A biography for Dario Argentohasn’t been written yet.
“Maybe when I stop making movies, I'll understand my work better.”
“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.”
“The Opera was a very cold film, a hopeless and dark film, no hope, no love.”
“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.”
“In Italy the censor is very old and there are many judges and psychiatrists who analyse you.”
“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.”
“If you don't like my movies, don't watch them.”
“I wanted to get back to my style of 20 years ago after a long period of exploring horror and fantasy themes.”
“I like films to have something inside, I don't mean a message, I mean something from the soul.”
“So I haven't thought about the critics for a long time.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“When I see a film I've finished, it's like another person made it. Like another mind.”
“I don't like landscapes. I like cities. Lots of cities. I like buildings. I like streets.”
“There's nothing gratuitous about my films.”
“I'm Dario Argento, and my style is something recognizable I think by the audience.”
“My life and career is my own adventure.”