Two by Dario Argento
One of cinema’s great, dark dreamweavers, Argento orchestrates labyrinths of terror that push into the realm of unnerving beauty with their vibrant colors and flamboyant intricacy. Merging giallo and horror in unholy hybrids, his films center on people who watch the boundaries fall away between life and nightmare in murderous ways, amid the (often fabulous) trappings of contemporary Italy. This pair of features takes us into the morbid mysteries of the occult and Western art itself, exploring primal fears and panic.
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The Stendhal Syndrome
Directed by Dario Argento | 119 mins | 1996
Asia Argento, the director’s daughter and a future star in her own right, plays a detective on the trail of a serial killer, who takes advantage of her condition: entering an unconscious or fugue state upon encountering certain artwork. Infusing giallo ... -
Inferno
Directed by Dario Argento | 106 mins | 1980
Showing Argento’s doubling down on visual logic of dreams, this mystical yarn of alchemy and witchcraft unfolds as a series of lurid setpieces and cryptic clue-drops, largely in a New York apartment building. Resisting explication, the story erupts with...
