lights! camera! human perversion! - A personal reaction to Dario Argento's tenebre NOTE: This essay assumes that you have seen tenebre previously, and you have a basic understanding of the giallo and slasher genres Looked at entirely superficially, tenebre is flashy but empty, violent and sexist. It features little character development, bad dubbing, a character who shows her nipples even when dressed, and lots and lots of blood, usually from sliced-up women. Most of tenebre's cast gets slaughtered by the end of the film, and in such a way as to land the film on the British video nasties list (DPP list) in the 1980's, banning it from being shown in Britain. Those who compiled the DPP list were not known for their cinematic taste, though. Dig deeper and you can find a surprising amount of substance in tenebre which is rarely matched by most other similar films. Argento uses the film as a response to accusations of sexism and as a break with giallo and slasher film convention. tenebre very rapidly pushed its way into my head without warning, simply because it throws so many elements at the audience and fuses style with thematic substance in a way that few other gialli have been capable of matching. This essay is my attempt to explain why tenebre is a great thriller, unfairly overlooked by the majority of cinema goers. I'm not going to touch on everything I like about tenebre, as that would take far too long. What I'm going to do instead is discuss three areas of the film that I took a particular interest in. The first looks at tenebre as Argento's reaction to charges of sexism. He has famously said that he prefers to kill women, and thus has been taken as misogynist. Looking carefully at any of his films will reveal that he isn't, but tenebre is his major response to the charge. The second area is the film's style allied with a major theme, violence. tenebre is a vicious film, but its ferocity is artificially heightened by a surprising and extremely effective filming style. It has coloured my view of the film more than anything else and thus it deserves to be discussed. The third area appeals to me as a reader and a writer. As someone who writes detective stories, I enjoy the challenge of trying to work out whodunit, and tenebre, unusually for a giallo, gives you a good run for your money. Seeing how the pieces slot together is fascinating and satisfying for someone engaged in the same task. Before I start, there's one thing I hope this essay does not contain - over-analysing. tenebre features a lot of scope for 'over analysing what is basically just a piece of entertainment,' as it features sexual violence, double killers and discussions of detective stories in a detective film. The best-known analysis is probably Xavier Mendik's, and in my opinion he hasn't avoided the trap. When he starts talking about Freud and Lacan, it's rather difficult to believe that he isn't seeing something that simply isn't there, making it sound as if Argento was carefully constructing the film as a textbook on deviant psychologies. Well, Argento was carefully constructing the film, but the construction I'm admiring is quite different to Mendik's, and I seriously doubt that Mendik's really exists. He comes up with some interesting points, such as Neal working through past memories with his flashbacks, but ultimately stretches them out until they break. tenebre simply isn't that complex. 'Why do you despise women so much?' Horror films (I am lumping supernatural stories and thrillers together here) are traditionally seen as something at best tolerated by good society. I mentioned above the DPP list, which featured films considered too sexually or violently graphic to be shown to the public. Even today horror films may be decried as unpleasant beasts pandering to the worst in human nature and occasionally provoking a maniac into finally killing someone themselves. The strange thing is that horror films can be as reactionary as any Mary Whitehouse figure; The Exorcist may be one of 'the most terrifying films of all time', but it couldn't have been what it was without the Catholic Church's active and willing collaboration. Horror films - particularly slasher films - can be curiously schizophrenic. Absolutely no pretence was made at all in Friday the 13th Part V when a girl reveals her breasts with a cry of 'It's showtime!' - the audience wants its kicks, and if they want breasts and sex paraded across the screen, who are the film makers to deny them? But that girl ends up dying. They usually do, the most famous examples being the Friday the 13th franchise and Halloween. 