Dario Argento / L. Andrew Cooper.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cooper, L. Andrew, 1977-

Series:

Contemporary film directors

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Argento, Dario--Criticism and interpretation.

Argento, Dario.

Argento, Dario--Interviews.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Interviews.

Physical Description:

x, 186 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2012]

Summary:

Commanding a cult following among horror fans, Italian film director Dario Argento is best known for his work in two closely related genres, the crime thriller and supernatural horror, as well as his influence on modern horror and slasher movies. In his four decades of filmmaking, Argento has displayed a commitment to innovation, from his directorial debut with 1970's suspense thriller The Bird with the Crystal Plumage to 2009's Giallo. His films, like the lurid yellow-covered murder-mystery novels they are inspired by, follow the suspense tradition of hard-boiled American detective fiction while incorporating baroque scenes of violence and excess.

While considerations of Argento's films often describe them as irrational nightmares, L. Andrew Cooper uses controversies and theories about the films' reflections on sadism, gender, sexuality, psychoanalysis, aestheticism, and genre to declare the anti-rational logic of Argento's oeuvre. Approaching the films as rhetorical statements made through extremes of sound and vision, Cooper places Argento in a tradition of aestheticized horror that includes De Sade, De Quincey, Poe, and Hitchcock. Analyzing individual images and sequences as well as larger narrative structures, he reveals how the director's stylistic excesses, often condemned for glorifying misogyny and other forms of violence, offer productive resistance to die cinema's visual, narrative, and political norms. Book jacket.

Contents:

Dario Argento: Doing Violence on Film 1

Against Criticism: Opera and The Stendhal Syndrome 5

Opera 8

The Stendhal Syndrome 17

Against Interpretation: The First Five Gialli 23

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage 26

The Cat o' Nine Tails 37

Pour Flies on Grey Velvet 43

Deep Red 52

Tenebre 62

Against Narrative: The Three Mothers Trilogy and Phenomena 73

Suspiria 75

Inferno 94

Mother of Tears 107

Phenomena 119

Against Conventions: From Trauma to Giallo 127

Trauma 129

The Stendhal Syndrome (Revisited) 133

Sleepless 134

The Card Player 137

Do You Like Hitchcock? 140

Giallo 142

Interviews with Dario Argento 149

Filmography: Feature Films and Television Directed by Dario Argento 155.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes filmography.

ISBN:

9780252037092

025203709X

9780252078743

0252078748

OCLC:

788269563