PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
FOUR FLIES is commonly deemed the third
of Dario Argento’s “animal triliogy.” There’s no small irony
in the fact that actual animals are not important to any of the
stories. There is a bird in BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, but the
actual creature is only important as a mnemonic device. There’s no
feline in CAT O’NINE TAILS, and the idea of a multi-thonged whip is
just a metaphor for the story’s complications. Similarly, the “four
flies” also don’t come on stage: they exist only as an image
concocted to make sense of chaos.
In my review of CAT O’NINE TAILS, I
opined that Argento might have been aiming for a more upscale, less
ultraviolent type of thriller than he’d executed in PLUMAGE. FLIES,
though, feels like a return to the heavy violence and meandering
storylines of classic giallo. Certainly Argento and co-scripters Luigi
Cozzi and Mario Foglietti pay a lot more attention to the killer’s motivations here
than the scripters did in CAT. For good measure FLIES seems to be recycling
many of Argento’s story-tropes from the previous two films:
insanity spawned by violent trauma, incestuous encounters, and weird
societal outliers who may or may not help the hero triumph.
To be sure, one thing Argento does not
recycle from PLUMAGE is a likable hero. Roberto is a drummer for a
professional band in Rome, married to a relatively wealthy woman,
Nina. Roberto doesn’t seem to have any serious problems in life, but
suddenly he notices a strange man watching him during practice, or
following him in the streets. One night he overtakes the stranger and
demands an explanation. The man draws a knife, and Roberto attacks.
In the scuffle the stranger is apparently dealt a fatal wound, and
before Roberto can think what to do, a second mysterious stranger,
face concealed by a doll-mask, takes a photo of the homicide. Later,
Roberto and Nina start receiving letters harassing Roberto,
threatening to reveal the crime, though no blackmail money is
demanded. Roberto absolutely refuses to go to the police, fearing
that he’ll be put away for manslaughter, particularly after local
newspapers have carried the story of the man’s death.
Though in theory Roberto might seem
sympathetic given all of these ordeals, he comes off as petty and
self-concerned. He’s certainly not remorseful about a man’s
death; he’s just scared of being punished for it. He’s so freaked
out by the fear of retaliation that after a friend at a party tells a
tale about a criminal getting his head chopped off by an executioner,
Roberto keeps visualizing the execution in dreams. Further, Roberto
doesn’t appear to be very smart. Given that his meeting with the
pesky stranger was being watched by a person ready with a camera, a
reasonably intelligent individual might suspect a set-up. But
although Roberto hires a detective to find the quasi-blackmailer, at
no time does he wonder if the manslaughter might’ve been phony.
The viewer learns this in jig time,
though. One of the maids in Roberto’s household figures out the
blackmailer’s identity and tries a little blackmail of her own,
which paves the way to her death. Later it’s revealed that the
supposedly dead stranger is still alive, though Argento never
explains how the newspaper-reports were faked. The faker complains to
his employer about getting involved in a murder, so Phony Corpse soon
becomes Real Corpse. The detective—a particularly flouncy gay
fellow, but relatively good at his job—learns some clues about the
villain, but not in time to save himself. Nina, distraught over the
threats, leaves, and her cousin Dalia moves into the house. Roberto
easily seduces Dalia, which shows another of his character-flaws, but
as soon as Argento raises the possibility that the cousin may be the
plotter, she too gets the axe.
Given that the script doesn't provide other suspects, process of elimination leaves only the
distraught wife, who fills in the blank for “insanity brought on by
trauma.” In Nina’s case, her father abused in one way or another,
causing her to spend some time in a loony bin. But he still left her
all of his money when he died, and she apparently decided to marry a
man she considered to be just like her father, so that she could
torment and execute him. This contrived psychology doesn’t make
much more sense than the significance of the “four flies,” which
is supposedly an image recorded on the corneas of one of Nina’s
victims. Still, just because Argento brings so much perversity into
his schema, I give FOUR FLIES’ mythicity as high a rating as that
of PLUMAGE, if only for the synchronicity-like significance given to
Roberto’s execution-dream at the conclusion.
Many reviews complain about Argento’s
use of humor here, and while I didn’t find much of it funny, it
didn’t bother me in most cases. The one big exception is the
distracting presence of huge Bud Spenser as one of Roberto’s
confidantes. The actor might have been able to put across a credible
character had he been given one by the script. But Spenser’s
character is inserted so clumsily that one can’t help suspecting
he’s just there to appeal to the actor’s fans.
No comments:
Post a Comment