Dark Glasses (Movie)

Subterms

    Latest story

    63 Shares149 Views

    Do Panic: Dario Argento’s Cinema

    by

    The Italian horror director is the subject of a new documentary and a film retrospective. But his artistry can be summed up in his feature directing debut, “The Bird With the Crystal Plumage.”There’s a moment in “Dario Argento Panico,” a new documentary about the Italian horror movie maestro Dario Argento, that made me wonder if I’ve misunderstood why his assertively macabre and stylishly grotesque films so deeply give me the willies. It comes late in the film in Argento’s own words — word, actually — as he talks about what makes his scary movies scary.“I’m looking for panic,” he says.Panic: terror’s more dire, immediate, physically inescapable weird sister. The Italian word for panic is right there in the title of Simone Scafidi’s humanizing and absorbing documentary (on Shudder Feb. 2), and it courses through Argento’s filmography.But I was caught off guard hearing that word on Argento’s lips, because it laid bare what I feel when I watch his films, a sensation I assumed was mere fright. Its real-world parallel is the gut punch I received one night when the lights went out in an elevator I was in, just as it came to a shuddering halt between the eighth and ninth floors. Trapped in dangling darkness, I got scared, and then rescued. But first, I panicked. We all know that feeling, but Argento feeds on it, monstrously.Starting Jan. 31, Argento fans and the curious uninitiated have a terrific chance to sample the 83-year-old master’s disquieting work when Shudder and the IFC Center in Manhattan present — here’s that word again — “Panic Attacks: The Films of Dario Argento.”Stefania Casini and Jessica Harper in “Suspiria.”Seda SpettacoliThe 13-movie retrospective, which continues through Feb. 8, features the director’s best-known titles, including the 1977 supernatural dance academy shocker “Suspiria” (also streaming on Tubi), the more traditional whodunit “Deep Red” from 1975 (on Shudder), and the less heralded (and unfortunately more cornball) fare like “Dracula 3D” from 2013 (on Amazon Prime Video in 2-D). Not included is Argento’s most recent film, “Dark Glasses,” starring his actress-director daughter Asia Argento, which came out in 2022 to mixed reviews and is streaming on Shudder.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

    More stories

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Dark Glasses’ Review: She Wears Her Shades at Night

      by

      A prostitute blinded by a stalker tries to protect a young boy. But in his first film in 10 years, Dario Argento opts for visuals as banal as the scares.Five decades ago, the Italian director Dario Argento (“Suspiria,” “Inferno”) melded slasher flicks with modern art, saturating the screen with lurid colors that were more captivating than the ideas underneath them. Giallo, the genre Argento popularized and, later, clumsily satirized in a poorly received 2009 film of the same name, is often snubbed as having more style than substance. “Dark Glasses,” Argento’s first film in 10 years, responds by stripping away the style, too.Visuals are overrated, this intermittently ticklish thriller seems to insist. Argento and his cinematographer, Matteo Cocco, limit the film’s palette to shades of mildewy gray-green spattered by crimson blood (shot, of course, in gruesome close-up). Our heroine, a surly call girl named Diana (Ilenia Pastorelli), is too vexed to fuss about this dishwater depiction of Rome. In the opening scene, she irritates her eyes gazing at a solar eclipse; shortly after, she’s blinded when a serial murderer in a van rams her car into oncoming traffic, killing the other driver and orphaning a 7-year-old named Chin (Xinyu Zhang).How can Diana dodge her deadly stalker when she can’t — and won’t — ever see his face? Argento has masterminded a setup that empowers him to dazzle audiences with sound instead of sight. Oddly, he doesn’t follow through on it, despite declaring his intentions with an extended cameo from his daughter Asia Argento as a care worker who teaches Diana how to listen for aural clues to her surroundings. The inept cops on the case (Mario Pirrello, Maria Rosaria Russo and Gennaro Iaccarino) wax on about the limits of the eye — they’re stymied by fuzzy CCTV footage, microscopic chips of paint, and vehicles that change color from black to white — but the film’s execution never proves their point. In one ineffectual detour, Diana smashes lamps in an attempt to hide from her pursuer. Not only does the scene continue to be filmed in relative brightness, but her brainstorm doesn’t affect the chase one bit.The scares are as banal as the visuals. Argento made his reputation on tangled yarns where witchy women usually wielded the knife. At 82, he’s finally resorted to a straightforward male-sicko-slays-sex workers tale. He and co-writer Franco Ferrini may believe they’re saying something or other about misogyny. (Even Diana’s non-murderous clients are varying degrees of awful.) Still, the writers seem to have spent little time developing their villain, who is so dashed off that the baddie doesn’t even commit to a weapon, reaching for garrotes, blades, nooses and steering wheels as though from a random grab bag. (At least Arnaud Rebotini’s spidery synthesizers set the right mood.)Yet, while it’s easy to dismiss “Dark Glasses” as the work of a master gone soft, Pastorelli’s prickly, sharp-tongued Diana is perhaps the most charismatic leading lady of Argento’s career. She dominates her surroundings — a rarity in his films — and delivers a performance that creeps close to camp (particularly while being strangled by a snake). The best moments of the film involve Diana’s unsentimental alliance with Chin, the orphan who offers her more protection than she’s able to afford him. Their quirkily endearing relationship allows the horror legend to dabble in a genre that’s wholly new to him: the odd couple comedy.Dark GlassesNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. Watch on Shudder. More