- Careful, I'm moving it down ok? - Yes yes.
Shhh!
On the other side.
Attilio try to turn further, to the other side.
I'll go from below, you from above.
When there are no dogs.
Leaves, leaves, shake the leaves.
- Nice? - Good!
We cross the leaves like a person passing through them.
Ready? Go!
But what is Dario Argento's fear?
In short, I'm afraid of many things.
And the biggest fear you have right now?
Yes, yes, I'm really scared that's why I also work on holidays
there are only a few days left until the movie starts
and I'm afraid of the film.
This movie is like a person
like a bride I have to meet and I'm afraid of being rejected
but then she never rejects me
I have this little fear.
Do you feel the wind?
But how long have we been in the car?
Well, it’s almost an hour.
Couldn't we find a place closer to home!?
Maybe here in the countryside you can isolate yourself a little more.
Hello Maestro, welcome!
Good morning.
Come and let me introduce you to the hotel staff.
- Good evening, Ilaria. - Good evening.
- Good evening, Luce. - Good evening.
Good evening darling.
- Good evening Jaime. - Good evening.
Please, I'll show you the way.
We set up a small welcome buffet.
Thank you.
My mom was Elda Luxardo
who was a very famous photographer
of the 40s, 50s, and 60s.
She was specialized in showing the beauty of women.
My school was very close
to my mother's studio
so after school I always went there.
She photographed the divas of the time
like Loren, Lollobrigida
all these amazing beauties.
And I was there in a corner of the dressing room
where they put on their makeup and dressed up
I stayed there doing my homework
but I looked, I saw, I saw
how they put on their make-up
I still have the sweetish smell of make-up in my nose.
Then when I found myself on set for the first time
I immediately saw that I knew how to show the female figure in the best way.
Women, girls are very important in my movies
because I remember how my mother depicted them
how she elevated them.
I start the film in seven days and in the last days
there are no Sundays... Look how cute she is.
- She is nice! - Sweet isn't she?
What do you like the most about a woman? What strikes you?
The face!
I find his movies entertaining.
You don’t watch them to get sexually aroused
you watch them because, you know, they are exciting and effervescent.
They leave you with a little tachycardia which isn’t that intense
which is neither nonsexual nor necessarily sexual.
There is pure excitement like the one experienced by a kid
who discovers coca cola for the first time and wants more.
You watch Dario’s movies, with screaming women, whether it’s through a cinemascope
or not, in extremely bright colors, with all those hands covered with gloves
and it’s beautiful, it’s exciting and you just want to watch more.
Our house was all about cinema.
My mom was a successful stars' photographer.
My dad was a manager at Unitalia.
In the distribution of Italian films abroad.
Dad was friend with the producers.
He traveled with Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren
who then met my mother.
Our world was cinema, directors, actors
photographers.
It was everywhere, these were our friends were those.
I was a kid
I was on holiday in the Dolomites, with my family
and one evening we went to
a theatre that was in town.
They were screening
"The Phantom of the Opera" with Claude Rains.
And I was moved, I liked that film a lot.
It revealed to me some parts of the soul that I didn't know
even a certain sick love that I didn't know could exist.
That was the first time
that I experienced those feelings.
My mum
didn't have, let's say, a regular childhood.
Her dad was a very adventurous man.
He liked to go to the centre of Brazil
and had no qualms about taking his family with him.
So no one knows where my mum was born, she was born somewhere.
So when she was very little
she had misadventures with poisonous spiders.
This was her childhood
and this had an impact on Dario's upbringing.
During the war in 1941 with Dario newborn
she took newborn Dario to see his father who was in Slovenia
on the battlefields
because she didn't want to leave her husband alone,
the passion was too strong.
My grandmother didn't like to talk about her work.
She was a great artist, but after she became a mom she put her job away.
Maybe regretfully and she never talked about it.
When we asked her "Grandma take a family photo" she refused.
When we took pictures all together
she struck crazy poses, a bit retro as her photos.
So she never taught me anything about photography
however I observed her work a lot, and I believe also my father did.
This almost supernatural aesthetic sense
these chiaroscuro, these mythological poses
it was such a perfect form of aesthetic. It almost created complexes.
My dad has always encouraged Dario to read
because the basis of culture is reading.
My father's library was very extensive, there were so many books
and I read a lot of them.
All books for grown-ups, that I read as a kid instead.
What's going on Dario? You look puzzled.
Where the fuck did you take me?
But why? It’s a famous hotel People come from all over Italy.
I hate famous hotels!
But everyone knows you love to write in hotels.
I know, but I hate famous hotels!
So you would not write a movie here?
I don't know, maybe yes.
Can you please bring us two fruit juices, please?
Of course.
Thank you.
Since the father was close to the film press,
when Dario finished his studies, he sent him
as an apprentice to "Giornale dello Spettacolo"
which was the official Magazine of Italian cinema.
Then he worked for "Paese Sera"
but he was the assistant of the assistant of the assistant.
So initially they sent him to do the review of ballets
and things that weren’t interesting to anyone in the editorial team
Dario Argento, director.
Argento, director for how long? Didn't you start out as a film director?
No, I've been a sailor, so I've sailed through many harbours.
I was a critic when I was very young.
Then I wrote for cinema as a screenwriter and I thought this would be my path
and I really liked this solitary relationship
with the typewriter at home.
I loved it.
Marisa was my high school classmate.
We studied together
and so one day we were both studying at our school friend’s house.
We were late
and so I asked Dario if he could pick us up
because our friend's house was far away.
I was a little annoyed I must say because he stopped at Marisa's house
and he talked to her for 15, 20 minutes
while I stood there waiting for them.
Why did you fall in love with Dario Argento?
