Once one of the great names in horror—given such arty thrillers as THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1970), DEEP RED (1975), SUSPIRIA (1977), INFERNO (1980), and TENEBRAE (1982)—Argento's works first entered troubled waters in the late 1980s, when he began to diversify into producing films for other directors, to preside over television projects, and even moreso after Asia Argento (his daughter, born to Daria Nicolodi) reached the age when she began to serve as her father's obnoxious alter ego. Everyone seems to have a different idea about when Argento's juicy wickedness dried up: a common choice is THE STENDHAL SYNDROME, while others (like myself) find that film inferior to OPERA (1987); there are also any number of titles that have been initially asserted as "returns to form," such as SLEEPLESS (2001, which features a tremendous Goblin score and some nicely demonic vignettes in the midst of an uninspired police procedural), THE CARD PLAYER (2003, one of his more interesting later scripts), and THE MOTHER OF TEARS (2007, the long-promised but wonky finale of his "Three Mothers" trilogy with SUSPIRIA and INFERNO). However, even his most generous followers would have to admit that his most recent work (2009's GIALLO and 2012's DRACULA 3D) were painful embarrassments. And, to a great extent, DARK GLASSES offers in its particular story a very naked, metaphoric self-portrait of a director who has lost his ability to "see" and feels abandoned by everyone but his pet dog (whose smell, in his heart of hearts, he probably can't abide). In its surprising vulnerability and thinly-veiled candor, it presents us with a director determined to engage with us at least one more time. If there is some reproachfulness underlying it, the sublimated anger within that reproach spurs him on to create the most pleasing (if still far from perfect) picture Argento has made since take-your-pick.
Sharing a title with the Italian translation of thriller writer John Dickson Carr's THE PROBLEM OF THE GREEN CAPSULE (UK: THE BLACK SPECTACLES, first published 1939)—not to mention a poster design that steals flagrantly from the earlier one for John Carpenter's THEY LIVE (1988)—the premise of DARK GLASSES reaches back to Argento's second feature, THE CAT O' NINE TAILS (1971), which featured Karl Malden as a blind crossword-puzzle creator who lives with a little orphaned girl, both of whom are lured into danger by reporter hero James Franciscus. Ilenia Pastorelli stars as Diana, a prostitute whose clientele seems to consist only of aging men, a crowd that ramps up from a chubby romantic, to a rich executive who tries to force her into action of a sort she doesn't do, to a younger man she rejects because he smells bad ("like dogs") without realizing he's the maniac responsible for the recent murder of another girl of her profession. He chases her down in his white van, rams her from behind and causes her to become blind (or was it a delayed effect of her looking into a solar eclipse—it's not clear), an attack that inadvertently results in the accidental deaths of an Asian couple. Unharmed in the backseat of their totaled car is their orphaned child Chin (Xinyu Zhang), with whom Diana forms an almost mystic bond. He flees an orphanage to be with her, and—while dodging custodians in search of Chin—she and the boy (along with her seeing eye dog Nerea) dedicate themselves, like Batman and Robin, to tracking down the killer, with little more to go on than the smell of other dogs and the remembered fact that he drove a menacing white van..png)
Argento shares credit for the screenplay with Franco Ferrini, whose credits encompass Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (!), Lamberto Bava's DEMONS films, and a number of Argento's more enjoyable mid-career titles, including PHENOMENA, OPERA, TWO EVIL EYES and DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? I will give Ferrini the benefit of the doubt by saying that the film has the unquestionable feel of an Argento rewrite of a script that might well have been more sea-worthy. Where Argento's fingerprints are most specifically felt is in the behavior of the characters, which is so unreal and preposterous that it's kind of charming and sweet. The characters are two-dimensional caricatures and clichés, with Asia Argento's Rita—who teaches Diana how to live with her blindness—the only recognizably down-to-earth human being among them. Everything about the film shares the same goofy but ultimately winning naïveté—a trait that (I, for one, can see) has been part and parcel of Argento's work all along. For all the architectural greatness of his past work, Argento doesn't seem to know anything more about people than someone could glean from a life of watching television, particularly inane celebrity "reality-based" television, and next to nothing about how people would react in real life situations. Here, the absurd search for a maniacal killer by this blind, somehow-almost-saintly hooker and her little grasshopper takes them on an extended night walk that comes close to quoting one of the more poetic passages from Charles Laughton's NIGHT OF THE HUNTER—yet it builds to nothing more ambitious than a scare by some water snakes and a climactic semi-reprise of SUSPIRIA's silliest killing. There are also echoes of Riccardo Freda's latter-day film CACCIA ALL'UOMO (1961), a misguided giallo whose real star turns out to be a German Shepherd named Dox.
