Deep Red (1975, Dario Argento), Part One

Argento controls the horizontal, Argento controls the vertical.

Originally published 7/4/22 on Substack

First off, my apologies — once again I’ve gone over the limit for Gmail. If you get this via that service it’s likely cut off. (And may be cut off with other services as well.) Please click on the banner to go the site and read the entire thing there. Again, I’m very sorry!

Second, this is a Request Line post, another pick by Friend of the Newsletter and paid subscriber Steve Carlson. Request Line is a benefit to all $5 subscribers of the newsletter or Patreon, allowing them to select a movie each month for me to review.¹ 

Third, if you’ve never seen Deep Red, please, by all means, go watch it before reading this post. The entire thing is spoiled. Now, I usually say spoilers aren’t that big a deal, read on anyway. This is not one of those movies. It’s a fun mystery, and I think it’s one of those films where experiencing it “in the moment,” as fresh and with as little foreknowledge as possible, enhances the experience.

Fourth, for the first time in this series, I’ve broken it into two parts, one for commentary on the film, and the other for the role-playing game part of the discussion. Like Poochie, I certainly have Something to Say on both topics, and that something has taken a lot more space than normal. The second part will appear in the next post. (When? Soon.)

What is it? Profondo Rosso, a.k.a. Deep Red, directed by Dario Argento, written by Dario Argento and Bernardo Zapponi, and starring David Hemmings, Gabriele Lavia, Macha Méril, Giuliana Calandra, Glauco Mauri, Clara Calamai, and Daria Nicolodi as Gianna Brezzi.

First viewing? Oh hell no. According to Letterboxd, my last three viewings were 12 June 2022, 11 June 2022, and 26 November 2020. I don’t even know how many times I’ve seen it before then.

What’s it about? When an English jazz pianist (David Hemmings) in Rome witnesses the murder of his upstairs neighbor (Macha Méril), he and a local journalist (Daria Nicolodi) must piece together the clues to solve the crime before the killer gets them.

What are your thoughts about it? In case you hadn’t heard, around here at the Against the ’70s home office, the bird is the word. The bird in this case being The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Dario Argento’s 1970 directorial debut and the film that popularized giallo. For those that don’t know, giallo is a film genre that, to simplify greatly, sits somewhere between an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery and the slasher film. (Giallo means “yellow;” it’s not important why right now.) Typical giallo elements include violence and gore, outsider protagonists drawn into a mystery, unseen black-gloved killers, protagonists who question their perceptions and sanity, and bold stylistic choices with lighting and camera work that suggest a world that is irrational, unhinged, decayed and/or corrupt.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is a terrific giallo, and a great place to start if you’re unfamiliar with the genre. But as much as I love Argento’s gialli and giallo-adjacent movies, such as Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Suspiria, Inferno and Tenebre (and am willing to acknowledge the existence of 1971’s The Cat O’ Nine Tails) no Argento, and no giallo, does it for me like 1975’s Deep Red. Deep Red is everything I want from both. For me, Deep Red is the yellowest of the yellow.

That said, when this film was requested, I really didn’t think I had much to say about it. (There’s never any correlation between my fondness for a film and the number of thoughts I might have about it.) But I watched it twice in succession, the original 126m Italian cut and the 106m English cut, and to my surprise, I had a lot to say about it. So strap in. We’re going… (puts on sunglasses) deep²

(There’s a plethora of critical literature on Deep Red, in the form of books, essays, documentaries and commentary tracks, and I’ve read/seen/heard only a few of them. The following observations may have already been made. If so, ah well. I just want to note that I came by them honestly!)

