Wednesday, 28 February 2007

The Cat o' Nine Tails - some existential questions?

In Cat o' Nine Tails does the killer leave his victims “all cut up” because he is insane or to lead the police into searching for a madman and thereby less likely to connect the break-in at the Terzi institute with his other crimes?

Is the fundamental difference between the killer and the blind investigator how they respond to the hands fate has dealt them, that the former cannot see past his possession of the wrong genetic combination while the latter has never let his becoming blind define his being as blind man and nothing else? (This is something Maitland McDonagh alludes to.)

Is part of the problem that many commentators have with the film, besides the probable influence of Argento's own retrospective dismissals of it, that its emphases, which I would identify as the aural, the tactile and what might be characterised as existential questions, are at odds with those of the dominant theories, which are visual and concerned with the unconscious? When Argento says the film is “too American” is he partly also saying it is too 1940s film noir and too little 1970s giallo in its thematics?

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