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Monday, May 16, 2011

Review: Deep Red (Blue Underground release)

3:04 PM / Reviews / 23 Comments

The film

1975. The giallo craze that consumed the early part of the decade has run out of steam, with Italian audiences turning to macho crime thrillers and sex comedies where once they flocked to lurid whodunits with names like A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN (UNA LUCERTOLA CON LA PELLE DI DONNA, Fulci 1971) and WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE? (COSA AVETE FATTO A SOLANGE?, Dallamano 1972). Dario Argento, after effectively launching the craze with his first film, THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (L'UCCELLO DALLE PIUME DI CRISTALLO, 1970), has bowed out of the race after completing his "animal trilogy" of gialli to make the ill-fated historical comedy THE FIVE DAYS OF MILAN (LE CINQUE GIORNATE, 1973). For many filmmakers, returning to the genre in which he made his name after so visibly falling short when trying his hand at something new would be something of a climbdown. Not so for Argento: with DEEP RED (PROFONDO ROSSO to use its original Italian title), he delivers the giallo to end all gialli and, at the time, his best film.

The plot is typical giallo fare: English pianist Marc Daly (David Hemmings), living in Italy, witnesses the bloody murder of his neighbour, psychic Helga Ullmann (Macha Méril). Earlier Helga, while giving a demonstration of her abilities at a parapsychology conference, had tuned into the thoughts of a killer in the audience, claiming to be able to identify them. Convinced that Helga was on to something and that something about the crime scene doesn't quite make sense, Marc teams up with a bolshie journalist, Gianna Brezzi (Daria Nicolodi), to track down Helga's killer before he himself meets a sticky end...

As you've probably already surmised, it's not really about the plot, although DEEP RED does have an unusually good one by giallo standards. It's largely a re-tread of that of THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, once again pitting a foreign artist adrift in Italy against a deranged serial killer and presenting him with an inexplicable puzzle relating to his witnessing of the initial murder, the significance of which he can't yet grasp. Marc Daly is cut from very much the same cloth as Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) in the earlier film, although to his credit he is somewhat more aware of his own foibles and actually seems to emerge from his ordeal having learned something about himself. Rather than simply regurgitating the story wholesale, Argento and co-writer Bernardino Zapponi use the by now familiar giallo template as a loose springboard from which to launch a variety of audacious set-pieces, frequently revolving around (but not limited to) the gruesome extended murder sequences for which Argento had become known. The use of Helga's apparently genuine psychic abilities as a plot device, meanwhile, foreshadows Argento's full-on embracement of the supernatural with his next film, 1977's SUSPIRIA.

If Argento's third giallo, FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET (4 MOSCHE DI VELLUTO GRIGIO, 1971), showed him to be growing increasingly disinterested in narrative and increasingly dedicating himself to the visuals and other technical aspects, DEEP RED is the film with which he finally cuts loose and embraces style for style's sake. That's not to say that the script isn't strong - it is, and I suspect we primarily have Zapponi to thank for that - but Argento allows the plot to meander, frequently forsaking it to indulge in, say, a debate about the different positions men and women occupy in society (culminating in an arm-wrestling contest to see which is the weaker sex) or an extended exploration of a crumbling old mansion. It's as if Marc, the archetypal foreigner abroad, has stumbled into some sort of strange otherworld where the streets are utterly deserted at night, the bar from Hopper's "Nighthawks" painting is mysteriously transposed on to the Piazza Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale as if torn from the canvas, landmarks from Turin and Rome intermingle in a single unidentified city, and it somehow seems utterly logical to launch an investigation based on no more than the ramblings of a murdered psychic. Meanwhile, the Kafkaesque machinations of the police - more concerned with non-functioning drinks machines and organising "sit-ins" than solving the case - suggest that there's not much room in this world for logical deduction.