'Have sex and die' is one of the most well-known rules of horror, but it means that the films first allow the audience to ogle the women and then turn round and imply that these people are killed for their sexual activity. A facetious critic might suggest that the grandest such story of this type was in the Bible, when God struck down Sodom and Gomorrah, in which case slasher films are as conservative as their decriers want them to be. Be home by midnight, children, or you'll be eaten by the troll under the bridge. tenebre is a giallo, not a slasher, but the point still stands. Argento has been accused of sexism at various times because a lot of his victims are women, and have been from the start. His first film, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, features a killer who specifically targets women, and one of the most harrowing scenes in that film is when Suzy Kendall's character is trapped in her flat with the murderer trying to get in. What's more, the entire giallo genre has traditionally been seen as sexist, a good example being the film The Case of the Bloody Iris. In The Case of the Bloody Iris practically all the victims or unpleasant people are involved in an unusual sexual practice (such as group sex or lesbianism) or are at least 'loose' in some way. This is not the place to analyse why such films are like this. All that is necessary to point out is that tenebre goes down another route. Though it features women being killed brutally, especially sexually active women at the beginning of the film, its attitude is entirely different. Before heading further, it is worthwhile dividing the deaths into two categories, Cristiano Berti's killings and Peter Neal's killings. I shall consider Berti's killings first. At first sight, tenebre is no different from The Case of the Bloody Iris. Berti has given himself the task of ridding the city of corruption and 'human perversion'. Two victims are lesbians, a third is a shoplifter who escapes arrest by practically selling herself to a store detective. The killer is insane, but then so is the killer in The Case of the Bloody Iris. In that film the killer kills 'loose' women because he believes they corrupted his daughter, but even when this explanation is given it doesn't seem that the film makers become any more sympathetic towards the victims. We thus can't use Berti's insanity alone to absolve Argento from the charge of being as reactionary as anyone else. Faced with this, Argento hits on a unique solution. He puts himself into the film. In an interview Peter Neal is also accused of sexism in his work by Tilde, a journalist. It's never made clear, however, whether she actually believes this herself or is merely being confrontational for the sake of a good story. Outside the interview they are old friends, Neal points out that he's publicly stood up for equal rights and while discussing the book Cristiano Berti cannot deny that the gay couple in the novel Tenebrae is portrayed as 'perfectly happy', indicating a liberal view of sexual matters. Never mind the fact that one of the couple dies - the statement here cannot be clearer. The lesbians in tenebre die because the killer wants them to die, not because Argento thinks they should be punished. Berti is clearly following the novel Tenebrae in his campaign against human perversion, but Neal is adamant that he's misinterpreted it. Through Peter Neal Argento thus creates a distance that isn't present in other films. In The Case of the Bloody Iris the fun-loving victim is thoughtless, the group sex participator is a rapist, the lesbian vamps on anyone coming in her direction. This isn't to say that the film makers are consciously being sexist and consciously punishing their cast members. It's just What Everyone Does. I have no doubt that a lot of horror films hew closely to the Golden Rules simply because that's all they've ever known, not because the makers have a rabidly conservative agenda, but it's nevertheless there. However, with tenebre we have Peter Neal thrown in the works, saying 'Hang on. You haven't really got the point, have you?' And the critics, along with Berti, haven't. To take the most prominent example in Argento's previous films, look at the relationship between Marc and Gianna in Profondo Rosso. Marc gets childishly petulant when he loses a battle-of-the-sexes arm-wrestling match, has a sexist streak we are clearly not meant to like and has to be saved from a burning building by Gianna. If after watching the film you still maintain that Argento hates women, you really haven't been paying attention. Argento goes further than merely putting such a blatant (and at the same time, such a natural) spokesperson into the film. He hires a transsexual as the initial victim, the girl on the beach who eventually gets stabbed by the young Peter Neal. Does this mean anything? Maybe not, but the casting does give a bizarre twist to the term 'equal opportunities'. Argento will happily kill anyone in his films, men, women and those who used to be men and now are women, and then in Profondo Rosso we have a woman cast as a man (Carlo's boyfriend) and we had a sympathetic portrayal of homosexuality in that film (despite Carlo's complicity in the deaths) and my head hurts. This isn't simply a director getting his kicks from killing a woman on set, because even though she is now a woman, she used to be 'one of us'. The casting decision undeniably ties in to Argento striking back at accusations of sexism, and is highly unusual. Along with Peter Neal acting as Argento's stand-in, what happens in front of and behind the camera has become blurred. We turn to the second lot of murders, the ones committed by Peter Neal. I've seen several reviews calling Neal secretly misogynist, and two points have to be raised- first, is he a misogynist? Second, if he's Argento's mouthpiece, what are we to make of the fact that he's an insane