Esoteric architecture
It is impossible to forget the majestic fountain with the marble giant, the allegorical depiction of the River Po, the main river of the city, as a bearded man, featured in Deep Red. The fountain stands in Piazza C.L.N. (also known as Piazza delle Fontane), a central square in Turin, where the film’s characters, Marc and the medium Helga Ullman, both live, in different apartments in the same building. The fountain where a drunk Carlo sits one evening is actually a twin monument that faces the Po on one side and the city’s second river, the Dora Riparia (as a shapely woman) on the other (albeit never seen in the film). The monumental fountain, sculpted by Umberto Baglioni, has another, esoteric, layer of meaning, as the Po and the Dora respectively symbolise the Sun and the male element and the Moon, the female. In Deep Red, Argento places the Blue Bar, clearly inspired by Edward Hopper’s painting, in the same square. There has been a bar, knowingly inspired by the Blue Bar, on the square since 2017 which at the time of production didn’t exist, an example of the film’s importance in the collective imagination. Villa Scott, embedded in the memory of many as the villa of the screaming child, can be found at Corso Giovanni Lanza 57 in the Borgo Po neighbourhood on the hill of Turin, it is a boarding school today. Here Marc carries out an essential survey for his investigations in total solitude and a silence broken by sinister noises, accompanied only by the spectral and thrilling Goblin soundtrack. Designed in 1901 by an engineer Pietro Fenoglio, Villa Scott is a splendid example of Art Deco and Rococo and is the setting for a key scene in Deep Red.