Amazing!
I fell in love with Dario Argento
because I could not do otherwise, knowing him.
I was still in high school and I was his sister's classmate.
That's how I met him, we were friends
and so I had the opportunity to know
her legendary brother who was already working for a newspaper
and for the showbiz section!
So he had charm, for an eighteen year old like me.
It was obvious that I fell in love.
What surprised me was that he fell in love with me!
Yes, I'm leaving, everything seems fine here.
Dario is starting to settle in.
Yes, yes, you know how he is
at first he hates having everyone around, then slowly he relaxes.
The place is beautiful, but it's terribly hot
but maybe you can also take a swim in the pool
"That Italian is starting to worry me!"
That's what the master of thrilling, Alfred Hitchcock, said
after seeing Dario Argento's first movie!
His way of using the camera has greatly influenced me.
It follows the detective who climbs the stairs and reaches the top
and it turns on itself then it follows him from behind again.
The camera tells so much!
Another one who influenced me is Sergio Leone
with whom I wrote, together with Bernardo Bertolucci
"Once Upon a Time in the West".
I understood that him, who had worked with the most famous
Italian and foreign screenwriters,
having to make a movie where the protagonist was a woman,
he thought that these screenwriters of a certain age,
did not know women, they didn't know how to describe women.
He wanted to get some younger people
whom he thought were more in tune with women
and understood them better.
We spent a long time writing this film
but the female character came out.
Also this one is kissable, she has nothing traditional, she's modern and up-to-date.
For those who haven't figured it out yet
we're on the set of "The Bird with Crystal Plumage"
which is nothing more than the title of a thriller movie
which is currently being filmed in Rome.
Salerno, he certainly doesn't need advice
instead he gives it to this young man, a predestined victim.
Or maybe not, maybe he is the murderer?
Mystery in a thriller is mandatory
and director Dario Argento remained very tightlipped.
Actually whether in art galleries or outside, in the sky
very few birds with crystal plumage have been seen so far
so for the curious ones we will reveal the secret: Ready?
He was already established in cinema as a screenwriter,
he had already written some important screenplays
but directing is another thing, it's all on your shoulders.
I remember I think the first day
I was not on the set so I report it,
apparently he did not shoot anything at all
because he was so nervous that he just wanted to
get familiar with the environment
and my father kept telling him "Relax, don't worry, relax."
It was very emotional for Dario, with no assistant director experience
but only this great culture of movies, that he had watched,
analysed, reworked and discussed with his friends and colleagues.
But afterward, he carried on really fast.
Salvatore Argento, I have a very dear memory of him,
because I worked with him a lot.
He was an extremely generous man, extremely vital.
He knew everything about cinema.
He had already been a producer
before doing with Dario “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage"
because no one at that time wanted Dario to direct that screenplay.
They liked the script, they wanted to buy it
but they didn't want Dario as director.
Salvatore was always behind every movie they made together.
He made the contracts, negotiated, discussed
then the fights between him and Dario were famous because the father
obviously had a budget,
he knew they could not exceed it.
Dario, for certain reasons, thought it was right to exceed it
to achieve a certain effect
and there were furious quarrels
but quarrels that lasted no more than an hour.
Perhaps a movie that isn’t even a giallo, for there is no suspense
nor mystery around who the killer is
but mainly an erotic representation
of men murdering women, is "Peeping Tom" by Michael Powell.
In the aesthetic of the film,
you can spot many elements belonging to "Peeping Tom"
while watching "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage".
I remember a phone call
made with the old phones still attached to the wall at home
with Sergio Corbucci, who was the author of a subject called "Incubus"
which became the movie “The Girl Who Knew Too Much"
after "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" came out
and was already a hit at the box office.
Sergio, who was a nice person too
asked my father
"But that film is a bit too similar to ours.
what are we going to do here?"
And my father told him "What are we going to do with it?
It's a great movie, ours went bad
let's be satisfied that there is someone in Italian cinema
who manages to bring audience to the kind of cinema we like"
When his first movie come out "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage."
I was so terrified that I didn't even remember what I had watched.
Yes, so my father watched the film with Lombardo
and I didn't want to go
because I already knew that Lombardo had negative thoughts.
And instead my father went there, he watched the movie
and in the end everyone said
"No, the movie isn't worth it, it isn't worth it".
Because it was a thriller different
from the other thrillers seen up to that moment
which were very flat
instead this was bizarre
full of new ideas.
And then they all went up in Lombardo's large studio.
On one side there was Lombardo's famous secretary, her name was Cesarina.
She was eating a sandwich for lunch
and her hands were shaking.
"What's up Cesarì?
Your hands are shaking!"
She says "The movie scared me, It impressed me very much!”
Goffredo listened and told
"She doesn't understand anything about cinema."
When I first watched the movie
and I saw many people entering the cinema,
I was proud, I was so proud of my brother!
I felt important to him, that's it!
It's Dario Argento, the director who opened up a new dimension
on the anguished world of fear
Dario himself told us how much he had been frightened
by the bombing of Rome in 1943.
It traumatized him.
He probably remembered it for long time
but in a certain sense, he exorcised it immediately afterwards,
by talking about it
by scaring me when I was a child in this big house.
Fear has an abstract meaning to me.
I make films that respect
my intimacy, my depths
but I don't know what real fear is!
When we watched movies when I was little with my mother and father
I remember that in suspense scenes
when maybe the killer appeared from behind
my mother screamed!
So she scared us even more.
But the fact of being a coward
was not accepted.
We lived on the top floor of a large aristocratic building.
He chased me into this big house, therefore mostly dark
in dark corridors etc. scaring me
and then I ran screaming "Please stop!"