killer? Peter Neal gives few indications of misogyny in his actions, if any. Consider his victims; the first victim, the woman on the beach, humiliates and hurts him, for which he gets his revenge. The next two victims, Bullmer and Jane, are having an affair, making Neal a cuckold; this is practically the oldest motive for murder you could get, and yet few people call Othello a misogynist for killing Desdemona. Berti is killed because it's necessary for Neal's plan, and the other victims are killed because they are a threat. They all know too much. The motives here are specific, as opposed to the general crimes that Berti commits. Berti could have gone after any lesbian or shoplifter in Rome, but only one person was having an affair with Jane. In other words, Neal kills people according to what the individual person has done, while Berti is, as he confesses in his letters, trying to kill off an entire type. Lending credence to this theory is when we work out who killed whom. Berti only killed women. Neal killed three women and four men. If we assume that Neal is not sexist, this makes the second question easier to answer. Since Neal is to some extent Argento's spokesman, portraying Neal as a sexist would muddy the waters far too much. We are still left with a problem, however, which is how far we should regard Neal as a reliable spokesman if he turns out to be insane. The answer is actually simple; Argento's having fun with us. Take the standard argument that exposing people to violent films will make them violent. If that's true, then how depraved must the film makers be! Argento must be a slavering maniac! By making Neal the second killer, Argento is poking fun at critics who think that he must be a rather horrible person for making the films that he does. Argento has already been poking fun by making his initial victims 'human perverts', thus creating the false impression that tenebre is indeed sexist, so why not go further? In effect we have two Peter Neals, both fulfilling separate but necessary functions. The sane Peter Neal is Argento's bemused reaction towards his critics ('You say I'm sexist when my work doesn't warrant such an accusation') and the insane Peter Neal is Argento's joke about what the critics think he must be like ('Alright then, it must be true!'). The apparent 'sexism' in tenebre thus isn't what it seems to be. It's summed up by the relationship between Captain Germani and Detective Altieri. Altieri usually hangs in the background, and Germani seems rather dismissive of her ('I should have a tough male assistant who runs fast!') but there are several hints this is just a game he plays with her ('You'd hate it,' she replies without resentment, 'you'd have nothing to bitch about'). At the end when he confronts Neal he seems more upset by Altieri's death than anything else. tenebre's stance warrants a closer look than many people are prepared to give it. 'I will eliminate those who disgust me, the human perverts' Another convention turned on its head in tenebre is that of darkness. Slasher films normally take place in the dead of night, with everything shrouded in shadow, no matter where you are; at the beginning of the awful Valentine a medical student dissects a body without bothering to turn the lights on. In The Relic 'the [museum] guests stagger through the gloom to peer at exhibits they couldn't possibly see properly.' The word 'tenebrae' (or the Italian term, 'tenebre') means 'darkness'. And yet the first thing that strikes you is how bright everything is. The days are sunny, the nights lit up by garden lamps and room lights, the characters all wear pale clothes, the walls are painted white. And then they're painted red; the reason everything is so bright is that this is his most violent film. By that I don't mean that it's his most explicit; a recent Dark Dreams poll on the subject saw Nonhosonno cart that honour off by some margin, and you could also make a reasonable case for Opera. But tenebre is absolutely saturated with the idea of violence. It has one of the largest body counts of any Argento film. It's telling that the first three acts of violence are not committed by either killer, being Jane's trashing of Neal's overnight bag, the struggle with the store detective and the tramp's attack on Elsa Manni before her death. Other incidents include the fight breaking out in the police station, the couple arguing in the square before Bullmer's death and the restaurant struggle at the same time. These are background incidents, suggesting that violence is endemic to the entire society. The 'darkness of the mind' that Argento wants to allude to with tenebre's title applies not only to the killers, but to practically everyone. I'm not convinced that Argento really wants to make a point about 'real' society here, though you could argue that he's saying that there'll always be violence in real life, no matter how brightly you light the narrow corridors. Blaming the films and the books (and you just know the press would support censorship like mad if tenebre's events happened in real life) is not the answer because the violence and potential for injury is there with or without Peter Neal's novels - Berti would have been insane even if he had never read