Riley and Company usually have their own sets of frustrating problems with most Maverick artist profile documents, which can be seen in “Dario Argento Panico,” an affectionate documentary about the Italian horror director. Luckily, most of that is irrelevant due to the stunning richness of the film’s head-talking interviews. It is true that Scafidi doesn’t have enough follow-up questions, but he does provide enough guiding ones so that his interviewees can accurately frame Argento and everything that goes into him including his current position as a stylized ancestor and often, familial, roots that influence how he developed his style.
Attacking his cast of interviewees is an infrequent recurrence for Scafidi, and there are far too many dull-looking and empty insight comments from celebrity filmmakers Gaspar Noe and Nicolas Winding Refn which I, for one, did not find captivating at all. There is little incentive to bother, though, given the mountain of other featured analyses, particularly from Argento’s family members, like his sister Floriana and his daughters Asia and Fiore, as well as long-time collaborators Lamberto Bava and Michele Soavi.
From the very beginning, Scafidi starts to make connections that he does not follow up on or doesn’t analyze deeply. Argento and some relatives bring up his mother, photographer Elda Luxardo, and they venture that seeing Luxardo in action must have been an influence.
Asia is the most blunt in the comments here and most other times, and Scafidi makes comparisons between Argento’s private life and his shocking modernist dramas. She proposes that after crying, Luxardo’s anger was probably their form of sadness after giving up photography to raise children. Asia supports her claim of family photographs, attributing many unsatisfactory pictures to her grandmother who had the opportunity but refused to accept the family’s request. In further comments, Argento maintains that he is also influenced by his mother, especially her adoration of the female form. In other words, that’s everything Scafidi manages to extract from Argento’s mother with respect to the influence on her daughter’s biography and her later work.
As has recently been the trend with many genres and subgenres para cinema, “Dario Argento Panico” seems to be aimed primarily at established film buffs. Why would anyone care that Refn was inspired by Argento’s use of electronic music in his glacial 1980s giallo slasher “Tenebrae”? Noe’s commentary on how Argento makes people “neither nonsexual nor necessarily sexual” is ghastly strange. To put it as plainly as possible, if you have never viewed any of Argento’s movies, that last line does not make much sense. The creators of “Dario Argento Panico” appear to believe the audience possesses some prior knowledge of Argento’s films.
The connections between the important events in Argento’s life are far too intertwined and complex. This quality might be the most striking aspect of the documentary. Unlike some of his worst work, this documentary functions quite well as a self-sustaining narrative due to “Dario Argento Panico” having a vast and complicated web of suggested reasoning. Scafidi, the main interviewer in this case, addresses topics from the break-up Argento had with his ex-partner and collaborator Daria Nicolodi to what seems like a creative low-point after 1987 when he directed “Opera.” While I don’t entirely agree, I am a bit biased, having served as Argento’s interviewer when writing the program notes for Lincoln Center’s 2022 Dario Argento retrospective.
This part is quite indicative of Argento’s said Oscar-winning documentary style. He tries to express his itchy need to discuss Argento and his art in multiple ways, something he Achieved with his neurotic style. It is clear that he knows a great deal of information and tries to condense it into short, simple-to-digest and humorous archival clips along with lightning comments from Argento, who doesn’t need to be introduced to the world of horror movie fans.
Given the level of care Scafidi takes in his subjects, it is hard to argue that “Dario Argento Panico” does not deliver on its promise as a retrospective docu-appraisal.
He pays tribute to Argento by rounding up different characters from different novels and letting the viewers experience a tapestry of contrasting viewpoints. Just like Argento, Scafidi appears to adore his characters as he prioritizes their life stories in order to help make sense to who is speaking and what is being spoken.
Scafidi’s film is more fascinating when he gives space to his interviewees to express their feelings about Asia’s company. It is delightful to watch her expand on her father’s films beyond the scope of the ones she stars in It is equally difficult to picture “Dario Argento Panico” having much of an appeal outside the ranks of the faithful Argento admirers due to the abundant emphasis placed on the dominating theories and concepts of Argento rather than an illustrative survey of his films.
It is quite a welcome change to see Scafidi emphasize these testimonies which, for many, would have been stripped down to their witty bits. These are the gaps in what one can achieve given the constraints of the materials one has.
Scafidi part ways with the lens and takes a full perspective on Argento and his family by letting him wind up like a toy. The rest is for the audience to interpret.
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