While Argento is unquestionably the real star of the show, cranking up the stylisation to the point of excess and revelling in all sorts of seemingly unmotivated camera angles, movements and cutaways, a lot of the credit for the film's success must go to David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi, who turn in assured and amusing performances and seem to have genuine chemistry together. Their relationship (the precise details of which are never spelled out - do they or do they not have sex?) has been described as the sweetest Argento has ever portrayed, and must surely be partly attributed to Argento's relationship with Nicolodi at the time (it's quite amusing to watch the treatment of Nicolodi's characters becoming increasingly nastier with each film as their relationship deteriorated). There's a case to be made that Gianna, who beats Marc at arm-wrestling, saves him from a burning building and does the lion's share of the investigative legwork, is the film's true hero, and her presence marks a significant shift in Argento's attitude to his female characters. Whereas in the animal trilogy the only women Argento graced with more than the most cursory characterisation were his villainesses, the relationship between Marc and Gianna eventually evolves into a partnership of equals, with Gianna prefiguring the tough-yet-vulnerable female protagonists Argento would favour in much of his later work. (It's telling that, since DEEP RED, the bulk of Argento's protagonists have been female.)

While I personally consider SUSPIRIA to be Argento's crowning achievement, I can at the same time completely understand why so many hold this up as his masterpiece. It's unquestionably the greatest giallo ever made, a perfection of the formula by the man who effectively launched the craze. In many ways, it's a shame he couldn't have left it at this, as his more recent forays into giallo territory have tended to be limp and derivative - futile attempts to recapture former glory that fail to do anything to advance the genre. Still, allow DEEP RED to stand alone and its status as the king of gialli - and Argento's status of the king of giallo DIRECTORS - is clear for all to see. It's a stunning piece of work, the best of its kind and one of the best movies ever made, regardless of genre. 10/10

Image quality

Blue Underground's BD version of DEEP RED arrives a few months after the UK release by Arrow Video. Reviewing that release back in January, I was disappointed by the image quality, chiefly on the grounds of what looked like poor quality scaling from a sub-1080p source and the stucco, noise-like quality of the grain. I expressed slight surprise at this at the time, given that my impression, from having previously viewed the 2005 WMV-HD DVD release from Italian label Medusa, was that the master, which the two releases shared, was a reasonably good one. Much to my surprise, there were instances in which, despite its woeful bit rate, the grain was actually rendered better on the WMV-HD version than on the Arrow BD. As far as this new edition goes, they do say that third time's a charm...

First things first, let's be abundantly clear about one thing: despite claims to the contrary, the BU release is NOT a brand new scan of the film. It's the exact same master that was created in 2004 (as far as can be ascertained under cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller's supervision) and used for both the 2005 Medusa WMV-HD and the 2011 Arrow BD. So, going ahead, we need to bear in mind that we're talking about a master that's somewhere in the region of seven years old - not something that would normally fill me with confidence. With that being said, I'm more than happy to concede that the results here are good - in places strikingly good. The scaling artefacts that plagued the Arrow release are gone, and more importantly the grain is rendered throughout with far more precision. In terms of detail and quality of encoding, it's every bit the equal of Blue Underground's earlier BD of THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, with the tight close-ups Argento has such a penchant for showing ample fine detail. Wider shots can tend to look a little soft, but I'm confident that this is simply down to how the film was shot. That said, the source material seems to have been in slightly worse shape to that of BIRD, with noticeable positive (black) and negative (white) print damage throughout (once again casting doubt on the claim on the back cover that the film has been "newly transferred... from its original camera negative) and, during the final ten minutes or so, some intermittent discolouration, with the tint fluctuating between the slightly yellowish look of the bulk of the film and a more sickly green hue. I must confess to not having noticed this when I watched the Arrow version (presumably I was distracted by its other problems), but looking at it again it's definitely there.

