MovieChat Forums > Inferno (1980) Discussion > Exposition - Argento's biggest downfall?

Exposition - Argento's biggest downfall?

posted 9 years ago by ElxDiablo
3 replies | jump to latest

I do like this movie (although I still think Suspiria is the best of "The Three Mothers" trilogy)...still, I find that for all his skills as a director that a major downfall of this film is in the exposition.

I understand from the trivia on this movie that Dario Argento had serious limitations with translating from Italian to English, and in many ways I think it shows whenever dialogue is required to be nuanced.

Both Suspiria and Inferno have endings with a "final boss" witch, basically wrapping things up before the building goes up in flames.

In Suspiria, the child-like dialogue (which was originally intended to be spoken by a younger cast...but changed for obvious reasons), allows the audience to be taken in by a flurry of visual Escher references, and let stilted or cheesy dialogue go. Words are barely needed to convey the storyline anyhow. It's a highly visual film.

It's all "Alice in Escher-land", so the audience doesn't care if a few lines come out cheesy.

I think Inferno suffered much the same fate in terms of the ending exposition...but because the cast are all adults and the imagery isn't a coherent motif based on the surreal work of a mathematician-artist, the audience is less forgiving of the "final boss" nurse-witch-skeletor proclaiming that she is death, basically out of nowhere.

My personally feeling while watching Inferno is that it's a less inspired clone of its predecessor. I like it, but there's this nagging feeling that it didn't live up to it's potential in terms of the visual and pacing elements that made Suspiria so engrossing...and because of that, it makes the ending exposition seem like a rushed cop-out (even though I'm sure it wasn't intended to be like that at all).

Anyhow, I'm not intending to offend any Argento or Inferno fans out there. I do love his work and this film...but after re-watching the trilogy it became apparent why Suspiria is an absolute classic of the genre, while Inferno seems to not quite reach the same heights, even whilst sharing the same ending exposition problems as its predecessor.

Feel free to comment or rip my opinions to shreds. I just thought I'd share.

[–] recklesscow 9 years ago

I think the problem is they're two very different films, so one colors your perspective of the other.

Inferno really has no main character in that it pulls a bait and switch halfway through like Psycho and pushes Mark to the forefront after Rose's death. Even before that, we have two simultaneous storylines taking place on different continents as opposed to the isolated location of the ballet school in Suspiria. In some ways it was interesting to see a narrative split like that, but in other ways it denied us a strong protagonist as we don't spend the entire movie with one particular character.

On top of that, the film feels so languid at times. I mean we have entire scenes where a character does nothing but sit in a cab and watch the rain. Most other directors would just cut to the character arriving at their destination to eliminate filler, which is why Argento is so different. It feels like it takes forever for Rose to finally get into the sunken room in the basement and entire portions of the film are basically just the characters wandering around their buildings. I've not quite figured out what Argento was going for, but seeing as this was the way it was edited, it was clearly intentional. My only guess is that it adds an overwhelming dreamlike atmosphere to the proceedings because without something important or shocking occurring every other minute, we get lulled into a placid state because the music and the story unfold at such a leisurely pace. It's quite artful, but unfortunately it can also come off as boring for those who aren't used to it.

In the end I think both films have their strengths, but Suspiria is going to be the clear winner for most because the narrative and pacing is much more traditional. Personally I will say I prefer Inferno, but then the dreamlike, languid pacing works for me.

[–] ElxDiablo 9 years ago

I don't particularly disagree with anything you've said...but it's also tangential to the topic at hand.

Taking Suspiria and Inferno as examples, I find BOTH become cheesy and forced, during those final few moments where the "mater" of that building is wrapping things up.

There are other moments scattered throughout mostly Inferno which I'd label as "somewhat clumsy exposition", but it stands out most strongly at the end.

In contrast, Trauma uses a number of flashbacks in lieu of exposition during the "final boss", which I personally felt worked exceptionally well.

Argento is a man who is most adept at showing and not telling the audience what's going on...and I don't know if there are translation issues contributing to this, but when a lot of telling is occurring (and it's not part of normal back-and-forth dialogue), things get very cheesy, very quickly.

Of course I have reasons for feeling that it was more apparent and/or less forgivable in Inferno (many that concur with your views)...but still that clumsy exposition at the end was there, and there's not getting around that fact.

I'm really wondering if others have noticed.

[–] monamask 8 years ago

I wouldn't call the downtime in INFERNO artful. It's really maddening. There's a major distinction between being atmospheric and wasting the audience's time. Argento is no Tarkovsky. We don't need to see a guy prying apart floorboards for five minutes. When your movie is all style and no substance, every scene needs to move the story forward. When character isn't important, the story needs to be chugging along. Argento doesn't get that here. It's a complete mess, but there are some great sequences in it.