Tenebrae (, also known as Tenebre) is a 1982 Italian giallo film, written and directed by Dario Argento. The film stars Anthony Franciosa as American author Peter Neal, who – while in Rome promoting his latest murder-mystery novel – becomes embroiled in the search for a serial killer who may have been inspired to kill by his novel. John Saxon and Daria Nicolodi co-star as Neal's agent and assistant, respectively, while Giuliano Gemma and Carola Stagnaro appear as detectives investigating the murders. John Steiner, Christian Borromeo, Lara Wendel, Mirella D'Angelo, Veronica Lario and Ania Pieroni also feature in key supporting roles. The film has been described as exploring themes of dualism and sexual aberration and has strong metafictional elements; some commentators consider Tenebrae to be a direct reaction by Argento to criticism of his previous work, most especially his depictions of murders of women.
After Argento had experimented with pure supernatural horror with Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980), Tenebrae represented the filmmaker's return to the giallo subgenre, which he had helped popularize in the 1970s. Argento was inspired by several incidents in which an obsessed fan phoned the director to criticize him for the damaging psychological effects of his previous work. The phone calls culminated in death threats towards Argento, who channeled the experience into the writing of Tenebrae. The director also wanted to explore the senselessness of killings he had seen and heard about while visiting Los Angeles in 1980, and his feeling at the time that true horror came from those who wanted "to kill for nothing".
Shot on location in Rome and at Elios Studios, Tenebrae used mostly modern-looking locations and sets, allowing Argento to realize his vision of a near-future with a diminished population; the director filmed none of the historical landmarks that usually appear in films set in Rome. Employing director of photography Luciano Tovoli, Argento also intended that the film simulate the stark, realistic lighting featured in TV police shows at the time; production designer Giuseppe Bassan created supporting environments that were cold and austere, with sharp angles and modernistic spaces. Several former members of Italian rock band Goblin provided Tenebraes music, a synth-heavy score inspired by rock and disco.
Tenebrae was a modest success in Italy; it reached theatres with little controversy after Argento made cuts to one of the most violent scenes. However, in the United Kingdom, it was added to the infamous list of "video nasties" and banned from sale until 1999. The film's theatrical distribution in the United States was delayed until 1984, when it was released in a heavily censored version under the title Unsane, which received a mostly negative critical reception. The original version later became widely available for reappraisal and has come to be considered one of Argento's best films by many fans and critics.
Plot Peter Neal, an American writer of violent horror and thriller novels, visits Italy to promote his latest book, Tenebrae. He is accompanied by his literary agent, Bullmer, and his assistant, Anne. Neal is unaware that his embittered ex-fiancée, Jane, has also followed him to Rome. Just before Neal arrives in Rome, Elsa, a young kleptomaniac, is murdered with a razor by an unseen assailant. The murderer sends Neal a letter informing him that his works have inspired him to go on a killing spree. Neal is soon contacted by Police Captain Germania fan of his novelsand his partner, Inspector Altieri.
More killings take place. Tilde, a lesbian journalist and friend of Neal's who nonetheless considers his novels sexist, is murdered at her home along with her lover Marion. Maria, the young daughter of the owner of Neal's hotel, is 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 Bullmer's assistant, Gianni, go to watch Berti's house. Gianni approaches the home alone to get a better view and witnesses Berti getting 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 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 in the back seat of his car.
Jane sits at her kitchen table with a pistol when a figure leaps through her window and hacks her to death. Altieri arrives at the house and is killed with an axe to the back. Germani and Anne arrive soon afterward and confront the murderer, who is revealed to be Neal. Upon learning the details of Berti's sadistic murder spree, Neal recalled 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.
Surrounded, Neal sees that he cannot escape and slits his throat in front of Germani and Anne. Finding the telephone out of order, they go outside to report the incident on the car radio. Germani returns to the house, where he is murdered by Neal, who has faked his death using a trick razor. Neal waits inside for Anne to return, but when she opens the door, she knocks over a metal sculpture that impales and kills Neal. A horrified Anne stands in the rain, screaming.
Cast
Anthony Franciosa as Peter Neal John Saxon as Bullmer Daria Nicolodi as Anne Giuliano Gemma as Captain Germani as Inspector Altieri John Steiner as Christiano Berti Christian Borromeo as Gianni Lara Wendel as Maria Alboretto Mirella D'Angelo as Tilde Banti Veronica Lario as Jane McKerrow Ania Pieroni as Elsa Manni as Marion Vaine 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) Michele Soavi as Man in Flashback (uncredited)
Analysis Influences 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." These narrative and visual strategies had been introduced years before Argento made his first thriller, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)—most critics point to Mario Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) as the original giallo.
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. 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.
Warren and Alan Jones cite a scene where a character is killed in a public square as evoking the work of Alfred Hitchcock; Thomas Rostock agrees that the editing of the sequence is in a Hitchcockian vein, while the lighting is more influenced by Michelangelo Antonioni. 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.
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. 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). Neal is seen to be reading this novel in an early scene. 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.
Themes 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 its thematic content. 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." 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 actively ignored". According to James Gracey, author of a book about Argento's work, with Tenebrae Argento "explores some of his most reoccurring themes and preoccupations, such as Freudian psychology, sexual deviancy, repressed trauma, voyeurism, audience spectatorship, and the fetishisation of violence and death." Water is often associated visually with Neal. In almost all his scenes, his appearance is followed or accompanied by a shot of water. Later, this device is used repeatedly as a clue to the ultimate killer's identity – Neal himself.
Duality and "dark doubles"
According to Thomas Rostock, "Tenebrae" is filled with rhyming imagery that relates to the film's exploration of "the dual nature of [the] two active murderers" through doubles, inversions, reflections, and "re-reflections". Every major character has at least one double, and the theme extends to objects, locations, actions, and events – major and minor. The doubling or mirroring of incidents and objects includes telephone booths, aircraft, homeless men, otherwise-meaningless public brawls in the background, car accidents, typewriters (literally side-by-side), keys, handkerchiefs, hands caught in doors, and the characters themselves. Rostock cites several scenes where characters are set up in the frame with their doppelgängers – one such is the first meeting of Peter Neal and Anne with Detectives Germani and Altieri.