Four Flies on Grey Velvet came up in conversation a few days ago and my failure to say anything about this film prompted me to revisit Argento’s third film last night. My previous screening of the film was in 2009, when the botched MYA DVD first hit the street, so last night’s screening, courtesy of the German Koch Media Blu-Ray was long overdue. Sadly though, my inability to comment on the film was not so much down to my faltering memory, unreliable as it is, but the fact that Four Flies on Grey Velvet is rather dull and unengaging. Not having seen the film in over a decade I couldn’t recall going in who was tormenting Michael Brandon’s character and quite honestly, I gave up guessing about midway through, such was the insipid storyline and the leaden pacing - the suspense sequences in particular seem to take an age to unfold. Four Flies is a sort of oddball film at this point in Argento’s career, and it feels very self-conscious in a few respects. There’s some very show-off subjective camerawork as if Argento was flexing his muscles in an increasingly crowded murder-thriller genre that had found inspiration in The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. And there’s some dismal comedy as if the director was deliberately trying to shake off expectations set by his two previous thrillers. The comedy would find greater expression in the sabbatical that was The Five Days of Milan, and if one follows the sequence of films, Four Flies…Five Days; Deep Red looks ever more like Argento’s great comeback film. Four Flies is probably a more enjoyable film to discuss than to watch, and there are ideas and elements in the film that would resonate for years to come across Argento’s work, even as far in to the future as Opera, and for that alone, the film remains an essential collector’s item.
No comments:
Post a Comment