After the lackluster reception of Inferno, the second entry in his supernaturally inclined Three Mothers trilogy, Dario Argento pivoted back to the giallo genre that he’d helped put on the world-cinema map with the release of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage back in 1970. Not content to merely “return to form,” and plagued by some personal demons of his own, Argento unleashed the supreme meta-giallo Tenebrae, an endlessly reflexive murder mystery about the solving of murder mysteries.
The notion that Tenebrae is primarily concerned with the conditions of its own making is signaled straight away. The first thing we see is a copy of a book also called Tenebrae. A voiceover narrator declaims a passage that describes murder as a liberating, creative act. What’s more, the scene introduces two of the most elemental bits of giallo iconography: the black gloves worn by the killer and a shiny cutthroat razor.
The notion that Tenebrae is primarily concerned with the conditions of its own making is signaled straight away. The first thing we see is a copy of a book also called Tenebrae. A voiceover narrator declaims a passage that describes murder as a liberating, creative act. What’s more, the scene introduces two of the most elemental bits of giallo iconography: the black gloves worn by the killer and a shiny cutthroat razor.
- 9/26/2023
- by Budd Wilkins
- Slant Magazine
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