Quattro Mosche di Velluto Grigio

Quattro Mosche di Velluto Grigio (Four Flies on Grey Velvet) (1971, Dario Argento)


Dario Argento's giallo genre (mystery, crime) established his reputation throughout his career and helped him to demonstrate an interest in horror films with psychoanalytic and sexual thematic structures. The nightmarish qualities of his films provide the audience with intellectual support and attitudes the audience arrives at on the screening. I think that Freud and Jung provided Argento with a belief system to draw on. Not only is the female protagonist in Four Flies on Grey Velvet schizophrenic and sexually abused character, but she represents the dark and mysterious sides of life. Her husband is more stable and sexually healthy. Argento's film narrative seems to suggest that psychoanalytic ideas give him intellectual credibility to create. The visual style of the film guarantees a psychoanalytical reading of the film. The lighting, the point-of-view shots, the murderous gazes, and the dream sequences all reveal the potentiality for the psychological deciphering of the film. In the film, the unconscious represents supernatural power and the monstrousness of the human mind.