The opening scene is set inside the 4th century Mausoleum of Santa Costanza in Rome, where Marc is playing jazz with a group of musicians, on a white piano pushed up against the altar of the Roman church.
Dario Argento, however, shot most of the film in Turin, the apotheosis of an esoteric and magical city, a source of fascination to him since childhood and the city he describes as “the place that best suits my nightmares”. Turin is the location for the long scene with the German psychic, Helga Ulman, in the Teatro Carignano swamped in red (of course) cloth for the occasion: the audience is taken onto the stage at the end of a beautiful tracking sequence that is revealed to be the killer’s POV.
Another key location in Turin is Piazza CLN, dedicated to the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (Committee for National Liberation), established in 1943 to free the country from Fascism. Marc and Carlo talk for the first time here, sitting on the Fountain of the Po River, which stands on the opposite side of the square from its twin, the personification of the River Dora: the piazza was designed in 1935 by Marcello Piacentini and completed two years later with the fountains sculpted by Umberto Baglioni. The set of the Blue Bar was also built in the square, in front of Piacentini’s columns, a clear reference to Edward Hopper’s famous painting Nighthawks (1942, Chicago, Art Institute), where a drunk Carlo pronounces the notorious phrase “I drink to you, raped virgin”, misunderstanding the scream that heralds the first murder in the story. The square is also the location for the apartment building where Marc and Helga the psychic live. A walk through the scenes of the film would continue by heading out northwards, from Piazza CLN and Piazza San Carlo, to Galleria San Federico where Marc and Carlo later discuss the murder investigations as they walk.
During his investigations, Marc takes a trip around the villas of Turin, passing by the 17th century Savoy royal residences, Villa della Regina and the Villa d’Agliè, on a hill in the Borgo Po neighbourhood as he heads to Villa Scott, a masterpiece of Turinese art deco designed by Pietro Fenoglio in 1902, in Corso Giovanni Lanza.
In addition to the opening scene, Dario Argento also used Rome for later sequences, such as the record shop that Marc visits which is in Via Tiburtina, the market in the Trionfale neighbourhood, and the library where he goes to do some research, the Museo Nazionale delle Arti e Tradizioni Popolari in EUR no less. There’s even the former clinic Madonna delle Rose in Fonte Nuova (RM), here used as the hospital where Marc enquires about the health of the journalist Gianna Brezzi. One of the first meetings between Marc and Gianna is an interesting demonstration of the use of locations. After Helga’s funeral, Marc takes a lift from a woman who drives a white Fiat 500 through the streets of Rome where we note Viale Carso, near Piazza Mazzini, while the cemetery where Helga is buried is actually in Perugia providing one of those cases where film editing demonstrates all its power, leaping distances in the blink of an eye to bring places together through the use of a reverse shot.
The opening scene is set inside the 4th century Mausoleum of Santa Costanza in Rome, where Marc is playing jazz with a group of musicians, on a white piano pushed up against the altar of the Roman church.
Dario Argento, however, shot most of the film in Turin, the apotheosis of an esoteric and magical city, a source of fascination to him since childhood and the city he describes as “the place that best suits my nightmares”. Turin is the location for the long scene with the German psychic, Helga Ulman, in the Teatro Carignano swamped in red (of course) cloth for the occasion: the audience is taken onto the stage at the end of a beautiful tracking sequence that is revealed to be the killer’s POV.
Another key location in Turin is Piazza CLN, dedicated to the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (Committee for National Liberation), established in 1943 to free the country from Fascism. Marc and Carlo talk for the first time here, sitting on the Fountain of the Po River, which stands on the opposite side of the square from its twin, the personification of the River Dora: the piazza was designed in 1935 by Marcello Piacentini and completed two years later with the fountains sculpted by Umberto Baglioni. The set of the Blue Bar was also built in the square, in front of Piacentini’s columns, a clear reference to Edward Hopper’s famous painting Nighthawks (1942, Chicago, Art Institute), where a drunk Carlo pronounces the notorious phrase “I drink to you, raped virgin”, misunderstanding the scream that heralds the first murder in the story. The square is also the location for the apartment building where Marc and Helga the psychic live. A walk through the scenes of the film would continue by heading out northwards, from Piazza CLN and Piazza San Carlo, to Galleria San Federico where Marc and Carlo later discuss the murder investigations as they walk.
During his investigations, Marc takes a trip around the villas of Turin, passing by the 17th century Savoy royal residences, Villa della Regina and the Villa d’Agliè, on a hill in the Borgo Po neighbourhood as he heads to Villa Scott, a masterpiece of Turinese art deco designed by Pietro Fenoglio in 1902, in Corso Giovanni Lanza.
In addition to the opening scene, Dario Argento also used Rome for later sequences, such as the record shop that Marc visits which is in Via Tiburtina, the market in the Trionfale neighbourhood, and the library where he goes to do some research, the Museo Nazionale delle Arti e Tradizioni Popolari in EUR no less. There’s even the former clinic Madonna delle Rose in Fonte Nuova (RM), here used as the hospital where Marc enquires about the health of the journalist Gianna Brezzi. One of the first meetings between Marc and Gianna is an interesting demonstration of the use of locations. After Helga’s funeral, Marc takes a lift from a woman who drives a white Fiat 500 through the streets of Rome where we note Viale Carso, near Piazza Mazzini, while the cemetery where Helga is buried is actually in Perugia providing one of those cases where film editing demonstrates all its power, leaping distances in the blink of an eye to bring places together through the use of a reverse shot.
Rizzoli Film, Seda Spettacoli
Marc, an English pianist, witnesses the murder of his neighbour without seeing the face of the killer. He begins to investigate with the help of a journalist, but gradually realises that everyone he comes into contact with ends up dead.
