Experimental Thriller - Film

Reading fans or non-fans complaining about Argento's storytelling in film after film gets pretty old. You'd think by now film enthusiasts would come to the conclusion that Argento's storytelling method IN ALL HIS FILMS simply does not conform to mainstream criteria; melodramatic, character driven cause and effect narrative IS NOT how this director builds his movies. Calling FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET a who-done-it is like calling Antonioni's RED DESERT a love story, or LA DOLCE VITA a social drama. Argento layers in so many levels of activity, with characters that dig into concerns that seem more thematic than merely functional, the film is clearly operating on a completely different wave length than, say, Sergio Martino's TORSO, or, if you will, any Hitchcock title. Argento emerged from a cinema tradition that actively explored new methods of screen narrative, even to the point of destroying the tried and true. Antonioni and Fellini did the same thing, though they were not associated with any particular genre. Sergio Leone and Mario Bava were associated with specific genres, and they, too, did a great deal to reconfigure the viewers' complacent relationships with expected twists and turns in westerns and horror movies, respectively.

FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET opens with a series of cross cut sequences that explicitly detail the film's concerns and its visual language and style. At the center of this opening sequence is the musician playing the drums; the aggressive, chaotic rock and roll rhythm underlines and connects the entire sequence. Argento is telling us right at the beginning that he's not going to be linear or orderly about it; he's also giving us, with his non linear cross cutting, the films point of view.

Unlike most thrillers, where the main character's point of view is demonstrated so we will identify with the character and therefore worry about what happens, this film's point of view is Agrento's; his is the logic that draws us from set piece to set piece; the connection between all thing here is in the logic he applies, and not specifically in the development of any specific character. We view a first person narrative in which the narrator is not a single character, but rather an aspect of all the characters.

Argento's method has more to do with what we see and how we see it than it does with who-done-it, or even why. The story points that do emerge are meant as ironic comments on the thriller form, just as the motives in a Leone movie are rife with self conscience myth-making. That's why the reality or logic of the eye business at the end is quite beside the point. Argento uses that particular device as a stylistic short hand, as if to say, what we see makes an impact.

Watch the way Argento edits his set piece sequences and you see an explicit desire on his part to go in a direction that's not expected and is more experimental in just about every way than any other thriller-type movie you can name. For me, it's the unexpected turns that this experimentation creates that draws me in. It's the disturbing way the film shifts its story out from under me that creates moments of unnerving suspense. Argento's film is not trying to be a traditional thriller. No. Argento is trying to create something different, a new genre; in fact, he has become his own genre.