the exact moment the murderer turns schizoid are the only two areas in which Argento truly lets the film down.
So there you have it, Opera is a flawed masterpiece one that won t have too many rushing to become fully paid up member of the Argento fan club especially as it does contain such heavy psychological extreme bloodshed verging on the edge of nausea. But for the already converted it is a cause for celebration, a massive return to form for the only director to use the visual medium correctly. Take any frame of Opera, or Inferno for that matter, and each would be a work of art. How many other directors could that in all honesty, refer to? So many people can't see beyond the intimidating violence representing Argento's myopic personalized overview of everyday reality. But that's their loss. I've found a place in my heart for Argento's unique talent, his sumptuous imagery and his consummate artistic technique. And on the strength of Opera, it will be there to stay. |
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reviewed by Alan Jones |
| credits |
| cast: |
Cristina Marsillach, Ian Charleson, Urbano Barberini, Antonella Vitale, Barbra Cupisti, Coralina Cataldi Tassoni, Daria Nicolodi, Francesca Cassola, William McNamaro |
| director: |
Dario Argento |
| producer: |
Dario Argento |
| screenplay: |
Dario Argento and Franco Ferrini, based on an original idea by Dario Argento |
| cinematography: |
Ronnie Taylor |
| music: |
Brian Eno, Roger Eno, Claudio Simonetti, Bill Wyman and Terry Taylor |
| sfx: |
Renato Agostini, Sergio Stivaletti and Barbra Morosetti
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| technical information |
| negative: |
35mm |
| print: |
35mm |
| aspect ratio: |
2.35:1 |
| format: |
Super 35 |
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