1.³ There’s a peculiar shot in Deep Red that occurs not long after the inciting incident, the murder of the psychic Helga Ullman, a shot you can only see in the widescreen version of the film⁴. Marcus, having given his statement to the police at the station, is returning to the apartment building he lives in, the same one Helga was murdered in. He talks with his friend Carlo, as he did just before the murder, and Marcus tells him that he thinks he saw a painting in Helga’s apartment, but it disappeared. The shot is from a wide angle, emphasizing the horizontal nature of the space, Marcus on the left and Carlo on the right, the middle anchored by a giant statue of a reclining muscled man, representing the river Po. During this conversation, Carlo keeps moving further and further away from Marcus, and as he does so, the camera pulls back to keep him in frame. The effect is like Carlo is pushing the borders of the frame, forcing it to get even wider and more horizontal, like a something out of a Warner Brothers cartoon.

This shot got me thinking about the concept of “horizontalness” in the film. Were there other examples of this, in terms of set design, mise-en-scene, camera work, or even as a metaphorical concept? Here’s what I found.

2. “Horizontalness” is more than just a one-off motif in that Marcus-Carlo scene⁵. It is a major form of visual expression within the film, possibly the primary form. Now, what do I mean by this clumsy word? I’m talking about the creation of space within the film that implies forward movement in a straight line. The shot of Marcus and Carlo is an obvious and extreme example — Marcus, Carlo, the street, the statue, the flatness of the image, all contribute to impression of a straight line, in this case from left to right.

But this horizontalness can be seen elsewhere, in different ways. Take Helga’s apartment. Please! I don’t think I’ve ever seen an apartment laid out like this. The front door opens into a small foyer/sitting room/office, and there is one long corridor that ends in a bedroom. Halfway down the corridor, there’s a second corridor perpendicular to that one. (The second corridor creates two spaces where I imagine there are rooms. I assume this is where the bathroom is.) Both corridors are decorated with art of haunting faces. I presume the apartement was constructed for the film this way to emphasize the irrationality and nightmarishness of the scenario. Yet, while irrationality and nightmarishness are key qualities of Deep Red in particular and gialli in general, this is not what I’m getting at here. Actually, kind of the opposite. It’s weird! Let’s continue.

3. As you can probably already tell, the corridors are another example of horizontalness — just their very existence is evidence. (Nothing says “straight line” like a corridor.) But look at how Argento shoots it. He introduces the apartment with a shot of Helga at a table, taking a call with Professor Giordani. But then he slinkily pulls the camera away and points it in the opposite direction, where we first see the corridor. It’s narratively important — it points the way towards Helga’s death, and one could say that its placement here is analogous to Helga’s psychic powers that reveal hidden information. However, unlike the later street shot, Argento gives the image depth, and even more directly emphasizes the straight line of the corridor, so much so that despite being flat it’s almost vertiginous. (So much so, in fact, it’s very easy to miss the adjoining corridor.) Then, Helga hears the child’s song, the killer’s calling card, and we get a quick succession of jump cuts, pullling us towards the front door where the killer is waiting. (Just before this, Argento drolly has Helga say to Giordani, “I feel jumpy.”) Then, after the murder, Marcus enters, and we get an extremely low angle, floor-level shot of the main corridor, dabs of blood leading Marcus forward down a path, almost inexorably. And using that angle, the destination at the end of the line is rendered unimportant; it’s all about the forward momentum.

4. The next two murders also feature a similar kind of horizontalness. The victims, Amanda Righetti, the author, and Professor Giordani, the psychologist, live in homes that share a straight-line quality with Helga’s apartment. Righetti’s house appears to be arranged around a central corridor. You can see this in two shots, in the one where Righetti discovers the second baby doll hanging from the ceiling, and then, after the murder, the shot of Righetti’s maid who senses someone watching her. Giordani’s murder happens in his study, a large rectangular room that suggests rotundity rather than narrow straight lines. Except: Argento takes the time to show Giordani leave this room, travel down a corridor to get some tea, and return via the same corridor. All three major victims lived their lives around a straight line.

