Argento Against Andre: Surrealism as Anti-Neorealism

Both emerging from the Italian film industry, albeit at different epochal contexts, the neorealist movement and the cinema of horror/giallo auteur Dario Argento begs comparison. Whilst they ostensibly seem worlds apart, these two distinct perspectives on film exist in dialectical conversation with one another, with Argento clearly decrying the foundational ethos of the preceding generation of Italian cinema.

Where film critic and theorist Andre Bazin saw realism and immersion as film's ultimate goal (1967a), Argento is far more interested in providing a cinema of spectacle and whilst Argento's early films in the giallo sub-genre (the proto-slasher films that often invoke the works of Agatha Christie) are certainly more tame than his later experimentation with technicolor intensity and supernatural storytelling, they possess a disregard for stern realism all the same. For example, the passage of time, which in Bazin's formulation should be continuous and naturalistic (1967a), is played with particularly in Tenebre (1982). Scenes play out of order as flashbacks disguised as dream sequences slowly unveil the film's secret.

The flashback-qua-dream sequence in Tenebre (1982).

This is perhaps the most transgressive instance of that giallo trope which emerges perennially throughout Argento's films, wherein which an element shown early in the narrative becomes pivotal to solving the core mystery. This is more obvious elsewhere in the film, particularly when the young Gianni attempts to remember the telling detail he had repressed from viewing one of the murders, but in the flashback-qua-dream sequence particularly the flow of naturalistic time is disrupted.
This echoes similar moments in Argento's directorial debut, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (Argento, 1970), and his wider oeuvre, even playing a role in the supernatural gialli Suspiria (Argento, 1977) and Inferno (Argento, 1980). In Suspiria though, Argento disrupts normative time in another way: by utilising the soundtrack. Goblin's prog-rock accompaniment blares out "Witch" for the audience, long before the story the character's suspect the secret of the Tanzakademie, ensuring that Suspiria presents itself as a non-chronological experience. I think we can say that the use of music in Argento's cinema is also decidedly anti-realist in its implementation, as often the line is blurred between diegetic and non-diegetic sound (notably in Tenebre's use of classical music).

Rose is attacked in Inferno (1980).

Whilst Suspiria and Inferno are both anti-realist in their supernatural subject matter, I think that's less relevant to the Argento rejection of the neorealist tendency than a wholesale commitment to "simultaneous cohesion and incoherence" (Heller-Nicholas, 2015: 19) that permeates the giallo and its supernatural counterparts alike. That being said, the supernatural subject matter, and the intention to cultivate a Gothic fairytale aesthetic, accommodated a space for Argento to push against realism in fiercer ways, with Suspiria arguably being the zenith: "Every facet of Suspiria is laced with a knowing self-awareness that not only shuns but also aggressively mocks any attempt at realism" (Heller-Nicholas, 2015: 14).

Reflecting on the "pure" cinema of De Sica's Bicycle Thieves, Bazin highlighted that there was "[n]o more actors, no more story, no more sets, which is to say that in the perfect aesthetic illusion of reality there is no more cinema" (Bazin, 1967b: 60). Suspiria doesn't cast non-actors, in fact it casts actors with a subtextual specificity. Arguably bringing an audience out of the immersion, but operating in a sphere of recognisable consciousness and signifying meta-narrative traits, Argento cast Jessica Harper as Suzy Bannion, who has become known for presenting "characters that straddled innocence and experience" (Heller-Nicholas, 2015: 33), a relative neophyte to co-stars and cinematic icons Joan Bennett and Alida Valli. There is potentially something to be said about the resemblance between Harper and a young Joan Bennett, but both of the older women are utilised to play homage to the noir genre and their roles within it (Schulte-Sasse, 2002).

However, interestingly, Argento doesn't seem to reject the realist ethos with regards to location shooting so vehemently. He utilises some shots on location, notably Berlin's Königsplatz, but it's important to note that even here the reality we see is distorted and warped, akin to the meticulous set design that elsewhere invokes surreal, dreamlike qualities.

The iconic line in Suspiria, suggesting that "bad luck isn’t brought by broken mirrors, but by broken minds" (Argento, 1977), is considered by Heller-Nicholas to be rendered totally false by the subsequent discussion with an occult expert and the 'reality' of the film's witches (2015); I would disagree, as I think the line instead operates as one face of the film's duality, and a key component in the blurring of the fantastical realm and the real one. That the witch of Suspiria appears to be real belies how fundamentally unreal the rest of the film is designed and, from her first steps into Berlin, protagonist Suzy Bannion is confronted with a warped fairytale world of artifice. Meticulously designed sets and non-naturalistic lighting choices can be read as eschewing the idea that any of this is really happening.