He tested what could be scary.
Then when the film had great success
Lombardo called me and told me
"We are very happy, we have followed you so much,
we were always behind you!"
I didn't remind him
that he even wanted to replace me halfway through the film.
1970, a film has caught the world's attention
and it is in the US of Hitchcock, the king of fear where it triumphed
with a 2-million box office success in the first weeks of release.
The movie is "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage"
by Dario Argento.
It had never happened that an Italian film
was number one in the US box office!
Another person who completely changed his mind
was the main actor, Tony Musante.
We argued throughout the film from the first shot to the last.
He saw me as new, so he saw me as someone who was not capable.
I worked in a strange way, crooking the camera shots...
all things he didn't like.
Before leaving
he even came to my house
and he wanted to hit me.
He knocked on the door
"Dario Argento open the door! Open the door!"
"Open the door! Open the door!"
Kicks on the door
I remained silent, I thought
Well, it's ten in the evening
I may have gone to the cinema
I'm not at home
so you can hit as much as you want against the door which is pretty sturdy
Nothing will happen
and so finally he got fed up and left
The film was very successful especially in America
I got a call from Tony Musante
who told me
“We are delighted, we had great success together”
And I told him "Look, that's not true, that's not the story
the story is we fought throughout the film
We didn't love each other at all”
The fashion for the Italian thriller started from him
Dario Argento, 29 years old, only two films
two animals, a bird and a cat, two immediate successes
Almost 3 billion gross.
Now Argento is shooting another film that has four flies in the title
I met Michael Brandon in Los Angeles
Something about him fascinated me immediately
he looked a lot like me!
"Four Flies on Grey Velvet" is a film that
coincided with a first crisis between us
a first crisis between us
What I noticed was the incredible resemblance of the protagonists
with us!
But
to what point does this resemblance correspond to us?
Do you really think that
something hard, something difficult could happen between us?
The question was a bit like this
When there was the first screening of the film
my wife was there too
At the end of the film she looked at me and asked me "What have I done to you?
For you to represent me like this?”
But I hadn't thought at all when I chose the actress
that she indeed looked like my wife
in terms of expressions, face, hair
in short, she really looked like her!
But on the other hand we all get inspired by our private lives
when making movies
once a magician I met in Turin
told me to put animals in the title
I actually put it in the first one because it was quite relevant
and then in the second one I kept it
And here it's actually almost more pertinent than in the first one
because the resolution of the thriller entitled "Four Flies on Grey Velvet"
entitled "Four Flies on Grey Velvet"
is precisely in finding out what this title means
What you are about to see is the first of the four films I’ve made for television
and it is also the first meeting between you and me
because up to now my activity has focused exclusively on cinema
Dario accepted the invitation to work for television
because at the time the Italian broadcasting company
had decided to "rejuvenate" itself
So when his work was broadcast Rai was overwhelmed
with protests from quiet people who had watched it
expecting a sequel to "Melissa" or something like that
and had found themselves in this sort of hellish nightmare
We wrote this series with Alfred Hitchcock's one in mind
"I think you have to introduce it"
I told him I had seen him acting many time
I mean acting in real life
And so his face became very popular for a director
people usually only vaguely knew how directors looked like
They didn't know what they looked like, popularity was given to actors
We were pleased with
the success that has resulted from the success of this project,
but
it also created moments when we were overseen, stopped,
constantly harrassed
It had become difficult to even go to the supermarket to do the groceries.
Damn, it's really broken!
And what do I do now?!
Success is a bad companion for a couple
We understood this
and then we simply noted it
With regret, but also with the idea that
"Okay, let's move on"
I think the case of “The Five Days” is very telling of his artistic route
He was trying to experiment
with something in his poetic view
Comedy is actually an integral part of his work
The fact that this was a terrible flop was for him
I think, I wasn't born yet
cause of great suffering, but also a warning
He said to himself
"Okay, I tried, but now I have to stick to my genre"
Well, when we made "The Five Days” he cared a lot about it
because several articles by major Italian critics ended with
"Pity that Dario Argento wastes his time with these ridiculous giallos"
"He should use his talent or more serious projects"
And Dario was indeed eager to show that he was a versatile director
In my opinion it was this "failure"
of “The Five Days" which brought him back
with a vengeance
in his “Deep Red".
When I was writing "Deep Red" in a cottage in the countryside
without lights and without anything, isolated, alone
I went there in the morning at about 9am
and I only left in the afternoon, at sunset
Sometimes I was scared
As I was digging really
into the depths of my soul
I had moments of fear
anguish, anxiety
Building puzzles of different cities for a movie, creating an imaginary city
It was the right choice, a great idea it seems trivial
But it's the great idea that gave a particular shine to his films
Because they were Italian, but not from a precise Italian city
When Argento had just finished shooting "Deep Red"
he was working on the soundtrack with Giorgio Gaslini
who had already collaborated with him for "The Five Days".
But he wanted
a little more rock music
because Giorgio Gaslini was too traditional with the orchestra
So he said to the sound engineer of the film
Carlo Bixio of Cinevox Record
that he wanted Pink Floyd or Deep Purple
Carlo Bixio said to Dario
“Why don't you listen to these guys I’m producing?”
and Dario came to the studio and he listened to our music and said
"Here, they can fit!"
We have been quite disruptive
because we combined 70s rock
with a thriller movie, which had never been done before
I had already made films that had been extremely successful
but I thought I was doing something different
something dreamlike,
something unrealistic
Putting art
into a sort of great mixer of styles
There was the fascist style of Turin
there was the art déco villa
A big cauldron where I put all my aspirations
"Deep Red" was released in theaters
And it sold 1 million albums in just the first ten months
At the time the Gold Record prize was 1 million albums
now all the discography put together reaches 1 million
Well those were different times!
