31 Days of Halloween: Day 4

Opera (1987) Director: Dario Argento

Opera is one of the last quality films directed by Dario Argento before he decided that making crap would be better for his career.  While the third act is rather sloppy, the rest of the film does a good job of keeping the viewer engaged with red herrings and quality murders that effectively raise the tension, as compared to some of Argetno's previous works.

Opera begins with an elaborate tracking shot, that appears to be the POV of an opera singer, but as if her eyes were in the back of her head.  This instantly creates a mild disorienting effect in the viewer.  The source of the shots perspective is never revealed, nor is the face of the woman who we are apparently following, leaving us only her voice.  She is angrily leaving the opera house because she does not like working with the live crows in the theater.  As she walks out she is hit by a car and critically injured.  This leads to the production company promoting the understudy, Betty, to the lead of Verdi's Macbeth.  A string of murders follow, naturally, but Argento adds an interesting twist to his formula this time around.

It seems that Betty will be the first of the characters to meet their end, but the killer instead ties her to a pillar and tapes a line of pins under each of her eyes.  He tells her she must look, or her eyes will be torn off.  When someone comes to her help, the killer appears and stabs him to death.  Betty is then cut loose, but the murderer is no where to be found. 

Don't close your eyes.

The eye-pin mechanic adds a great level of previously lacking tension to the murder.  Usually in an Argento film the audience knows that once the knife is out, the poor soul is done for, but here the deaths are not so much about the victim, but the witness, Betty.  We feel each of the cuts to closeup of her eyes, as the killer digs his knife into his victim.  Unfortunately, Argento uses this setup in almost every death scene in the film, so upon repeated usage it loses almost all of its impact since we know she is not in any real danger. 

As suggested already, eyes and vision are a major theme throughout the film.  We begin with the tracking shot from a mysterious perspective, and we have our heroine witness each of the murders in a grizzly manner.  Shots of closeups on the eyes of crows is a recurring image as well, and a POV shot of a crow is used for an elaborate crane shot at the end of the films second act.  Finally, when the murderer is revealed, it is his eyes that are attacked, with one of them being pecked out and eaten by a crow.  Argento is perhaps reflecting on the controversy that has always surrounded his films, and his audiences love looking at them. 

The acting in Opera is pretty bad across the board, without a single character really giving a believable performance.  This is surprisingly easy to look past, however, due to the good pacing of the film and constant teasing of who the killer actually is.  The third act is really rather bizarre.  I'm not sure if it is terrible, or just strange.  The last ten minutes without a doubt is the worst part of Opera, but it isn't so bad that it ruins the whole thing.  It just leaves one scratching their head a little.