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Plot [ edit ] Peter Neal, an American writer of violent horror novels, visits |
Italy to promote his latest work, Tenebrae . He is accompanied by his literary |
agent, Bullmer, and his assistant, Anne. Neal is unaware that he has also been |
followed to Rome by his embittered ex-fiancée, Jane. Just before Neal arrives |
in Rome, Elsa, a young female shoplifter, is murdered with a razor by an |
unseen assailant. The murderer sends Neal a letter informing him that his |
books have inspired him to go on a killing spree. Neal is soon contacted by |
the police in the form of Detective Germani and his partner, Inspector |
Altieri. More killings take place. Tilde, a lesbian journalist, is murdered at |
her home along with her lover Marion. Maria, the young daughter of Neal's |
landlord, is later hacked to death with an axe after discovering the killer's |
lair. Neal notices that TV interviewer Cristiano Berti has an unusually |
intense interest in his work. That night, Neal and his Italian assistant |
Gianni go to watch Berti's house. Gianni approaches the house alone to get a |
better view and witnesses Berti get hacked to death with an axe. However, |
Gianni is unable to see the murderer's face, and returns to Neal, only to find |
the novelist has been knocked unconscious on the lawn. Germani discovers that |
Berti was obsessed with Neal's novels, and believes the killings will stop now |
that Berti is dead. However, Bullmer, who is having an affair with Jane, is |
stabbed to death while waiting for his lover in a public square. Gianni is |
haunted by the thought that he missed the importance of something he saw at |
Berti's house. He returns to the house and suddenly remembers that he had |
heard Berti confessing to his attacker: "I killed them all, I killed them |
all!" Before Gianni can share this detail with anyone, he is strangled to |
death from the back seat of his car. Jane sits at her kitchen table with a |
pistol when a figure leaps through her window and hacks off one of her arms. |
The wound sprays blood over the kitchen walls before Jane falls to the floor. |
The killer continues to hack at her until she is dead, at which point Neal is |
revealed to be the murderer. Upon learning the details of Berti's sadistic |
murder spree, Neal recovered a previously repressed memory involving his |
murder of a girl who had sexually humiliated him when he was a youth in Rhode |
Island . The memory tormented Neal and inflamed his previously repressed lust |
for blood, driving him insane. Inspector Altieri arrives at the house and Neal |
kills her. Germani and Anne arrive soon afterwards; surrounded, Neal sees that |
he cannot escape and seemingly slits his throat in front of them. Finding the |
telephone out of order, Germani and Anne go outside to report the incident |
from the car radio. Germani returns to the house where he gets murdered by |
Neal, who had faked his own death. Neal waits inside for Anne to return, but |
when she opens the door, she accidentally knocks over a metal sculpture that |
impales and kills Neal. A horrified Anne stands in the rain screaming |
incessantly. Cast [ edit ] Anthony Franciosa as Peter Neal John Saxon as |
Bullmer Daria Nicolodi as Anne Giuliano Gemma as Detective Germani Carola |
Stagnaro [ it ] as Detective Altieri John Steiner as Christiano Berti Veronica |
Lario as Jane McKerrow Mirella D'Angelo as Tilde Christian Borromeo as Gianni |
Ania Pieroni as Elsa Manni Lara Wendel as Maria Alboretto Mirella Banti [ it ] |
as Marion Eva Robin's as Girl on Beach Ennio Girolami as Department Store |
Manager Marino Masé as John Fulvio Mingozzi as Mr. Alboretto Lamberto Bava as |
Elevator Repairman (uncredited) [7] Michele Soavi as Man in Flashback |
(uncredited) [7] Analysis [ edit ] Influences [ edit ] According to the film |
historian and critic Bill Warren , Tenebrae is a typical example of the giallo |
film genre: "visually extremely stylish, with imaginative, sometimes stunning |
cinematography", it presents "mysterious, gruesome murders, often in |
picturesque locations; at the end, the identity of the murderer is disclosed |
in a scene destined to terrify and surprise." [8] These narrative and visual |
strategies had been introduced years before Argento made his first thriller, |
1970's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage —most critics point to Mario Bava 's |
The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) as the original giallo . [9] [10] By the |
time Argento made Tenebrae , he had become the acknowledged master of the |
genre, to the point where he felt confident enough to be openly self- |
referential to his own past, referencing the "reckless driving humor" from The |
Cat o' Nine Tails (1971) and the hero from The Bird with the Crystal Plumage . |
[11] The scene in which Veronica Lario 's character, Jane, returns home |
directly references The Bird with the Crystal Plumage with its large sculpture |
in the entrance hallway. [5] Warren and Alan Jones cite a scene where a |
character is killed in a public square as evoking the work of Alfred Hitchcock |
; [5] [8] Thomas Rostock agrees that the editing of the sequence is in a |
Hitchcockian vein, while the lighting is more influenced by Michelangelo |
Antonioni . [12] The film critic and author Maitland McDonagh argues that |
Argento's influences for Tenebrae were far broader than just his own films or |
previous Italian thrillers. She refers to the strong narrative in the film as |
an example of "the most paranoid excesses of film noir ." McDonagh suggests |
that Fritz Lang 's Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) ("in which a man convicted |
of murder on false evidence ... is in fact guilty of the murder") and Roy |
William Neill 's Black Angel (1946) ("in which a man who tries to clear a |
murder suspect does so at the cost of learning that he himself is the killer") |
both use such a similar plot twist to Tenebrae that Argento may have used them |
as partial models for his story. [13] Kim Newman and Alan Jones suggest that |
the mysteries of Arthur Conan Doyle , Rex Stout , and Agatha Christie were all |
obvious influences on Tenebrae , and there are many references to these |
authors throughout the film. [14] One example is the use of a quote from |
Sherlock Holmes in Conan Doyle's novel The Sign of Four (1890): "How often |
have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever |
remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" A variation of this quote is |
delivered many times in Tenebrae . Another reference is the dog attack: as |
something of a non sequitur , the scene is thought by Newman to be a likely |
nod to Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–1902). [15] Neal is |
seen to be reading this novel in an early scene. [16] The imagery in the beach |
flashback references the American mystery film Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), |
especially the scene of Eva Robin's wearing white while kneeling in the sand, |
which is a direct reference to Elizabeth Taylor in that film. [17] Themes [ |
edit ] Critics have identified various major themes in Tenebrae . In |
interviews conducted during the film's production, the usually somewhat |
reticent Argento offered his candid views on the thematic content of the film. |
As biographer Maitland McDonagh noted in Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark |
Dreams of Dario Argento , "Argento has never been more articulate and/or |
analytical than he was on the subject of Tenebrae ." [18] Film scholar William |
Hope considers the film to be devoid of classical narrative progression and |
states that the characters "lack a narrative function or purpose, existing |
only to be killed in a spectacular fashion, their death hardly moving the |
narrative on at all. Traditional cause and effect are seemingly forgotten or |
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