FEAR - The Autobiography of Dario Argento
“I was not afraid of the dark, like most children. No, I was afraid of the bedroom corridor. It was a perfect form of terror: pure and unconditional.”
To his legion of admirers Dario Argento is a horror legend of the greatest magnitude. And to his genre filmmaking contemporaries he’s an inspiration and an icon.
For many years Argento’s ground-breaking shockers like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, Suspiria, Inferno, Tenebrae and Opera meant box-office gold. Now the maverick auteur, lauded as the Italian Hitchcock and the Horror Fellini, has written his autobiography, revealing all about his fascinating life, his dark obsessions, his talented family, his perverse dreams, and his star-crossed work.
With candour and honesty, Fear lifts the lid on the trials and tribulations of Argento’s glittering career during the sensational Golden Era of Cinecittà. From his childhood mixing with glamorous Italian movie stars thanks to his noted photographer mother and his film industry father to his start in the fledgling field of cinema criticism, Argento shares compelling anecdotes about his life growing up in La Dolce Vita Rome.
Adapted from the Italian translation, annotated by world-renowned Argento expert Alan Jones, and illustrated with numerous rare photographs from his collection, the award-winning and critically acclaimed Master of Terror tells all. So put on your black leather gloves and start turning the pages of Fear for the answer to every question you’ve ever wanted to ask about the weird and wonderful world of Dario Argento.
About the Author
Born into a family that breathed cinema, even as a child Dario Argento was a voracious devourer of books and films. Bored by school so much that he fled to Paris, the young Dario discovered he felt at ease only in the darkness of a cinema – where he found fertile soil in which his solitary nature and overflowing imagination could flourish. But it was his experience as a journalist at Paese Sera that turned out to be his formative training ground, and which led to his life-changing encounter with Sergio Leone, for whom he and Bernardo Bertolucci wrote the script for Once Upon a Time in the West.
Meanwhile, the mind of the future director developed a desire as ambitious as it was magnificent: to make a film in a new style, distinct from all others. Channelling the emotions he felt whilst watching the films of Hitchcock, Lang and Antonioni triggered a wealth of ideas that were destined to change the history of genre cinema.
His first film came out in 1970 – The Bird with the Crystal Plumage– grossing far in excess of a billion lire. In no time at all the name of Dario Argento was known across the globe. And soon enough a series of classic films including Deep Red and Suspiria saw the light of the projector beam.
Dario Argento is a maverick auteur who managed to capture his personal demons on celluloid. At last, his fascinating life story can be told: his passions, his loves, his fears. In this candid autobiography, alongside the tale of an inspirational film director making his mark on the world, one glimpses the anxieties of a driven but shy man, in love with cinema and life itself.
Technical Details
Size: 234mm x 156mm
Binding: Hardcover
Extent: 288 pages, including 32 pages of illustrations
ISBN: 978-1-913051-05-1
Booklaunch Date: 23 August 2019
Market: AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Arts and Entertainment
Weight: 895g
Edition: First Edition
