Dark Eyes Retrovision #3 - Opera aka Terror at the Opera (Italy 1987: Dir Dario Argento)

"It's the opera. Macbeth brings bad luck!"

Dario Argento's much maligned and misunderstood Opera had a very inauspicious beginning, to put it mildly. The movie was a total failure at the box office in Italy on first release, mainly because the distributors cut a lot of the violence from the original film, hoping to appeal to a wider and younger audience - the very audience who would have been more likely to see the thing in the first place if it had retained the gore! So the gamble didn't pay off and people stayed away in droves: when it was exhibited at Cannes in 1988 the film continued in its ignominy, with the traditionally tough festival audience deriding the hideous dubbing that distracted from the story.

The film was subsequently released as Terror at the Opera (the version which I first saw at London's Scala cinema at their Horror and Cult Film preview Festival in 1990, and which had even more cuts added to the original - unreinstated - ones, including the removal of some narrative scenes which made it occasionally rather incomprehensible). Orion, the distributors, clearly did not know what to do with it, and as a result never effectively promoted the movie.

Career wise Opera came at an odd time in Dario Argento's career, sandwiched between his 1985 movie Phenomena and a bizarre TV show called 'Giallo', cancelled after one season, which sounds like an Italian version of the 1970s UK TV series 'Whodunnit', in which a panel watch short films about murders (directed by Argento and Lamberto Bava, among others) and have to guess who did it - now that I'd like to see.

On a personal note I have a particular fondness for this film, as my review of the festival in which Terror at the Opera was screened was my first published piece of writing (in John Gullidge's superb magazine 'Samhain') so it feels that I've come full circle in finally getting to see the movie, as Argento, originally intended, via the new CultFilms release, complete with original title.

Cristina Marsillach as Betty, destined to see everything in Opera

For those who have not seen the film, its plot is simple, and probably the least remarkable thing about it.

An Italian opera company is mounting a lavish version of Verdi's 'Macbeth;' but when the star diva is run over by a car outside the theatre (a role originally to be played by Vanessa Redgrave, who walked before filming could begin, necessitating Argento to use a series of PoV shots to avoid actually showing the singer), pretty understudy Betty (a game Cristina Marsillach) is asked to step into the lead. But Betty is being stalked by a be-gloved mysterious killer, who seems very keen for her to see him at work, via a rather sadistic device of a row of needles taped under her eyes, forcing her to keep them open. First he knifes her boyfriend to death in front of her, then takes out the company's wardrobe mistress. What is the strange connection between Betty and the killer, and can suave police inspector Alan Santini (Urbano Barberini) solve the case before the murderer strikes again?

Opera is less interesting for what goes on in the film than how it's depicted. Argento's love of Hitchcock is clearly to the fore, both literally (the production uses real ravens which at one point go on a very The Birds style pecking spree) and metaphorically. Opera is a movie about watching, whether it's the audience viewing the opera, Betty being forced to view the killer at work, or the camera gently gliding around observing the cast. Some rather clumsy scenes hint at the psychological denouement of the film (including a rather poor model of a throbbing brain) but overall Opera looks sumptuous and stately - there are distinct Peter Greenaway touches here - and yes the dubbing is much better. The transfer is glorious, and the film has never looked better. It's by no means Argento's finest work, but this version does restore some cohesiveness to the storytelling, even if the heavy metal elements soundtrack do sound a little dated.