So we held the record
of being perhaps the best-selling album in the history of Italian music.
"Deep Red" sold more than 4 million records!
She was a woman with a very strong character
very important
of great culture, she was a very cultured person
She inspired me in many things
We travelled a lot together during my trips around the world
she supported me
We discovered the Eastern civilizations
the Andean civilizations
She has been very important to me
Then it finished,
on the other hand
everything ends sooner or later.
How important has love been in your life?
Well it’s important for everyone.
But I also think that in this era that we are living,
love, the ancient love, Dante's love
is no longer so powerful because there are so many distractions
there is television, you can travel easily.
Once people lived in small houses with no light.
Only with candles, in the evening it was cold people needed capes.
They fell ill easily and they all had bad breath
because of stomach diseases.
They had toothaches and there were no dentists.
So once upon a time, love was the only thing...
the only entertainment, like a leisure
Now there are many leisure activities there are discos where you can have fun,
you can travel, there are football matches on television, there are videogames
In short, it has become less the center of the universe, I think
"Suspiria" is a bit
the elephant in the room
for my family and for my life
Because my mother used to tell one story about it
and my father another.
According to my mother as we all know
it's a very personal story
it was my great-grandmother's story.
Witchcraft...
things that were definitely part of my mother's universe.
I've never seen my father studying the magical arts,
instead my mother had a lot of books about it
it was definitely my mother’s subject.
With "Suspiria" we have truly created a genre
that cannot be said to be inimitable
because it has been imitated by many other musicians.
Let's say the real music, the real Goblin sound
it's more like "Suspiria".
Screening, ready? Ready? Go!
It is the key that lets us know where the teachers go every night!
I discovered it yesterday evening, I wrote everything here next to you!
Susy you don't know anything about witches!
We have experienced a lot, we used ethnic tools,
we used bouzouki, the Indian tabla, the Greek bouzouki.
Then I brought in a big Moog
to make electronic music
in short, it was a very avant-garde work.
Still today when I listen to it,
we were way ahead!
But I know this situation,
has been the beginning of the end of my parents' relationship.
This son "Suspiria" which belongs to both,
it was a film, a child they had made together.
Son of a great love and a great passion.
But in my opinion the thing was that
my mother was supposed to play the main character, I think eh!
My mother talked about it a lot
it was a resentment
until the end of her days.
It's kind of something we can't talk about
but it is certainly
the most loved movie abroad.
But I recognize a lot of my mother in this story.
there is a lot of her
and also in "Inferno"
I am anxious before starting a movie.
Why?
I can't get rid of that so much stress
so from the film, I always get very strong depression,
I think about suicide, even if I shouldn't say it, though
tonight I can tell you anything.
I felt like a pull towards the window,
to almost throw myself out.
I don't know why, everything was fine the movie was good
I had a lot of fun, I went out a lot after I got divorced
I was single, I went out, I had a lot of girlfriends
it was wonderful!
I remember that I lived in a hotel in via Veneto
while I was making a film, called "Suspiria"
and
almost every night I was taken from this desire to throw myself out the window
I spoke about it with a doctor friend of mine and he told me
"put a wardrobe in front of the window. Do you have a wardrobe?"
And in fact I barricaded this window
with the wardrobe, a small table and a chair
The suicidal idea is very quick,
it comes to you
and if you have to move the wardrobe
to turn, work, open,
it has already passed.
- But why did you want to die? - I had absolutely no reason to!
I have no idea why this thought came to me...
Because, in fact, I was happy
Strange!
And weren’t the two daughters a reason that could bind you to life?
In fact the idea of committing suicide made me sad for their pain.
But I thought that I was so sad anyway, that I was not of help for the girls.
For me he is my family,
my world, my everything, it has always been like this.
My mother traveled a lot for work
and I've always been with him he’s my point of reference.
He is my dad!
How are you here?
At first I thought it was terrible
because I didn't like the people who stay in this hotel but the weather is good,
then I'm always by myself, always writing,
so basically I meet people only when I eat,
otherwise I don't see anyone, for me it's the same
this or another hotel,
eventually it is the same.
My family was very close when my grandfather was around.
On Sundays we all went to have lunch together,
the classic bourgeois family thing to do.
Keeping the family together, that was him!
In fact, when he became sick, the family fell apart.
These lunches never happened again.
I remember my mother hated them, these bourgeois Sunday lunches,
instead for me they were fantastic.
I think they were important
to my father, who has a bourgeois spirit. They are important for his stability.
I mean, he had these emotional peaks through his work,
to have
such a strong basis
it helped him, held him steady
Even now, I sometimes dream of working on that film!
Everyone who worked on it knew
they were doing something different.
For example, when Dario made Inferno with an American production,
he was shooting with a studio that wanted to teach him how life works
as they’re used to explaining to directors how to make a movie more profitable.
Dario thought “We’re using American money,
we have plenty of it, so we can do even crazier things!"
"We’re going to make movies as crazy as Fellini’s"
"delirious, oneiric ones, which were a success”.
In order to make "Satyricon", Fellini used American money too
and Americans gave him a lot of artistic freedom
so that he could be as extreme in his movie as he wished to
Dario thought he had enough money
even to outperform the craziness of his own films.
Then they told him
“That’s not what we want narratively speaking, etc.” .
For someone who had begun filming
through the production of his father
Who would always defend
and recommend him to investors and distributors.
He could not fathom what they meant
and how money could rewrite his work
Inferno is written as if it was a dream,
kind of like “Age of Gold" or "An Andalusian Dog" by Buñel.
The movie might be harder to understand.
