<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>This article re-engages with existing scholarship identifying Deep Red (Profondo rosso, 1975) as a typical example within Dario Argento’s body of work, in which the Italian horror-meister fully explores a distinguishing pairing of the acoustic and the iconic through an effective combination of elaborate camerawork and disjunctive music and sound. Specifically, this article seeks to complement these studies by arguing that such a stylistic and technical achievement in the film is also rendered by Argento’s use of a specific art-historical repertoire, which not only reiterates the Gesamtkunstwerk-like complexity of the director’s audiovisual spectacle, but also serves to transpose the film’s narrative over a metanarrative plane through pictorial techniques and their possible interpretations. The purpose of this article is, thus, twofold. Firstly, I shall discuss how Argento’s references to American Hyperrealism in painting are integrated into Deep Red’s spectacles of death through colour, framing, and lighting, as well as the extent to which such references allow us to undertake a more in-depth analysis of the director’s style in terms of referentiality and cinematic intermediality. Secondly, I will demonstrate how and to what extent in the film Argento manages to break down the epistemological system of knowledge and to disrupt the reasonable order of traditional storytelling through the technique of the trompe-l’oeil in painting.</p></abstract>

This article re-engages with existing scholarship identifying Deep Red (Profondo rosso, 1975) as a typical example within Dario Argento’s body of work, in which the Italian horror-meister fully explores a distinguishing pairing of the acoustic and the iconic through an effective combination of elaborate camerawork and disjunctive music and sound. Specifically, this article seeks to complement these studies by arguing that such a stylistic and technical achievement in the film is also rendered by Argento’s use of a specific art-historical repertoire, which not only reiterates the Gesamtkunstwerk-like complexity of the director’s audiovisual spectacle, but also serves to transpose the film’s narrative over a metanarrative plane through pictorial techniques and their possible interpretations. The purpose of this article is, thus, twofold. Firstly, I shall discuss how Argento’s references to American Hyperrealism in painting are integrated into Deep Red’s spectacles of death through colour, framing, and lighting, as well as the extent to which such references allow us to undertake a more in-depth analysis of the director’s style in terms of referentiality and cinematic intermediality. Secondly, I will demonstrate how and to what extent in the film Argento manages to break down the epistemological system of knowledge and to disrupt the reasonable order of traditional storytelling through the technique of the trompe-l’oeil in painting.

Pictorial Imagery, Camerawork and Soundtrack in Dario Argento’s Deep Red

Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

{"article-title":"Pictorial Imagery, Camerawork and Soundtrack in Dario Argento\u2019s Deep Red"}

This article re-engages with existing scholarship identifying Deep Red (Profondo rosso, 1975) as a typical example within Dario Argento’s body of work, in...

Pictorial Imagery, Camerawork and Soundtrack in Dario Argento’s Deep Red

Published Online: Apr 06, 2016

Page range: 159 - 179

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ausfm-2015-0021

Keywords
Dario Argento, Deep Red, excessiveness of imagery and sound, American hyperrealism, trompe-l’oeil

© 2016

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Pictorial Imagery, Camerawork and Soundtrack in Dario Argento’s Deep Red

Published Online: Apr 06, 2016

Page range: 159 - 179

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ausfm-2015-0021

KeywordsDario Argento, Deep Red, excessiveness of imagery and sound, American hyperrealism, trompe-l’oeil

© 2016

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
Dario Argento, Deep Red, excessiveness of imagery and sound, American hyperrealism, trompe-l’oeil