Sunday 18 March 2007

Some telling dialogue from Tenebrae

Gianni: “I was on my way back to the house. I know there's a piece of the puzzle there if I can only remember it, see it.”

Or, the expectation that a Bird with the Crystal Plumage / Deep Red dynamic is about to develop, as Gianni revisits the scene of the crime, the haunted house.

Peter Neale: “I'm sorry Gianni, I'm really sorry that you had to get caught up in all of this.”

Or, Neale's admissions of guilt and another signal that Argento is playing by a different set of rules to his more celebrated earlier gialli, that the (young) man who just about knows too much is about to die; the dynamic being more akin to Four Flies on Grey Velvet, where Arrosio is allowed the pleasure of knowing that he was right and had solved the mystery, albeit “only at the moment of dying”

Who says Argento cannot write effective, multi-layered dialogue?

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