Pictorial Imagery, Camerawork and Soundtrack in Dario Argento’s 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 which the Italian horror-meister fully explores a distinguishing pairing of the acoustic and the iconic through an effective combination of ELABORATECAMERAWORKANDDISJUNCTIVEMUSICANDSOUND3PECIlCALLYTHIS article seeks to complement these studies by arguing that such a stylistic and technical achievementINTHElLMISALSORENDEREDBY!RGENTOSUSEOFASPECIlC art-historical repertoire, which not only reiterates the Gesamtkunstwerklike complexity of the director’s audiovisual spectacle, but also serves to TRANSPOSE THE FlLMS 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 FlLM RGENTO 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.