It is the film that has taken most of my time
because I wrote part of it in New York
in winter, while it was snowing
and I stayed in the hotel and wrote
I wrote, I wasn’t satisfied.
The months went by, it was too difficult, it was an alchemic film,
it was an enigmatic film.
The president of 20th Century Fox,
she watched it sitting next to me
At the end she told me
"Look... I didn't understand some things
and I think the audience won't understand”.
It was released in theaters in the rest of the world,
but not in America
because the American audience is not used to this kind of cinema,
so enigmatic and so full of unsolved mysteries.
I let the audience watch the scene
and try to understand why, what did that sentence mean.
In some countries such as England
it was also a great success from the audience,
so these riddles actually interested the audience.
Do you want to scare me?!
We are live with “Blitz", a lighting bolt ripping the darkness.
Let's hear what the music is like
Slowly, slowly.
Grow, grow, grow.
"Tenebrae" brought Argento back to the beginning
he went back to making a Giallo with a classic story
of the assassin who kills everyone with his black glove.
And he wanted the Goblins again for this occasion,
but it was not possible because we had split up in 1978.
After the Goblins, I completely changed genre.
I started making dance music.
I thought that "Tenebrae" should have more modern music
and less 70s rock
Completely electronic work was done
in fact there is not even a drummer, there is the electronic battery
a kind of electronic rock.
When I was assistant on “Tenebrae” and I met Dario's family
I used to see in the cinema
"Salvatore Argento presents"
"a film by Dario Argento"
"produced by Claudio Argento"
"written and directed by Dario Argento"
You entered a universe where you say "Are these all from the same family?"
As I said before, Argento, Argento means silver
and silver is a tinkling thing, a precious thing...
No, instead
let's butcher people!
The Louma was a device that no one had ever used.
This Louma started from a point and circled the whole house
and it entered the window from the other side.
I remember when it was told to the troupe
of “The Passenger” by Antonioni,
that the camera would go out the window in the ending
there was this idea of doing things
that would remain in history, as it has remained in the history of cinema
Dario was immediately
very welcoming and affectionate with me truly like an older brother,
both he and Lamberto protected me because I was very young.
There are a lot of strange people in this job
and they were afraid that I might take a bad turn
because there were those who drank after midnight
and he told me "Be careful, don't drink
If they offer you a drink, say no!”
I told him "But I don't drink, what should I care".
Both of your two daughters have decided to come and live with you
when they were very young.
What was family life like with two girls to raise?
Like the ones of all fathers actually.
And therefore I also had a double responsibility,
and so this pushed me to be more involved in the family
For me it was a beautiful experience
Fiore, will your dad get angry ona the set, but does he get angry also at home?
Has it ever happened with you?
Sure, yes!
- It happens to argue - Of course!
They can't be left as...
a wild horse that
*BANG ♪
you pat its ass and say "Go!"
And it goes.
No, that's not how
you raise a child.
There's absolute equality with both daughters
and I have to say, it's a thing I don't see often
which I don't see much in other families.
So he does one thing for one he also does one thing for the other
there has always been.
And it must be difficult too always having to balance
a smile to one, then a smile to the other, a good word, a good word
a help, a help, a trip, a trip.
Never do a little less for one or a little less for the other
How come?
Yes, yes, it's something that comes instinctive though,
that you know you have to do this, and so you will!
You chose both your daughters in movies
the first was Fiore in "Creepers", making her debut
and you immediately murdered her. Why did he make that choice?
Did it have a meaning or was it just for fun?
No, no, it's not fun.
Making movies is serious business!
Serious and demanding
no, it's never been a joke, entertainment is different
No, I wrote this film having my daughter near me
who was 13 years old,
and I saw her and said "I think she could do it right"
I thought "But she's not an actress
Oh well, but nobody is really an actress at 13"
During a dinner, it was a party
Where there were various movie people
someone thought to play a game.
That is "Who would you like to be in cinema?"
And I said "I would like to be Daria Nicolodi"
"Wait, why?"
"Because she writes films with Dario Argento".
And since I was a big fan of Dario Argento,
who I didn’t meet yet, I expressed this wish.
And in fact then I became after not long
Daria Nicolodi.
"Creepers" is the first film we wrote together
and for him it was a turning point because it was the first film that
he produced or attempted to produce by himself
So he told me "I can't go wrong"
and in fact we had taken a long time to write this screenplay
and at first he gave me some input.
One was
"In my films there is always the family"
And there is family in "Creepers", an absent family
but there is one!
The main character, she is looking for her father, she is looking for a mother
Usually the directors like staying in the shade for a while.
Meaning that only the actors are shown
Instead Dario was a character who everybody knew
also because he is very particular.
And I have to say that when we were hanging out
I was also a bit his "bodyguard"
because everyone went to him to ask for autographs, to bust his balls
I think it’s hard.
And I must say he has always given himself to everyone!
You told that years ago there was a more homemade variant, a famous double
a doppelgänger of Dario Argento, who pretended to be you.
He went around Rome claiming to be Dario Argento,
what did he do?
He went to restaurants to eat and he said that he was Dario Argento
and that he didn't have any change, but it would pass after a few days.
He had nothing to do with me, because he was a guy with long hair
with a prophet's long beard.
They reported him, they took him to the police.
And he started looking for me,
I had to do a press conference where I should have said
that he was not Dario Argento.
"You have to do it by force, by force
otherwise, when I meet you, I'll slaughter you!"
There were a lot of mythomaniacs stalking him, not just that guy.
We just told that guy over there "Listen, what do you want?"
Now we are working, you have to leave us alone,
otherwise we call the police.
