The Thinking Machine #98

In their series The Thinking Machine, critics Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin create a new video essay for Filmkrant every month.

Sergei Eisenstein believed that a specific, targeted idea could enter the consciousness of a film spectator most deeply if it was split over many registers of expression: image, word, music, allusion, metaphor… It’s a composite montage that comes together in our minds.

Few filmmakers illustrate this creative process better than Dario Argento. His classic Profondo rosso (1975) takes a horrific ‘primal scene’ and represents it in three different ways, each one involving its own powers of revelation and suggestion.