From the depths of darkness
September 7, 1940 Dario Argento, one of the most famous and important masters of cinematic thrillers, was born in Rome on 7 September 1940 by Sicilian Salvatore Argento, film critic and writer, and the Brazilian Elda Luxardo, fashion photographer. A curious note sees the father manufacturer of all his films, from "the bird with the Crystal plumage" up to "the darkness", although, in adolescence, relationships were not to be idyllic. Enrolled at the Liceo classico Dario abandoned him as a sophomore, deciding to run away from home. At this time the future filmmaker is forced to live of gimmicks; in his stay in Paris, for example, working as a dishwasher. Back in Italy, is taken in a Rome newspaper ("Paese Sera"), as a film critic. Are the early 1960s years next to those hot disputes, but years of who came out from the lines was still regarded with suspicion. And, surely, Dario Argento has never been a spirit very loyal to the rules though, of course, more in terms of the artistic rules of social behaviour. The pieces that stretched out for the newspaper, for example, were often contrarian, able to displace the reader use to see official confirmed his views by critics. Silver pen was sharp and rich inventiveness. The young Dario, therefore, it takes little to understand that with the pen you can also make a living. He doesn't lack imagination and then here he is taken, before timidly then always more safely, the screenwriter. With Sergio Amidei says "excuse me, are you for or against?" Alberto Sordi (1967), then "a rope a colt" with Claude Desailly by Robert Hossein (1968), and then "the season of the senses", "the sexual revolution", "probability zero", "today you, tomorrow me", "Comandamenti per un gangster", "an army of five men," Legion of the damned "," Metti una sera a cena ". In 1969 he wrote and directed his first film, "the bird with the Crystal plumage" (1970). The film, after an uncertain start, turns into one of the biggest hits of the Italian production of that year. The success of the second film, "the cat o ' nine tails" (1970), confirms the interest of the public, and imposes it as author of suspense Italian film. In 1971 he directed "Four flies on Grey Velvet", continuing a personal research in the cinematic language of fear, and developing new techniques designed to elicit strong emotional tension within his thriller, initially you from soundtracks of Ennio Morricone. The main feature of these early film by Director Roman is to rely substantially on fact, IE without the break-in Saleh supernatural themes. The presence of death is perceptible and looming always as an event that can break at any moment. The terror of the Viewer is induced with great skill through an eerie atmosphere and full of expectations. Later, however, silver will operate a real breakthrough in this regard, setting up in his movies all samples of the supernatural of the best kind. Appear demons, witches and so on, in an attempt to stage a see-saw game with death as a something as opposed to the "reality" of life. In 1975, with "Profondo Rosso" Silver makes the movie that even today many consider to be his most important work and significant: a summary of all those aspects disturbing researched and studied in the previous film, developed with the use of specific Visual technologies in film writing a style that will mark a point of no return for the representation of fear for years to come. Mysterious and fantastic sussurati echoes in "Profondo Rosso" burst in the depiction of the fairy tale told with irrational cursed Suspiria, dated 1977. Pictures become paintings by demonic as unreal and gleams in the subsequent "hell" (1980), to return with "darkness" (1982): a detective story whose connotations are canceled through a palimpsest of vision that hides beneath the surface of the real, horror and fantastic, disintegrating continually representing verisimilitude ready always to rise up, like a curtain, the sneer of the unknown. After "Phenomena" (1985) and "Opera" (1987), in 1990 he directed an episode of "two evil eyes" (the other being directed by George Romero) inspired by the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. In 1993 turns "Trauma" played by his daughter Asia, protagonist of the subsequent "Stendhal Syndrome" (1995) and "the Phantom of the Opera" (1998). "I don't sleep" marks the return to glacial and fatal yellow thriller reflections, always driven by the "great sails of irrational and delirious" that Silver can explain with his customary skill. His cinema is the only one to be recognized also by great directors from overseas as European benchmark in performing arts of suspense and fantasy, a "yellow" whose connotations are canceled through visions that conceal, underneath the surface of the real, horror and fantastic. In addition to his masterpieces, just remember that Dario Argento has financed feature films of other Italian Directors (such as those by Lamberto Bava or Michele Soavi), or television series including goes at least mentioned "the door on the dark" (1972), in which he directed the episodes "the tram" and "witness".