Then there was Cozzi who was quite energetic
They started to fight,
and this was a lesson, I think a good one for him, because he never showed up again
He
Lion in cinema, sheep in life! I mean he was scared.
And now I don't remember the names of the women who stalked him
who became obsessed with him
Dario called me and told me he wanted to see me.
I said yes and he said "Well, come on, let's go for a short trip
I'll pick you up at your house, then I drop you off at your house
In the meantime, I'll tell you about the movie".
So, he came to pick me up at my house and we left with the car.
It was a very long ride for me.
He told me the idea he had, how he wanted to realize it
He insisted that I was the perfect character
that Betty was a very pure girl.
It was a word he used a lot.
The atmosphere on the set was one of of great professionalism,
everyone was focused on their plot and a lot of respect for Dario
everyone.
He usually speaks very softly, which I thought was exquisite.
It was a lot of fun because he is very nervous
and then, well, he was talking to me, in five minutes
he would transfer the magic, the electricity to me
and then he would go to the cameraman
and say "This is how it’s done".
Then to the one with the light, he was at the one with the light and makeup,
he was like a lizard moving all over the place.
But it was him, all the rest of us revolved around him.
It's coming at you, no no!
One here!
Look here Cristina, you look at him here!
Yes, come forward, come forward
Ok, you say "no, no, I said no!" ZAM! He got stabbed.
And he fell on your feet, he is here next to your feet.
Every morning they put the adhesive plastes on me with the pins.
Dario always came when I had scenes like that
he would always come to my side, and he would always say to me like this
they're not going to take off, are they?
He would check
"No, no, you've got it well glued, very good."
It was very uncomfortable a lot of times, because I couldn't move my eyes very well.
For him, it was all natural
and he made us feel natural about everything that was going on.
Dario makes a very particular kind of film
which also does not follow the Italian tradition of cinema.
Dario Argento movies were famous abroad
where the culture of these kind of films
was at its peak and moreover also in America.
And a friendship was born between me and Dario
I think before even making the film.
And then I remember we made a good film, one of the best we have ever made
and then it went well all over the world.
You stomp on him, do you understand?! Like this
Yes, hard! You're a fury, understood?!
There was also tension between him and Marsillach
because she must be wet
and he wanted something to be seen through the white blouse.
She didn't want to take off her bra, then Dario sent me
to say "Cristina could you please remove your bra?"
And she said first yes, then no, then she lifted it a bit.
Then when I went back to Dario, he asked me "So?!"
“No, she says no”
And he, in fact, was so angry that he stopped talking to her.
The feeling I get from Dario Argento as a director of actors
for me
it's wonderful, because he helped me a lot.
I don't know if he did it intentionally or not, but he helped me a lot.
That coldness, that detachment, even contempt for me
that he didn't talk to me, or gave me directions
in a very cold way, right?
Very "Put yourself there, I don't know what, and now you have to do this".
Ready now? All set? Fantastic. Come on, everybody.
And maybe like a father to a daughter, right?
Like "let's go help this girl"
To really feel everything that is going on in the film
and I did not feel hurt
that is, I did not perceive that I was the victim and he was the executioner
and I believe that we were on an equal footing,
because I was helping him and he was helping me.
The last memory I have
of Dario Argento on set was
I think we gave each other a hug
I am two Dario Argentos,
There is the normal Dario Argento in life,
then there is another Dario Argento, the one who instead
has a deep dialogue with himself, the dialogue with the dark side of him,
who lives these experiences between the dreamlike and the unreal
and then transmits them to the spectators. So we are two people.
If you have to describe him, who is Dario Argento?
Who is Dario Argento?
I don’t know.
I do not know who Dario Argento is
I'm sorry, but I just don't know, I don't know how to answer this.
Listen, out of curiosity, what do you have in your pocket?
What?
I mean if I frisked you right now, what would I find in your pocket?
- Like a policeman? - Show me
Matches, 10 Lire, two cinema tickets
One "Monsieur Verdoux
"I watched it recently, I watched it the day before yesterday.
This here “The Last Tycoon"
A telephone.
A remote control.
A little train.
A penknife, I found it in front.
An elastic band.
A slightly sucked candy, don't look.
You can hardly see it, a stone.
A glittering
stone.
This is a poem that I translated
by John Donne, a 17th century English poet which is called "Broken Heart".
But above it I put a quote of a sentence
said by Monsieur Verdoux Chaplin.
A very nice quote
"Despair is the narcotic that generates indifference among the people".
Think about it for a moment.
For someone like you seeking isolation
and peace to write in tranquility away from everyone in hotels
isn't the mobile phone a problem now that everyone can reach you everywhere?
No, that's not true, because if I put it on silent mode
no one can reach me.
So...
I once said I believe that he brought me into the world
to have a protagonist in his films
after he broke up with my mother.
Me and my father are very similar, both mentally and physically.
He, although he almost always had female leads.
I think he identified with the main character
and therefore, being myself almost an extension of my father just because,
we had such a similar childhood, two very introverted people,
book worms, both Virgos, very organized.
Then when I became an actress I connected the dots
I said "Ah here it is, the perfect protagonist is me".
I mean I'm my father in those movies!
I spent a long time with Asia
as the main character of my films.
I know that her way of acting attracted me,
to pose, to narrate, to tell her expression,
her face, her smile, her eyes.
She always was
my favourite actress!
That fury, the one that was in Argento until “Opera"
has faded a bit and changed, what do you think happened?
What changed in Dario at the end of the 80s?
First of all, in "Opera" there’s really been a budget exploit.
Dario also called an Oscar-winning cinematographer: Ronny Taylor
Those were the days when Dario imagined a dolly
attached to the ceiling of the Parma Regio Theater.