5. There are many more examples of this horizontalness. The opening of the red curtains to the theater reveals a straight line to the stage, where the three speakers are perpendicular to that line. (This is one of those classic Italian opera houses with the ridiculous number of balcony seats that seem to stretch up to infinity; yet, this quality is never emphasized.) The Blue Bar, the lozenge-shaped bar where Carlo works, a modern edifice that has been built around a much older one, the stone columns piercing the building like knives into a body. The bit of arm wrestling, a game that can only go in one of two directions. The terrifying walking doll that uncannily glides in a straight line towards the horrified Giordani⁶. The close-up of Helga’s mouth as she spits out water. The close-up of the necklace biting into the killer’s neck. The inter-credit flashback to the first murder with the child’s feet. The actual scene of the first murder, where the killer moves in quickly from left to right, in an apparent homage to Psycho.

6. Each of the major characters, save perhaps one, is locked into some kind of linear, “forward-only” mindset that doesn’t want to allow for alternative perspectives. They almost literally can’t see in any direction except the one they’re going in, pulled along as if caught in Po’s current. Marcus, with his sexism that blinds him to the truth. Carlo, with his alcoholism and doomy pessimism, whose last moments on Earth are dragged across blacktop by a speeding truck, forward momentum as fate. The killer, with their psychopathy. (Murder: the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.) Giordani, who has an important clue, but waits to tell Marcus, despite the existence of Gianna the reporter, and nearly scuttles the investigation because of his inaction. This isn’t a symptom of an irrational world; this is petrified rationality. (I’m certain each of these characters’ actions make perfect sense to them.)

In general, stories, particularly films, are about a protagonist who goes through incredible circumstances, which changes them, usually by revealing a heretofore hidden truth about life and themselves. This is Marcus. Marcus needs to recognize his own linear mindset and figure out how to break out of it. If he doesn’t, he’ll be killed. But what it would it mean to break out of such a thing? If they are stuck, mentally, in a straight line, then breaking out can mean moving in a different direction… including up and down.

7. Height, then, represents a different way of thinking. Marcus is trying to identify the killer, and he actually gets a glimpse of them three times. Two of those times are from the window of the tall apartment building, once from Helga’s window, once from his own just after the killer tried to get him. He can only see the killer from literally a different vantage point. As a performer and teacher of jazz, an art form of improvisation and spontaneity, it could be argued that Marcus already has one foot in alternative ways of thinking — perhaps that’s why his apartment is so different than Helga’s, one that suggests roundness as opposed to straight lines. (Or maybe he only survives because, unlike Helga, his apartment has a second door.)

The idea gets a further workout when Marcus goes into the so-called House of the Screaming Child, a clue from Righetti’s book. He doesn’t know really what he’s looking for; the trail of evidence that led him here is weak and circumstantial. So he goes inside, and starts looking around. This sequence takes up fifteen minutes of screen time (in the 126m cut), broken into two non-continuous blocks, of ten minutes and five minutes. I say this as someone who gives this movie the highest possible rating: it borders on interminable. Marcus leaves the house and then goes back in four times. There’s definitely a creepy vibe, a wonderful flooded basement that prefigures the one in 1980’s Inferno, and feints towards “is someone there watching him?” But, on the level of plot, it feels like wheel-spinning⁷.

8. And yet, it makes perfect sense, if we accept that this is Marcus metaphorically attempting to explore alternative ways of thinking⁸. This is the first time the movie has really emphasized height in a way other than scene-setting. Nearly every shot outside has the house looming over Marcus, or from high above, rendering him small, seemingly ineffectual. And what does he do when he enters? He explores it, horizontally and vertically. He climbs up and down stairs, several times. He walks through rooms. He leaves several times, seemingly frustrated, but bucks up and goes back in. He busts through stuck doors. He goes into the basement. He looks at the debris. He finds things in the debris to use as tools. He enters one room, dismisses it, then ends up coming back to notice a clue he missed previously. He chips away at walls. He goes home at one point, seemingly done, and then has a sudden epiphany. He ends up outside, climbing across things that were not meant to be climbed, as blatant a representation of “thinking outside the box” as one can get.

