Disponibile per il mercato anglosassone (Amazon.com) la traduzione inglese del Fotogramma #27 Proiettili d’Argento. Gli anni Duemila del Maestro del terrore di Claudio Bartolini
A book on Dario Argento? Another one? What can we say about the director of 4 Flies on grey velvet and Deep Red that has not already been said in the dozens of essays (in Italian) dedicated to him or in the interviews he has given in over fifty years of career? He even wrote an autobiography! Well, there is something new to say.
And, if anyone can say it, it is the author of this little book, that Claudio Bartolini who has single-handedly compiled the encyclopaedia on Italian Giallo-thriller cinema, considered by many to be definitive. Thanks to his ability to bring out elements worthy of attention – giving them the right weight (no more, no less) – that are under everyone’s eyes but on which almost no one dwells; and to provide a filmic analysis starting from the language of cinema together with an
illuminating reading (what ‘film critics’ should always do and often, alas, don’t do).
He succeeded in doing this in 2009 by writing Il gotico padano. A Dialogue with Pupi Avati, he tries again today with these nine ‘bullets’ dedicated to as many sequences from as many films made by our Master of terror (and horror) in the new millennium, starting from 2001’s Sleepless (Nonhosonno) to 2022’s Dark Glasses (Occhiali neri). Titles, like the other seven addressed here, that have incurred the scorn, when not the derision, of a large part of Italian critics (and also
of the public). Nothing new, for Dario, hailed by fans all over the world and (perhaps precisely because of this) often target of poisoned tirades
from ‘reviewers’.
And yet, it only takes a few skilfully selected minutes for each film to find movements, shots, editing cuts or technical or soundtrack inventions, in short, what has made Argento, Argento: a living monument, who never stops challenging himself and sometimes wins, more often loses, always enjoys himself… and us.
Claudio Bartolini, co-founder and director of the monographic periodical INLAND. Cinema notebooks and co-director of the collection INLAND Books (Bietti), is currently a writer and cultural journalist. His publications include: the film essay Il gotico padano. A Dialogue with Pupi Avati, the encyclopaedia Italian Giallo-thriller cinema, Nothing Underneath (Sotto il vestito niente) [by Carlo Vanzina], and the autobiographical novel At Italia ’90 I was eight years old.