CultFilms releases Opera on Dual-Format Blu-ray & DVD and VOD 21 January 2019. Extras include:

Aria of Fear : A brand new candid interview with director Dario Argento
Opera Backstage : A detailed, period documentary showing Argento making Opera (40 minutes)
Restoration featurette on the process from raw to scan to the re-graded, restored final vision

Suspiria (Italy/USA 2018: Dir Luca Guadagnino)

Remakes are as old as film itself. And while I don't generally subscribe to the 'why bother?' argument for that very reason, it doesn't stop me holding the opinion that most updates of original movies offer very little. But I keep an open mind because sometimes a remake does provide a new perspective on the source film, while being important in its own right. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

Suspiria was the remake that shouldn't have happened. The original held such canonical status that any attempt to update or reboot it met with incredulity in fan and critical circles. But when the trailers started to appear the dissenting voices quieted somewhat. Revisiting the original movie it's clear that Dario Argento was much less bothered with narrative drive and more with set pieces, spectacle and overall mood. While this makes the original timeless, its occluded storytelling leaves lots of questions unanswered (and which failed to be fully responded to in his sequels Inferno (1980) and the belated final part of the trilogy Mother of Tears (2007)).

Guadagnino's version cleverly takes the key plot points of the original film - a dance studio run by a coven of witches, with a war between the three founding 'mothers' into which newcomer Susie Bannion is admitted - and gently re-assembles them, producing a movie which feels both naggingly familiar and very different - it's a hard one to pull off, but he succeeds.

His Suspiria is set in the Berlin of 1977: the timing is important. Not only is it the same year that the original film was released, but it was also a time of Bowie and Iggy's occupation (there's a Bowie poster on one of the dance student's walls to prove it) and huge civil unrest in the city, what with the tensions between east and west and the rise of the Red Army Faction via the Baader-Meinhof gang. Guadagnino exploits these tensions, even gently suggesting that they are in some way the product of the spiritual war going on within the City's Markos Dance Academy.

Described as 'six acts and an epilogue set in divided Berlin' the chapters of the film gracefully progress, taking their own sweet time to gradually generate a mood of decay and even ennui. Whereas Argento's movie was bathed in primary colours and full of overexcited characters, Guadagnino's version visually utilises muted shades and hues, and has a cast whose general temperament could best be described as 'listless.' Fittingly the Markos academy, while seeming very similar to the building in Argento's original, looks old and in poor condition here, and its location by the Berlin Wall subtly integrates it into the country's turbulent history. This version of Suspiria doesn't trumpet its arrival, but insidiously creeps up on you (even the title sequence dispenses with the film's name by having it superimposed on a passing U-Bahn sign), and its two and a half hour running time doesn't drag as a result.

The director holds back on the violence too, although the threat is ever present. One scene early on, where one of the students is despatched in an empty mirrored studio, her flailing limbs broken and smashed by an unseen presence while, in another room, new arrival Bannion (Dakota Johnson) is executing the same moves via an audition piece, is shocking partly because of the quiet sequences that bookend it.

Tilda Swinton is on restrained top form as Madame Blanc (a role more melodramatically realised by Joan Bennett in the 1977 movie), ruling the dance academy and tutoring the pupils in rehearsals of an extended piece called Volk, which was originally devised at the end of the Second World War. The dance will acquire huge significance towards the end of the film as the power struggle between the 'mothers' erupts (the only point in the movie where the grand guignol excesses of the original are revisited); its development also strongly suggests the complicity of the rest of the students in relation to the events that are set to unfold. Also connecting to the war is a new character of Dr Josef Klemperer (subsequently disclosed to be Swinton herself under heavy facial prosthetics) who is carrying out an investigation into the Academy based on the disclosure of a former pupil, one of his clients. His treatment at the hands of the victorious 'mother' at the end of the film added a coda of sadness to the movie that I wasn't expecting; equally unexpected was some light humour, courtesy of the coven at rest.

Thom Yorke's score is as moody and unobtrusive as the film which it soundtracks (although I could have done without his instantly recognisable voice which took me out of the film somewhat), and I liked the ambiguity and pathos of its conclusion. Suspiria is a movie which challenged and exceeded my expectations. It handles its many changes of tone without affecting the overall structure of the film, and its emotional sweep was unexpected but powerful. It's a film I'd happily see again and again, it's that bloody good.

Suspiria premieres at the London Film Festival on 16 October 2018 and is released theatrically from 16 November.