Slowly descending with the a remote-controlled camera
simulating the subjective view of a crow
These are those things that took three weeks to build,
with testing and everything
and then didn’t work very well.
They were times when those things could still be done.
At some point we started to film in English
choosing an American actor or actress,
making these international products
it has stopped working, they are no longer done.
Actually this change after "Opera",
I link it a little to my grandfather's death.
An event, the death of grandfather Salvatore,
which I know touched him a lot
and therefore he has changed like everyone else change, like human beings
and therefore our cinema, our works are a reflection of who we become.
What happened in my father's cinema is very natural
and it's a good thing that he didn't stay still
making the same cinema over and over again.
A person who always remains the same,
it means that he hasn't evolved.
My father evolved as a human being, although he has mellowed over time.
He'd hate to hear that, but I'm happy for him
The key is television, television has funded ever since
all Italian cinema.
But it was no longer the old Italian cinema
because Italian cinema was made for television,
done with the TV clauses.
Among the clauses, there is also the one that says that if your film is R-rated,
you must return all the money we gave you to make it.
Which changed cinema because the authors were no longer
free to express their true imagination as they wanted.
Dario always replies "We made that cinema, then that cinema was transformed".
It's nobody's fault, it's the market's fault.
At a certain point there was no more request.
I had the idea for a film.
I have to propose this to Dario Argento
and it was "Seven".
The one written by me took shape,
it had been even more “Americanized”
and then it became the success it became.
And when I see Dario I always tell him
"Look, the credit, you don't know, but the credit is yours!"
At first he was a revolutionary.
He wanted to stand out from everyone, do better than everyone else.
Then he got into a system.
Earlier his films were produced, but not only his
all Italian films were produced to do better than the previous film.
By putting in more gore, more crazy scenes, more madness
all this broke with the arrival of television.
"Trauma" marks a turning point because there is no more art,
there is no more theatrics
there’s the American world.
"Trauma" was a very difficult film.
I wanted to work with my father from the beginning
but I started when I was nine and he called me when I was 16,
after I had already made several films
as an actress, with great authors.
And I was like, "But when is he going to call me?"
And then he did.
I was terribly afraid of disappointing him.
Plus it was a film in English,
where I had to speak with a Romanian accent
and there was the theme of anorexia.
My sister Anna suffered from anorexia,
so it was a thorny subject.
I had studied many books and in those days I didn't know a lot about anorexia,
in the early 90s.
It was quite
painful!
Also because
we have never spoke about this topic with my sister Anna
that we were making a film about her.
Because what was said at that time was that anorexia comes
from a girl with an absent father
and a mother too present, which is kinda what the plot of the film speaks about.
The character of the mother had to be my mother and I was supposed to be my sister.
My sister came to watch the film,
but there was no speech about it.
"Look, this is to help you" we did a kind of psychodrama, but only with the film.
It didn't help anyone, maybe just us at that time
The memory of "The Stendhal Syndrome" is not so fresh,
but between the movies he made with Asia is the one that touches me the most.
It's a fabulous film
and I find the film to be almost more cerebral
than "Inferno", which is maybe his film or is openly.
“The Stendhal Syndrome" is my favorite movie we did together.
I felt a great freedom as an actress in that character.
She was a powerful character,
in fact I remember that during the shooting filming,
I felt a bit haunted by this character.
And even when the film was finished, that character stayed with me.
She wasn't a spirit of light, she was very dark.
Come forward, come come.
Come forward, come, see? Never stop.
OK, another one.
Come down and immediately open.
Ready? Where are you looking now, are you looking down?
No.
No, I look like that.
Look at the other look.
But there were scenes in “The Stendhal Syndrome" really
really hard to shoot.
At that time I didn't have the courage to tell my father
"But why do we have to do these scenes?"
Because in the end he always says "Because the movie is like that!
Oh well, you're my daughter but you're also the actress,
we have to do these scenes, that's how I wrote it!”
I can't explain
why
we shoot these extreme scenes.
Sure, it's unusual for a father and daughter
to make such extreme films, even from a sexual point of view,
especially such a young girl in her twenties.
But our relationship
is kinda grown
and precisely by the fact that we went
into the abyss so deep into the human psyche together
and then we'd come out the other side
without a scratch
She is a sensitive girl, who tried to become a policewoman
exactly to go against this strong sensitivity.
Which inevitably comes out in front of such beautiful paintings
and while travelling she is lost, she is a touristcon.
She feels unwell and her oversensitivity comes out.
Her identity breaks and each part of her personality comes out.
She has no control of herself.
The relationship between father and daughter is fabulous.
It must make a lot of women jealous
or envious to witness such a creative, artistic and joyful relationship.
And yes, they are both fascinating beings, kind of unbridled, never self-censuring.
They have their own limits and their relationship code but
they make movies in a joyful atmosphere.
Of course, there are things in life that can’t be joyful, but
they are exactly where they want to be, and they are proud
to be where they stand, and they work their magic.
Few fathers and daughters
can brag about having collaborated together on such ambitious projects
With her face and... you see...
And I go "Oooo Mon tresor"
When we shot that sex scene
in "The Phantom of the Opera",
there was a sword of Damocles hanging on this scene.
We hadn't talked about it when we were going to shoot it.
That day my grandmother Fulvia was there
my mother's mother with whom me and my father were very close,
came to meet us in Budapest that very day.
And my grandmother sat with her chair facing away, to not to look at the set.
I was embarrassed and I already had the angel tattoo on the belly,
they had hidden the tattoo with make-up
and my father had complained to the operator saying
"Oh well the tattoo is really big".
I then cried even more, I felt humiliated.
I mean I was losing my virginity in front of my father.
It was just the Electra complex to the nth degree.
