Mystery and uncertainty: why does Dario Argento often place his characters in foreign cities?
The giallo genre emerged within the Italian film industry during the 1960s, with Mario Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much often considered the first. Blending vibrant colour palettes, violence, murder mystery, and sexploitation elements, giallo films became one of the most influential facets of the wider horror genre—effortlessly stylish and often rather gruesome. Alongside Bava, various other filmmakers tried their hand at the genre, with Dario Argento arguably becoming the most well-known of the bunch.
The filmmaker started out writing screenplays, even contributing to Once Upon a Time in the West by Sergio Leone. It wasn’t until 1970 that Argento made his directorial debut with The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, which was a success. Over the coming years, Argento made several acclaimed movies, mainly falling into the giallo genre. Yet, as he continued to release more films, a recurring feature became apparent – almost all of the protagonists within his films are English speakers living in a foreign country.
For example, in The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, Tony Musante plays an American writer in Rome; in Deep Red, David Hemmings is an English musician living in Turin; in Suspiria, Jessica Harper is an American ballet student in Germany; and in Phenomena, Jennifer Connelly plays an American girl attending a Swiss boarding school.
That’s not even all of Argento’s films that feature this trope – it’s something he seems to return to time and time again. Could this be due to a lack of imagination? Or perhaps Argento sees the set-up of using a protagonist exploring a foreign land as a storytelling device? Most of the filmmaker’s movies are similar in their themes, even if the plotline and setting are different. At the core of his films are murder mysteries, with a main character who must escape an unknown killer and figure out their identity. Thus, by using a character who is not native to the country in which the story is set, Argento heightens the movie’s levels of mystery, paranoia, tension and fear.
Imagine you’re living in a country with a different culture and language to the one you grew up with, and the people around you suddenly start showing up dead, or you witness a violent crime. Away from your home comforts, you’d be pretty scared, with certain language and cultural barriers stopping you from fully understanding what’s going on. In Deep Red, for example, Marcus, an English jazz pianist, suddenly enters into a world he is not privy to, intruding on an insane woman’s murderous delights. The information he is given as he tries to solve the crimes within the film all comes from locals who know the area and its history, such as the nearby haunted house.
By dropping foreign characters into a world they are not fully accustomed to, it creates a more unnerving effect. When Suzy arrives at her German dance school in the pouring rain, having just touched down from the United States, the atmosphere of mystery and alienation is high. The character’s confusion and isolation are emphasised as she tries to figure out who is causing terror within the film – and why.
Additionally, having an English or American protagonist (most of Argento’s movies were all dubbed in English) helped the director’s movies appeal to a wider international market. Hollywood audiences are more likely to see films with characters speaking the same language as them, and while a more cynical viewer might consider this the only reason for Argento’s use of native English protagonists, this certainly wasn’t the sole purpose of this trope.
You really do feel a sense of alienation between the main character and the events that unravel around them due to their engagement with people and places that they’re not well accustomed to. Mystery and uncertainty are at the heart of Argento’s films, and what better way to emphasise these themes than to place a character into an unfamiliar world?
