Top 55 Dario Argento Quotes

Horror is like a serpent; always shedding its skin, always changing. And it will always come back. It can’t be hidden away like the guilty secrets we try to keep in our subconscious.

‘Deep Red’ (1975) is my favorite movie. The character David Hemmings plays is very much based on my own personality. It was a very strong film, very brutal, and of course the censors were upset. It was cut by almost an hour in some countries.

Then I realized my early work did have something special that audiences adored apart from what I humbly thought about them. They occupy a distinguished niche in Italian film history and probably always will.

The psychiatrists examine you and ask you about your life and work, and then they decide whether your film can be shown or not. It’s a horrible experience.

I’m appreciated more abroad. In America, Japan… and in the United Kingdom.

I’m Dario Argento, and my style is something recognizable I think by the audience.

I don’t like landscapes. I like cities. Lots of cities. I like buildings. I like streets.

I’m Dario Argento, and my style is something recognizable I think by the audience.

I want to do what I want when I want to do it not be dictated to by audiences.

Paradise is too perfect for humanity.

If you make a film normally it’s all right, the distributors are helpful and cooperative. But if you make a film that’s a little stange, a little bizarre, then all the time it’s a struggle with them.

Fear has disappeared. No more fear. In Asia, it is different. They’ve discovered again the fear and the psychology of the characters. Without psychology, the horror film doesn’t exist.

It’s incredible that they censor films. It’s sad.

In Italy the censor is very old and there are many judges and psychiatrists who analyse you.

This is my life – I want to tell stories. There is something huge inside me that pushes me to tell stories, and tell stories for an audience and everybody.

‘Deep Red’ (1975) is my favorite movie. The character David Hemmings plays is very much based on my own personality. It was a very strong film, very brutal, and of course the censors were upset. It was cut by almost an hour in some countries.

When I see a film I’ve finished, it’s like another person made it. Like another mind.

In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.

I remember when I was very young, I had a fever – a long rheumatic fever in bed for four months. And in the days, I stayed alone with the maid. I only had my father’s books with me. They were fantasy books about ghosts, and also books by Edgar Allen Poe that made a forever impression on me.

I also don’t like films that are made just to make money, no this kind of film I don’t like.

Horror by definition is the emotion of pure revulsion. Terror of the same standard, is that of fearful anticipation.

You must push everything to the absolute limit or else life will be boring. People will be boring.

I’ve been lucky enough to have had the luxury of being able to make the picture I’ve wanted to make each time on my own terms and without compromise.

So I haven’t thought about the critics for a long time.

I like films to have something inside, I don’t mean a message, I mean something from the soul.

Maybe when I stop making movies, I’ll understand my work better.

Americans are very enthusiastic. We have a new generation of moviegoers who love great horror films. I am a very imaginative man, and for me, it’s easy to speak with my dark side. I have very beautiful, interesting nightmares.

‘Macbeth’ is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie – such as some of the special effects and bits of film – to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience.

It irritated me that my fans kept wanting me to retread old ground.

The process of writing and directing drives you to such extremes that it’s natural to feel an affinity with insanity. I approach that madness as something dangerous, and I’m afraid, but also I want to go to it, to see what’s there, to embrace it. I don’t know why, but I’m drawn.

If you don’t like my movies, don’t watch them.

Each film I make changes me in some way. When I start the picture I’m one person and by the time I finish I’m another.

For a long time, censors have been cutting my works. This makes me so sad, because many times they will tell me, ‘Television won’t like, so we have to cut, cut, cut!’

But you know, as you say, the original versions of my films are getting out there, slowly.

There’s nothing gratuitous about my films.

In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.

I’m very interested in portraying homosexual man and woman in my films because I’m interested in their lives and their problems.

No, it’s interesting to remake a film for the contemporary audience today. I think it’s a good idea; it needs to respect the original idea. Don’t just take the title and change everything else.

To try and raise a budget for a film that is strictly for adults and both strong and graphic in content is not easy, especially when there is pressure to spend serious money on good special effects.

My mother was a famous photographer for actresses, including Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, and so many. I remember I went to school close to my mother’s studio, and for years, I went to the studio after school and just watched how she captured these beauties.

When I see a film I’ve finished, it’s like another person made it. Like another mind.

I’m very interested in portraying homosexual man and woman in my films because I’m interested in their lives and their problems.

It’s incredible that they censor films. It’s sad.

I want to do what I want when I want to do it not be dictated to by audiences.

But you know, as you say, the original versions of my films are getting out there, slowly.

I remembered watching the film from Alfred Hitchcock, ‘Dial M for Murder,’ and he shot almost all of that movie in one room. There was a genius in what Hitchcock did by manipulating things in that room so that you could see the distances between things like the tables and the vases because of how he used perspective.

The Opera was a very cold film, a hopeless and dark film, no hope, no love.

I like films to have something inside, I don’t mean a message, I mean something from the soul.

Horror is like a serpent; always shedding its skin, always changing. And it will always come back. It can’t be hidden away like the guilty secrets we try to keep in our subconscious.

But no one should have the right to manipulate my films in the first place.

In Italy the censor is very old and there are many judges and psychiatrists who analyse you.

I think the camera was always my obsession, the camera movements. Because for me it’s the most important thing in the move, the camera, because without the camera, film is just a stage or television – nothing.

My life and career is my own adventure.

I like to watch many things, especially strange films and something recent, not just the story.

Young girls of 13 or 12 are great actors.