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Archive for November, 2001

Tenebre (Dario Argento, 1982)

Posted by Eric on November 27th, 2001

On one level, it’s very obviously about the culpability of violence in entertainment in influencing receptive and “unsane” folks (and one which lays a great piece of blame on itself). On another level, it’s a most beautiful and stunning paean to violence as the highest form of art. At any level, it’s probably the best Dario Argento film I’ve yet seen. But back to the art, one need look no further than the murder of Peter Neal’s cheating wife as an astonishing moment of both torrential foul-play ugliness as well as the creative artistic process at its most liberated. The stump of her arm gushing blood, she turns around, sprays the wall behind her in an arc, and she may as well be Jackson Pollock on a bender. When she is whacked with an ax in the back, she slowly turns face front again, and her arched back, missing arm, and overwrought emotional expression all resemble nothing less than a gothic statue — the Venus de Milo, before she lost her other arm. And what of the dowdy lesbian, with her left breast always hanging out of her flimsy garments (or, later on, in her toga-like bath towels) like a voloptuous Bottecelli? Intriguingly enough for a film steeped in artsy reference points, Tenebre is far more jaggedly edited and less concerned with architecturally expansive cinematography than Deep Red or Suspiria. It’s a far more brutal piece, with high-jumping attack dogs, red bitch-heels, and a sky-high body count. In that respect, it’s Argento’s most hedonistic film. Should we be surprised, then, that it is also a portrait of the artist at his most self-obsessed?

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