It’s been very tiring.
Just a day to forget.
But then when it was over, I definitely cried,
my father didn’t cry, but he was relieved.
I should have done “The Card Player", but I was in the United States,
where the production of my second film as a director “The Heart is Deceitful”
started very quickly.
So I couldn't go back to Italy, for me it was a unique opportunity
make my second film as a director at 27 in the United States.
My father was very upset
and then he didn't talk to me for a couple of years
for this reason.
For me it was terrible, but also for him I think.
And I remember that I contacted him, when I finished shooting the film,
to ask him for advice
but it took a while for our relationship
to come back to how it was before the movie.
I would say like before I became a mother
Argento,
your vocation is to terrorize people.
Yes
yes, it is a vocation, but also a personal, cultural predisposition
perhaps It’s also a constant, who knows, of my nightmares
of my dreams, even of my cultural choices
But it's complicated.
I would not even say that the predisposition is just terrifying
because terror is a phase that beginners provoke.
I'm looking for panic, which is something more,
it’s a deeper penetration.
If we want to compare panic to terror and fear,
we can say that fear, for example,
it is a feverish state with a temperature of 100.5.
Instead panic is 106 degrees temperature, that is delirium.
Many years ago I said that fear was
like having a feverish state with a temperature of 100.5
and panic was even higher fever.
As a joke to explain what panic is.
Panic is also something quite inexplicable
that takes you to a dimension you don't know
that you can't control.
The only time I've ever seen my father cry was when my grandfather Salvatore died.
It was Easter, we went to the Vatican
and there was Pope Wojtyla speaking.
My father was not religious, not yet at the time
and I don't know why he brought me and my sister Fiore to see the Pope.
And then, seeing the Pope speak,
my father bursts into tears with his hands folded like this
he asked for forgiveness "Forgive me, forgive me" and cried.
And I know that he was speaking to his father, my grandfather.
This is still a very strong, very touching image for me today,
seeing my father fragile.
Because he is just a man from another time,
he has never shown himself fragile, even today
He hates to be seen fragile.
Since the moment I first spoke about the story,
before I even started writing anything.
I’ve been thinking about how Dario would be amazing in the father’s role.
Maybe because of how familiar he is to me
and because of his Italian ways, how he moves his hands while he is speaking,
it reminded me of my own father.
I remembered him during his presentation of his films to the public,
when he introduced "Phantom of the Opera",
the guy is on stage and for an hour straight,
he can’t stop talking
and people are clapping as if they were watching the movie itself.
He’s so much more charismatic
than most comedians I know in France or elsewhere.
I thought "Hey, he’d be perfect"
Even better than the actor
who played "Umberto D." in De Sica’s movie
Do you know why I make cinema?
Why doing it, why? I know why, I absolutely know.
I do what I do because I want to be loved!
The car arrives at four o'clock
Okay, let's go
May I accompany you, Maestro?
Thank you.
He's someone who makes you want to live,
someone who makes you want to have a family.
Someone who makes you want to make movies
and someone who makes you want to watch other people’s movies.
When I asked him to be in the movie,
he said “Why are you proposing this to me?”
"I’m young, can’t you see?", and I replied
“I do, but, we can lie, make you look older, etc."
It’s true, he’s an eternal teenager
with the cinematographic intelligence of an adult director.
However, his behavior is that of an everlasting teenager.
Various directors are trained on his films,
one of these, for example, is Tim Burton
who came to Rome and asked to meet Dario Argento.
What did the two do? Did they talk?
No!
Because they both knew to be ordinary people in real life.
Well Tim Burton
is Tim Burton...
that is, a badly dressed man with awful shoes, with a black ugly coat,
with big teeth forward, a bit long hair.
We know Dario Argento
and instead they know very well that they transform when they do their job.
If you know De Palma, Carpenter, they seems like two normal gentlemen.
No, Dario is Dario Argento, he has no equal.
Because Dario Argento is fear!
I still remember New York at the time of "Inferno",
"Alien" just came out.
Dario and I went to see "Alien",
we were so scared that we had our legs over the seat.
I remember this like it was yesterday.
He was someone who was happy in our company, he liked to joke.
He had a sense of humor,
he had a sense of humor!
People can’t believe it, but yes he does have it!
One thing is the movies you make, one thing is how you are, right?
He has luckily never felt like a star,
because in this way he remained a very concrete person
Dario Argento is Dario Argento
he is like Andy Warhol
he paints you a painting, it's an Andy Warhol painting!
And therefore a great artist!
Many young people know his films, they discover and love them
but many others only know that "he's the scary one!"
They talk and say "But who is this Dario Argento?"
He’s the one who did "The Exorcist", didn't you watch it?
That is, they universalized it.
Dario is now fear himself!
When I won the David di Donatello, I was 18 years old.
I returned home with this prize
and my father who, in short, he is one of the greatest Italian directors of all time,
he had never been nominated, he had never won.
Then he won it later as a lifetime achievement award.
I went home, we looked at each other
and he told me "Oh well, sticazzi!” (“Who cares”)
This thing frees me a lot because
in fact sticazzi, because who cares about the prizes!
This was the important lesson.
It's not the rewards, it's the work. Work is the most important thing.
The real prize is being able to make a film
It's like a miracle
to be able to make films, today more than ever!
My dreams
they've changed, they've...
they changed because I changed.
I think that
I will continue to explore
my depths
my dark half
my dark half that is
in reality
the true
the true reason why I do cinema in this way
Implacable death exists
and you can't escape,
but I don't think about it.
Yes, you made me talk for almost two hours!
- Three quarters of an hour - No, no, no, it's 11!
Yes, it was 10. An hour, an hour!