Tenebrae. However, I'm more inclined to a simpler reading of the film. The point seems to be that an experiment is being carried out. Argento is frequently experimental, and this is most commonly seen in Suspiria, with its use of coloured lighting and set design. This was making no sociological point; it was simply intended to make Suspiria a fairy tale for adults, to give the film an appropriately dream-like quality. You certainly don't watch it for its realism. Similarly, the style of tenebre is just there to create a vivid impression. It's completely different to what we expected, and speaking personally I found myself unable to get the film out of my head for days afterwards for that reason. We've been so cinematically conditioned that Argento is playing for a form of cognitive dissonance. The final bloodbath takes place on a dark and stormy night but the lights make sure we can see every single thing and this should not be happening. This is not the place, not in this sterilised environment. No wonder the censors came down on it; aside from the fact that the killings themselves are intrinsically horrible, they are made to look worse than they are. 'I guessed who the killer was on page thirty. Page thirty! Never happened before!' The final aspect to tenebre is the detective story element. In gialli it is usually impossible to tell who the killer is until we see someone wearing black gloves, so to speak. A prime example of this is Cat O' Nine Tails where it could be almost anyone up until the camera shows us the culprit. tenebre, however, isn't like that. Critics derided tenebre for breaking the rules of detective fiction , but there's no reason the viewer should care. The game is still in place. You can piece together sufficient clues to work out exactly what's going on by the time Bullmer's body hits the floor. Don't believe me? Here are the clues:- 1) Cristiano Berti's house. We know that the killer has his darkroom in it. It's not something you can hide very well from the house's owner. Therefore Cristiano Berti must be the killer. But Argento deliberately confuses the issue, deceiving the audience as well as Gianni, who watches Berti die. Someone says 'I killed them all', and Gianni and the audience assume that it's Berti's killer speaking. The audience is making a bigger mistake than Gianni does here. If it isn't Berti speaking, then absolutely nothing makes sense. When the police look around Berti's house they find that Berti was very interested in Neal - like the killer. The audience is given every indication- and yet usually doesn't see it. 2) The letters. Neal doesn't get one after Berti's death or for any subsequent death. 3) The murders after Berti's death stop being generalist. It isn't a 'deviant' who dies after Berti, it's Neal's agent, suggesting a change in the killer's tactics. These three factors taken together indicate that another murderer must be operating. 4) The shoes. The red shoes worn by Neal's first victim are given to Jane, whom we know is having an affair with Bullmer. The first victim was someone who hurt and humiliated her killer, and there seems to be a ritualistic sign, giving the shoes to someone else who hurts and humiliates. But who is Jane hurting? It could only be either Bullmer or Neal, and since Bullmer dies not long afterwards, that leaves Peter Neal. 5) Gianni's death. It's highly unlikely that the killer just happened to be wandering around when Gianni went back to Berti's house. But Gianni had told two people of his plans, Neal and Anne. 6) And we can't forget that Neal was at the house when Berti was murdered. Certainly he got knocked on the head, but any Agatha Christie reader would tell you that that proves nothing. This builds up to the neat twist of having a real detective story you can follow when the entire film is about such a story - Tenebrae is after all a murder mystery novel. Captain Germani avidly reads it and guesses who the killer is before the end. Conversations regularly include references to other writers and the book. With Agatha Christie and Conan Doyle you can often play the game of trying to work out who did it before the solution is reached (this is depressingly easy with Sherlock Holmes, by the way - if you want a harder puzzle, go for Hercule Poirot!). This emphasises how tightly constructed tenebre has to be in general - it is very difficult structuring such a story, and Argento is to be commended for doing it so successfully. The only other Argento film in which such a game can be played is Nonhosonno, which, while it also involves a giallo writer, isn't as thematically complex. 'Structuring such a story' - 'structuring' is the correct word. tenebre is a masterpiece of cinematic engineering, carefully orchestrated to play on audience expectations, on accusations of sexism against its maker and on the relationship between the creator and the film-watcher. Superficially tenebre is merely an excuse to throw a lot of bodies at the audience; scratch the surface, however, and you'll find that 'superficial' is the last thing you can call it. tenebre isn't only a good film, it has reasonable claim to being great. by Ashley Lane with thanks to Michael Mackenzie and Chris Storm

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