Meticulously constructed set design delivering an eerie, dreamlike visage in Suspiria (1977).

As the film delivers an eerie effect of the nightmarish unconscious brought violently to the forefront, Professor Milius, who seeks to disprove his cynical colleague Mandel, does not go against the earlier statement, but rather aligns himself with the broken mirror, rather than the broken mind. Suzy is trapped in a nightmarish hellscape, caught in the battle between philosophies of the real and the fantastical; she is free from the nightmare only once she synthesises both viewpoints, that it may well be the case that nothing is real, but she must act as if it's real nonetheless.

If Argento's films are concerned with making sense of that which cannot be understood then they are in direct conflict with the neorealist desire to be immersive and its dealings with understandable, even universal, experiences. In fact, in Tenebre (Argento, 1982), Arthur Conan-Doyle is invoked to this effect: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth". This, perhaps, is Argento's manifesto, his guiding principle, in his surrealist approach. If the approaches differ, I think we should look to where the contexts converge, particularly with the politics of fascism. To the neorealists, fascism was pertinently present, always only slightly out of view. For Argento though, enough time had passed for a Europe in thrall to fascist fervour to transition into history and, then, into fantasy. Where neorealism sought to explore societal redefinitions in fascism's wake, Argento invokes fascistic (both Italian and German) historical context to blur the lines of the actual and the macabre. In the aforementioned Königsplatz, the fantastical invocation of history turns a blind man's dog upon him, murdering him brutally. Witchcraft is linked to the natural in Argento's two supernatural classics, with the possessed dog and maggot-infestation in Suspiria and murderous cats and rats in Inferno; it is the consigning of fascism to regrettable, but naturalised, history that is at the core of its re-emergence in violent form. This elucidates a key difference in the two cinematic portrayals of fascism: neorealism is concerned with the structural violence committed on the subject of (post-)fascism and the scars it leaves behind, where as Argento invokes it as a fearsome return of the repressed.

"[I]t is clear that if we wish to remain on the level of art, we must stay in the realm of imagination. I ought to be able to look upon what takes place on the screen as a simple story, an evocation which never touches the level of reality, at least unless I am to be made an accomplice after the fact of an action or at least of an emotion which demands secrecy for its realisation. This means that the cinema can say everything, but not show everything. There are no sex situations-moral or immoral, shocking or banal, normal or pathological-whose expression is a priori prohibited on the screen, but only on condition that one resorts to the capacity for abstraction in the language of cinema, so that the image never takes on a documentary quality."

(Bazin, 1967b: 174)

Berlin's Königsplatz in Suspiria (1977).

Bazin decried the making visual of sexuality and violence, if films were to possess the qualities of art. I'm sure Argento would disagree. The differences and divergent points continue: where the neorealists looked towards new, post-war configurations of masculinity, Argento seems more concerned with femininity. Neorealism took its inspiration from the streets, embodying documentary quality, and Argento took his inspiration from literary works and high art. "Argento's narrative universe is one where logic and reason are destabilised and subverted," (Heller-Nicholas, 2015: 32), where as neorealist filmmakers, such as Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica, had depicted the logical, sequential consequences to actions. Through all the minutia, Argento has placed primacy on the spectacle, an act that any neorealist would consider perverse.

Works Cited:

Bazin, A. (1967). What is Cinema? Volume 1. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bazin, A. (1967). What is Cinema? Volume 2. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Heller-Nicholas, A. (2015) Devil's Advocates: Suspiria. Great Britain: Auteur.

Schulte-Sasse, L. (2002). The "mother" of all horror movies. [Online] kinoeye. Available at: http://www.kinoeye.org/02/11/schultesasse11.php [Accessed on: 07/04/2019]

Films Cited:

Suspiria (1977) [film] Directed by D. Argento. Italy: SEDA Spettacoli.

L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo (1970) [film] Directed by D. Argento. Italy: SEDA Spettacoli.

Inferno (1980) [film] Directed by D. Argento. Italy: Produzioni Intersound.

Tenebre (1982) [film] Directed by D. Argento. Italy: Sigma Cinematografica.