Retrospective: Dario Argento

In the middle of a renaissance for horror films, we’re celebrating one of the genre’s undisputed masters: Italian director Dario Argento. For more than 50 years, his work has influenced fellow filmmakers such as George Romero, John Carpenter, and Takashi Miike and genres including the modern slasher film. As collaborator Luigi Cozzi recently noted in the New York Times, “Dario innovated the language with which horror films were made.”

Argento began his career as a film critic and screenwriter, collaborating with Bernardo Bertolucci on the script for Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). His directorial debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), helped Argento establish himself as one of the most important directors of the modern horror genre. His work is the pinnacle of Italian giallo style: atmospheric, violent, often sexually charged films that combine elements of horror, mystery, and, occasionally, the supernatural. The genre takes its name from the yellow (giallo) covers of cheap crime and mystery paperbacks popular in Italy.

We’re thrilled to present this series featuring all-new restorations from Cinecittà studios in Rome so that audiences might revisit these classics—or be terrified for the first time!

Horror fans, don’t miss Jennifer Reeder’s Perpetrator—introduced by the director—on July 18 at 7 PM.

IMAGE CAPTION 
Clockwise from top left: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, courtesy of the American Genre Film Archive; Suspiria, courtesy of Criterion Pictures USA; Tenebrae, courtesy of Synapse Films; The Five Days, courtesy of Severin Films; Phenomena, courtesy of Synapse Films; The Cat o’Nine Tails, courtesy of the American Genre Film Archive.