I've weighed in in the past on the grain that can be seen in many of the HD transfers of Italian films of this vintage, and its authenticity or lack thereof. Once again, I have to confess to being slightly suspicious that something odd is going on. The grain does at times have a decidedly noise-like quality, particularly noticeable on white or otherwise very bright areas of the screen. On the other hand, the grain in darker areas largely looks very natural, particularly compared to its messy rendering on the Arrow BD. Back when I wrote my review of that release, I attributed most of its problems to compression. Now, however, I feel more inclined to suspect that the blame may lie with a clumsy attempt to degrain the film. It would certainly fit with their modus operandi: INFERNO and PHENOMENA were both heavily degrained, so the idea that they would choose to leave the significantly grainier DEEP RED alone seems a little implausible. Whatever the reason though, it's clear that Blue Underground's handling of the master is vastly superior to Arrow's, giving this new release a clear win. 8/10

Deep Red (Blue Underground release)
studio: Blue Underground; disc country: USA; region code: ABC;
codec: AVC; aspect ratio: 2.35:1

A quick note on the two versions

Like the Arrow release, Blue Underground's version includes two cuts of the film: the full-length 126-minute Italian "director's cut" and a shorter 105-minute English export version. Both are included on the same disc but are separate files rather than being seamlessly branched. Surprisingly, the improved quality of this release allows us to see that the primary source for the HD master appears to have been a print of the export version. When scenes not included in that version arrive, the master switches to another print. There is no obvious difference in quality between the two sources, but shifts from one print to the other that occur mid-scene are noticeable: in a couple of instances, the image softens briefly during the switch, whereas a couple of frames end up being dropped at the beginning of the shot where Marc and Gianna return to Gianna's car after Helga's funeral. This probably also explains why Blue Underground have managed to get their hands on high definition English-language opening and closing credits (Arrow had to make do with standard definition ones). And, in case anyone was wondering, the image of Marc staring into the pool of blood behind the closing credits is not the awkward freeze-frame from the old Anchor Bay DVD (re-released by Blue Underground a few years back).

Audio quality

We get a myriad of sound options which vary depending on which cut of the film you're watching. The full-length Italian version offers up Italian DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround EX and Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, as well as a hybrid Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround EX track which plays most of the film in English but reverts to Italian with English subtitles for scenes where no English audio exists. The English export cut, meanwhile, features English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1, English Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround EX and English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono. English subtitles are provided for the Italian cut, and English SDH, Spanish and French subtitles for the English cut.

One disappointment for me is that the hybrid track is only available as a 5.1 remix, meaning that there's no way to watch the full-length version of the film in English mono. That said, it's a fairly subtle remix, with little in the way of noticeable rear channel effects and no out of place sound effects. Too bad it's lossy. Otherwise, it's all good, with the Italian DTS-HD MA track sounding by far the most impressive, particularly in terms of Goblin's driving score. Despite its jarring nature, I prefer to watch the film in its hybrid form so I can at least hear David Hemmings' own speaking voice MOST of the time. If you're less bothered about losing Hemmings' voice, though, or you dislike the film constantly shifting between English and Italian, you can't go wrong with either the 7.1 Italian remix or its mono counterpart. And, if you're one of those viewers who prefers the brisker (but considerably less thematically rich) export cut, the same choices apply, except in English.

By the way, I know that some people criticised the Arrow release on account of its subtitles seeming to run ahead of the video by several frames. While I can't claim that this troubled me unduly, there's no doubt that the subtitles on the Blue Underground disc are noticeably better timed. 8/10

Extras

No question about it, this release looks pretty limp in the extras department when placed alongside the Arrow release. That version had a commentary and new interviews with Argento, Nicolodi and Claudio Simonetti. This one has... a couple of grubby-looking trailers, a reheated 11-minute interview with Argento, Zapponi and Goblin from the old Anchor Bay DVD, and a couple of music videos, one of which (and the disc's sole new feature) is a "live studio" performance of the title theme, recorded in 2010. It's a very underwhelming line-up, particularly given the film's importance, and it's hard not to feel disappointed that Blue Underground didn't make the effort to either record some new material of their own or at least licence some of Arrow's more impressive line-up (as they did for their release of Fulci's CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD). 3/10

Overall

Lest anyone be in any doubt, this release of DEEP RED is by far the best the film has ever looked on home video and, despite the paltry extras, is undoubtedly the version to own. While I suspect that the age of the master and the technical limitations that were in place when it was created have resulted in the image quality not reaching the heights that would have been possible with a new scan, it's certainly no slouch, and viewers can now confidently throw away their DVD copies, safe in the knowledge that they have been well and truly superseded. 8/10

23 Comments

 
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