Marcus is learning⁹. You can’t expect to learn something new in an instant — it takes time, effort, experimentation, letting the subconscious do its work, backtracking, failure. Marcus experiences all of these, and he emerges from the house with two clues: the child’s artwork hidden under the paint, and the corpse in the hidden room.

There’s only one more thing that can complete this idea. I’ve said that every major character is stuck in linear thinking. Is there a character that isn’t? Is there a character that represents abandoning this petrified logic?

Of course there is. Her name is Gianna.

9. Gianna seems to exist outside the realm of everyone’s trajectories, her very existence repudiating the straight lines. She’s introduced intruding into the crime scene, from an angle lateral to everyone else, taking a picture before she’s even in the room, and greeting all the cops like she’s just arrived at a party. In another shot, while on the phone at the newspaper, she stops an intern on his straightforward path, takes his pad and writes down a note. As the incarnation of “verticalness,” then, she’s there to guide the protagonist towards the truth. She’s there to dispute Marcus’s sexism that’s blinding him. When Marcus has to exit her car, he can’t go to the side — he has to go up. And when they have their battle of the sexes arm wrestling match, Gianna wins by lifting her elbow up off the table. (Some might call this cheating, others might call it non-linear thinking.) Here’s the part that knocked me for a loop. Just after discovering the corpse in the hidden room, Marcus is bludgeoned into unconsciousness. When he comes to, he is outside, and the villa is on fire. Gianna has rescued him; metaphorically, she’s the only one who could. However, there’s at least a dozen different ways the film could have revealed Gianna’s presence; Argento chose to track up from Marcus horizontal on the ground to the vertical form of Gianna sitting above him.

Gianna is, in a sense, the Obi-Wan of this scenario. Which explains why she’s stabbed amidst the long shelves of the school archives and taken out — the pupil must accomplish the task on his own.

10. I said earlier that Marcus saw the killer three times. He returns to the scene of the crime and finally figures out the clue that’s been bugging him the entire movie: he saw the killer, and just didn’t realize it. Her face was in a mirror, and Marcus thought it was a painting. But of course, the realization has come too late, and there’s the killer, ready to strike. He barely gets out of the way, but on his way out of the apartment he trips and falls to the floor, slamming into the elevator. The killer chops Marcus in the shoulder, but he retaliates by kicking her into the elevator where her necklace gets stuck in the gate. Marcus is there on the floor, wounded, and the killer is temporarily restrained. He has to make a choice, and the choice he makes will determine whether he lives or dies. If Marcus learned anything about linear and non-linear thinking throughout this whole ordeal, now would be the time to demonstrate it.

He hits the down button on the elevator, the stuck necklace decapitating the killer.

11. So that’s what I found. It’s a strange perspective on the film, one I did not set out to find, but one that found me. Is all of this a house of cards built on sand on top of the San Andreas fault? Maybe. I don’t blame anyone for dismissing all of this as over-thinking, cherry-picked, a stretch. 

Still. At the end of the day, I’m left with this:

All Marcus had to do to solve the murder was turn his head a different direction.

How many stars out of five? Five heart attack-inducing walking dolls out of five.

Where can I stream it? As of this writing¹⁰, you have a wealth of choices from which to stream Deep Red: AMC+ via Amazon Prime, Hoopla, Vudu - Fandango, Kanopy, Shudder, Shudder via Amazon Prime, Pluto TV, Fandor via Amazon Prime, Screambox via Amazon Prime, Dark Matter TV, Spectrum On Demand, Arrow, Plex, and Flix Fling. You can rent or buy it from Google Play, YouTube, Flix Fling, Apple, Alamo On Demand, and Amazon. I have no idea which of these services have the 126m director’s cut, or the 106m English cut. To perhaps the horror of some, I prefer the shorter cut — it’s pacier, and nothing of value is lost. Regardless, it’s a winner in either form.

Again, this is just the first part of two. Stay tuned for the next post, coming soon!