My daughter, Asia, has been in many of my movies. I love working with her. In the beginning, I was not supportive of her being an actress, but now I think she is fantastic.
— Dario Argento
Americans are very enthusiastic. We have a new generation of moviegoers who love great horror films. I am a very imaginative man, and for me, it's easy to speak with my dark side. I have very beautiful, interesting nightmares.
Horror is the future. And you cannot be afraid. You must push everything to the absolute limit, or else life will be boring. People will be boring. Horror is like a serpent: always shedding its skin, always changing. And it will always come back. It can't be hidden away like the guilty secrets we try to keep in our subconscious.
Films are dreams. Many, many critics say to me that my films are not good because they are too unbelievable, but this is my style. I tell stories like they are dreams. This is my imagination. For me, it would be impossible to do a film that is so precise, that resembles real life.
I make a film - and once I've made it, everyone comes along and says 'Ah! This is a film that's political, or social', or whatever. But I'm not telling the story that they see. I made a film, told a story, but I wasn't thinking about exactly what it all meant.
Shooting movies has changed, and me too - I have changed. And then, every film I do, something in my mind, my soul, changes. My natural change, I change at the same time as the films, I think.
I was very young, and I was on vacation with my family, and there was a retrospective of old films, and one of them was 'The Phantom of the Opera' with Claude Rains that was in color. It was something very important for my career because I began to follow these stories that were morbid.
I think the camera was always my obsession, the camera movements. Because for me it's the most important thing in the move, the camera, because without the camera, film is just a stage or television - nothing.
Each film I make changes me in some way. When I start the picture I'm one person and by the time I finish I'm another.
Then I realized my early work did have something special that audiences adored apart from what I humbly thought about them. They occupy a distinguished niche in Italian film history and probably always will.
I've been lucky enough to have had the luxury of being able to make the picture I've wanted to make each time on my own terms and without compromise.
I like films to have something inside, I don't mean a message, I mean something from the soul.
I'm very interested in portraying homosexual man and woman in my films because I'm interested in their lives and their problems.
If you make a film normally it's all right, the distributors are helpful and cooperative. But if you make a film that's a little stange, a little bizarre, then all the time it's a struggle with them.
Young girls of 13 or 12 are great actors.
Paradise is too perfect for humanity.
So I haven't thought about the critics for a long time.
My mother was a famous photographer for actresses, including Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, and so many. I remember I went to school close to my mother's studio, and for years, I went to the studio after school and just watched how she captured these beauties.
'Deep Red' (1975) is my favorite movie. The character David Hemmings plays is very much based on my own personality. It was a very strong film, very brutal, and of course the censors were upset. It was cut by almost an hour in some countries.
We had many good directors - John Carpenter, Brian De Palma - but things have become polluted by business, money and bad relationships. The success of the horror genre has led to its downfall.
For a long time, censors have been cutting my works. This makes me so sad, because many times they will tell me, 'Television won't like, so we have to cut, cut, cut!'
I don't like landscapes. I like cities. Lots of cities. I like buildings. I like streets.
'Macbeth' is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie - such as some of the special effects and bits of film - to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience.
This is my life - I want to tell stories. There is something huge inside me that pushes me to tell stories, and tell stories for an audience and everybody.
I'm Dario Argento, and my style is something recognizable I think by the audience.
Horror by definition is the emotion of pure revulsion. Terror of the same standard, is that of fearful anticipation.
It irritated me that my fans kept wanting me to retread old ground.
I want to do what I want when I want to do it not be dictated to by audiences.
I also don't like films that are made just to make money, no this kind of film I don't like.
The psychiatrists examine you and ask you about your life and work, and then they decide whether your film can be shown or not. It's a horrible experience.
In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.
To try and raise a budget for a film that is strictly for adults and both strong and graphic in content is not easy, especially when there is pressure to spend serious money on good special effects.
Maybe when I stop making movies, I'll understand my work better.
When I was a teenager, I read a lot of Poe.
I remember when I was very young, I had a fever - a long rheumatic fever in bed for four months. And in the days, I stayed alone with the maid. I only had my father's books with me. They were fantasy books about ghosts, and also books by Edgar Allen Poe that made a forever impression on me.
The process of writing and directing drives you to such extremes that it's natural to feel an affinity with insanity. I approach that madness as something dangerous, and I'm afraid, but also I want to go to it, to see what's there, to embrace it. I don't know why, but I'm drawn.
I first came to cinema as a passionate filmgoer, when I was a child. Then, when I was a very young man, I became a film critic precisely because of my knowledge of cinema. I did better than others because of this. Then I moved on to screenwriting. I wrote a film with Sergio Leone, 'Once Upon a Time in the West.' And then I moved to directing.
I'm appreciated more abroad. In America, Japan... and in the United Kingdom.
Fear has disappeared. No more fear. In Asia, it is different. They've discovered again the fear and the psychology of the characters. Without psychology, the horror film doesn't exist.
I remembered watching the film from Alfred Hitchcock, 'Dial M for Murder,' and he shot almost all of that movie in one room. There was a genius in what Hitchcock did by manipulating things in that room so that you could see the distances between things like the tables and the vases because of how he used perspective.
No, it's interesting to remake a film for the contemporary audience today. I think it's a good idea; it needs to respect the original idea. Don't just take the title and change everything else.
You must push everything to the absolute limit or else life will be boring. People will be boring.
Horror is like a serpent; always shedding its skin, always changing. And it will always come back. It can't be hidden away like the guilty secrets we try to keep in our subconscious.
I went through a phase where I thought nostalgia was a bad thing.
My life and career is my own adventure.
I like to watch many things, especially strange films and something recent, not just the story.
In Italy the censor is very old and there are many judges and psychiatrists who analyse you.
Every writer, to some extent, writes about himself.
I wanted to get back to my style of 20 years ago after a long period of exploring horror and fantasy themes.
I've never gone into analysis. But Freud opened a door, I know.
