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Director
Dario Argento
Year
1987
Country
Italy, USA
Runtime
103 min

Also released as

  • Terror at the Opera
  • Im Zeichen des Raben
  • Ópera
  • オペラ座・血の喝采
  • Τρόμος στην όπερα
  • Η όπερα του τρόμου
  • Opéra
  • Опера
  • オペラ座/血の喝采
  • Terror en la ópera

Filed under

Opera

Argento's last great film, and the needles taped under the eyes are the image of his career.

A young soprano takes over Lady Macbeth at short notice and acquires a stalker who binds her and tapes needles beneath her eyelids so she cannot look away while he kills people in front of her.

That device is the whole thesis: Argento has spent a career being told his films punish women for being looked at, and here he makes the woman unable to stop watching and the audience share her position exactly.

The camera work is extraordinary. There are point-of-view shots from a raven flying over an opera house audience, achieved with a rig on a wire, and a bullet passing through a peephole and a head in one shot.

The production was miserable. Argento's relationship with Daria Nicolodi ended during it and his father died.

The final sequence in a Swiss meadow is either a disaster or a masterstroke.

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Trailer

The sleeves

The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.

poster
EN · poster
IT · poster
EN · poster
EN · poster
EN · poster
IT · poster

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