Deep Red (Dario Argento, 1975)

Cast: David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi, Gabriele Lavia, Macha Méril, Eros Pagni, Giuliana Calandri, Piero Mazzinghi, Glauco Mauri, Clara Calamai. Screenplay: Dario Argenti, Bernardino Zapponi. Cinematography: Luigi Kuveiller. Production design: Giuseppe Bassan. Film editing: Franco Fraticelli. Music: Giorgio Gaslini, Goblin. 

Dario Argenti likes his protagonists to keep sticking their noses in places where they shouldn't. In The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, for example, it's an American writer who witnesses something that he should have left to the Italian police to investigate, but he persists in trying to solve the crime, putting himself and his girlfriend in peril. And in Deep Red it's a British jazz pianist, Marcus Daly (David Hemmings), who witnesses something that he should have left to the Italian police to investigate, but he persists in trying to solve the crime, putting himself and his girlfriend, journalist Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi), in peril. Well, if a formula works, use it. And it does work, though largely because Argenti has such delight in flinging the most improbable situations and the most colorful (not to say bloody) images at the viewer. He also likes to load his films with a variety of eccentric characters, some of whom are red herrings, but most of which are just there to keep the protagonist on his toes. (There's a touch of homophobia in Argenti's treatment of some of them, like the antiques dealer in The Bird who keeps hitting on the writer, and the androgynous lover of Marcus's friend Carlo (Gabriele Lavia) who elicits a puzzled response from Marcus.) It's best not to try to solve the mysteries along with Argento's amateur detectives, mainly because nothing in his elaborate plots makes sense, like the mechanical doll that spooks one of the victims, or even the identity of the killer. Hemmings, who was usually cast as somewhat creepy, is instead a likable and intrepid protagonist, and Nicolodi is more the entertainingly spunky sidekick than the romantic interest.   

The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, 1970)

Cast: Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno, Eva Renzi, Umberto Raho, Renato Romano, Giuseppe Castellano, Mario Adorf, Pino Patti. Screenplay: Dario Argento, based on a novel by Fredric Brown. Cinematography: Vittorio Storaro. Production design: Dario Micheli, Film editing: Franco Fraticelli. Music: Ennio Morricone. 

Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)

Jessica Harper in Suspiria

Cast: Jessica Harper, Stefania Cassini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé, Barbara Magnolfi, Susanna Javicoli, Eva Axén, Rudolf Schündler, Udo Kier, Alida Valli, Joan Bennett. Screenplay: Dario Argento, Daria Nicolodi. Cinematography: Luciano Tovoli. Production design: Giuseppe Bassan. Film editing: Franco Fraticelli. Music: Dario Argento, Goblin (Agostino Marangolo, Massimo Morante, Fabio Pignatelli, Claudio Simonetti). 

I've seen movies in which the sets were more interesting than what's going on in them, but I don't think anyone would say that about Dario Argento's Suspiria. At the very least, in the competition of setting and action for the viewer's attention, it's a draw. When Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) tells a cab driver to take her to Escherstrasse, I should have been alerted to the visual phantasmagoria that is to come. It's clear that Argento means us to pick up on the allusion to the Dutch artist M.C. Escher, known for his plays on perspective and visual puzzles; Argento has the surly cabbie force Suzy to repeat the street name twice before saying it himself. But Escher's work was in black and white; Argento's, and that of his production designer, Giuseppe Bassan, and his cinematographer, Luciano Tovoli, is in color -- the most lurid Technicolor seen in a movie since the heyday of the MGM musical. Not that Suspiria has much in common with those musicals: The dominant color in Suspiria is red, and a lot of that red is blood, often artfully splattered. (One large blood splat looks like a Rorschach test.) I can't say that I was shocked by anything in the movie, although the many murders in it verge on overkill. It's too gaudy and noisy -- the background music by Goblin is the aural equivalent of the decor -- to build much tension. I could wish the dubbing of the dialogue didn't have the depthless quality, the lack of ambiance, of speech recorded in a studio -- even the English-speaking actors were post-synched in the manner of many Italian films of the era. But then the dialogue doesn't matter much: It's nonsense about witches, and the plot is only a device to hang horrors on. Still, Suspiria is a one-of-a-kind movie -- maybe we should be grateful for that -- and a landmark in its genre.  

Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)

Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West

Jill McBain: Claudia Cardinale
Frank: Henry Fonda
Manuel "Cheyenne" Guitiérrez: Jason Robards
Harmonica: Charles Bronson
Morton: Gabriele Ferzetti
Stony; Woody Strode
Snaky: Jack Elam
Sam: Paolo Stoppa
Sheriff: Keenan Wynn
Brett McBain: Frank Wolff
Barman: Lionel Stander

Director: Sergio Leone
Screenplay: Sergio Donati, Sergio Leone, Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci
Cinematography: Tonino Delli Colli
Art direction: Carlo Simi
Film editing: Nino Baragli
Music: Ennio Morricone

An acknowledged genre classic, Once Upon a Time in the West is also a rather self-conscious product of European filmmakers tipping their hats to the American masters of the Western movie, particularly John Ford, whose favorite setting, Monument Valley, plays almost a cameo role in the film. Ford would never have made anything quite so slowly paced, however. Director Sergio Leone's film is full of stylish gestures that make it immensely watchable, but draw attention to themselves rather than the story being told -- a pitfall that the great Western moviemakers like Ford or Howard Hawks or Sam Peckinpah never let themselves stumble into.