Sharing a title with the Italian translation of thriller writer John Dickson Carr's THE PROBLEM OF THE GREEN CAPSULE (UK: THE BLACK SPECTACLES, first published 1939)—not to mention a poster design that steals flagrantly from the earlier one for John Carpenter's THEY LIVE (1988)—the premise of DARK GLASSES reaches back to Argento's second feature, THE CAT O' NINE TAILS (1971), which featured Karl Malden as a blind crossword-puzzle creator who lives with a little orphaned girl, both of whom are lured into danger by reporter hero James Franciscus. Ilenia Pastorelli stars as Diana, a prostitute whose clientele seems to consist only of aging men, a crowd that ramps up from a chubby romantic, to a rich executive who tries to force her into action of a sort she doesn't do, to a younger man she rejects because he smells bad ("like dogs") without realizing he's the maniac responsible for the recent murder of another girl of her profession. He chases her down in his white van, rams her from behind and causes her to become blind (or was it a delayed effect of her looking into a solar eclipse—it's not clear), an attack that inadvertently results in the accidental deaths of an Asian couple. Unharmed in the backseat of their totaled car is their orphaned child Chin (Xinyu Zhang), with whom Diana forms an almost mystic bond. He flees an orphanage to be with her, and—while dodging custodians in search of Chin—she and the boy (along with her seeing eye dog Nerea) dedicate themselves, like Batman and Robin, to tracking down the killer, with little more to go on than the smell of other dogs and the remembered fact that he drove a menacing white van.
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Argento shares credit for the screenplay with Franco Ferrini, whose credits encompass Sergio Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (!), Lamberto Bava's DEMONS films, and a number of Argento's more enjoyable mid-career titles, including PHENOMENA, OPERA, TWO EVIL EYES and DO YOU LIKE HITCHCOCK? I will give Ferrini the benefit of the doubt by saying that the film has the unquestionable feel of an Argento rewrite of a script that might well have been more sea-worthy. Where Argento's fingerprints are most specifically felt is in the behavior of the characters, which is so unreal and preposterous that it's kind of charming and sweet. The characters are two-dimensional caricatures and clichés, with Asia Argento's Rita—who teaches Diana how to live with her blindness—the only recognizably down-to-earth human being among them. Everything about the film shares the same goofy but ultimately winning naïveté—a trait that (I, for one, can see) has been part and parcel of Argento's work all along. For all the architectural greatness of his past work, Argento doesn't seem to know anything more about people than someone could glean from a life of watching television, particularly inane celebrity "reality-based" television, and next to nothing about how people would react in real life situations. Here, the absurd search for a maniacal killer by this blind, somehow-almost-saintly hooker and her little grasshopper takes them on an extended night walk that comes close to quoting one of the more poetic passages from Charles Laughton's NIGHT OF THE HUNTER—yet it builds to nothing more ambitious than a scare by some water snakes and a climactic semi-reprise of SUSPIRIA's silliest killing. There are also echoes of Riccardo Freda's latter-day film CACCIA ALL'UOMO (1961), a misguided giallo whose real star turns out to be a German Shepherd named Dox.
Argento is always good for some nutty dialogue, and the English subtitles are pretty true to form in that regard. "Stay calm, stay calm," a woman is helpfully advised as she bleeds out wildly from her slashed throat. "Neither the sun nor death can be looked at steadily," coos one of Diana's johns as she peels off her top, adding, "Some French writer said that, but I can't remember his name." "Don't worry about that, I can still find your big swinger." When Diana loses her sight, she sobs "I can't see!," adding helpfully, "as if it was nighttime!" The dialogue often treats the viewer as though they are just as blind (or terminally thick) with constant spoon-fed captions of the obvious: "Grab my arm here, above the elbow, I'll guide you." "They'll put him in adoption, or worse, in a foster home." "I'm in a special situation, I recently lost my sight." A special telephone for blind users is explained at length: "If someone calls you, it will announce their name." "I hear footsteps," Diana says after we hear footsteps. "I hear them too," says Chin. Our blind heroine even cautions her young sidekick at one point, "Don't look, Chin!" How does she know what he would or would not see? Best of all: After her doctor lets a distraught Diana down easily with a leaden explanation of the fact that she will never see again and must vacate her hospital bed in three days, what does he say before leaving the room? That's right...
You're almost certainly waiting for me to tell you whether or not this film is a return to form, or Argento's best picture since who-knows-when. Sadly, this is now what we've been asking ourselves for ten, twenty, even thirty years. Aside from its charmingly absurd dramatis personae and wonky world view, Argento is given solid assistance by director of photography Matteo Cocco (whose work is attractive throughout and makes clever use of shadowy compositions to evoke a shared sense of Diana's blindness) and also the synthesizer score by Arnaud Rebotini, which hasn't the fullness of a classic Goblin performance but nevertheless shows great imagination in injecting certain scenes with a genuine sense of menace. There are also a few gruesome show-stoppers featuring the special effects know-how of Sergio Stivaletti. So, with all this in mind, I think "yes" is a reasonable response to the above questions; in the totality of Argento's 21 features to date, DARK GLASSES would probably rank about mid-point in his overall achievement, which means it's better than half that number of films ranging from bland to disastrous. Though it is somewhat let down by its lead performance, DARK GLASSES is nevertheless am enjoyably kooky little thriller that doesn't overstay its welcome at a comparatively trim 85 minutes.
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