DARIO ARGENTO INTERVIEW
Conducted and translated by Claudio Fuiano

Claudio Fuiano: Dario, when and how did you meet Ennio Morricone?

Dario Argento: He was introduced to me by my father who was much friend of his, and my father was also producer of my first movies and my associate, and my big friend. Ennio lived in a place near Rome called Mentana, a small town, and we had also a home there and so we began to frequent ourselves and I meet him almost on the house’s stairs. After our first meeting, Ennio encouraged me to do my first movie telling me that
he had scored it and so the story has begun.

Fuiano: And so how the trilogy of terror and fear was born?

Argento: I think that this trilogy was born by a chance, that is, I really did not have intention to do a trilogy. From beginning, I wanted to do only one movie, really one movie only that was The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, my first work as director. So after have done it, it seemed that my movie had great final results, a
very nimble very unerring movie and I was really satisfied with it. But at the same time maybe I was not sure
to have worked out all the things to say about the thriller genre, so I realized a second movie and then a third one. After I done the third movie, I have thought that I had finished to work on this kind of movies.

Fuiano: Morricone has written three soundtracks that represent a kind of fusion between rock and vanguard music. How did this choice happen?

Argento: It was very much a Morricone choice, but I think also it depends by the fact he has payed attention
to my own cinematographic and musical talents. But of course it’s all Ennio’s talent, also because Ennio Morricone is the vanguard, almost always in his movie scores he is a kind of fusion between vanguard and traditional rock music and so I think that it was something gradual.

Fuiano: Ennio Morricone has written for you three movies dissonant scores where an obsessive music
emerges creating strong tensions. However these movie scores feature a sweet theme that a little breaks the atmosphere of fear, of anxiety.

Argento: I think that also all this reflects the style of Ennio Morricone, but in particular for the first movie,
The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, I requested to him a sweet theme, as a kind of lullaby sung by a child
or a little girl that I did think as it came from a close apartment and that at the same time it became part of
the characters’ life, coming though a window, a court-yard, from a close house or a meadow, some place.
So Ennio liked this thing and in fact in The Bird... sometimes this kind of little lullaby appears and then maybe something has continued, but I do not remember how it has happened, but I know that in many movies
scored by Ennio Morricone there is music sometimes very vibrant, sometimes very delicate.

Fuiano: To sum up, of these three movies, what is that one to which you are more bound?

Argento: ..I think to the first movie The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, obviously because it is the first movie
I have made in my life and so I am very bound to this my experience that has been strange, sweeping and
also a little bit frightening to do it, because made with a total unconsciousness. I think that it is the movie to which I am more bound.

Fuiano: Then, Dario thank you for this chat! ‘Til next chance!

Argento: And thanks to Ennio Morricone!

Fuiano: Of Course!