Profondo Rosso

Notes sur un ciné-spectacle

premiere in Grenoble, Dolce Cinema festival, November 2007

1 – the show

Shot in 1975, Dario Argento’s film belongs to the Giallo movement that emerged in Italy in the 60s. A highly stylized gore thriller of undeniable graphic beauty, steeped in psychoanalysis and shot through with filmic and pictorial references, Profondo Rosso is a masterpiece of the genre.

Mark Daly, a pianist in Turin, witnesses the murder of Helga Ullman, a medium who has just telepathically unmasked a murderer at a parapsychology conference. Convinced that he had seen something that evening, and assisted by a young journalist, he conducts his own investigation. Revealing secrets thought to be buried forever, he unleashes a murderous spiral.

The orchestra takes up the film and reinvents its soundtrack, inviting an actor, a dancer and a guitarist for the occasion, turning resolutely towards electric, organic music.

Contemporary with Italy’s “leaden years”, the wave of gialli also appears to reflect a terrorized era, dazed as it is by Pasolini’s sordid murder.
In addition to the orchestra’s original music, with impromptu theatrical and dance interventions, the show establishes its own parallel stories, surtexts that alter or comment on Argento’s giallo. The links woven between film, text, dance and music resonate with each other, creating visual and aural spaces where poetics and politics collide, and which, through a committed portrait of the Italy of the time, speak to us of the contradictions and fears of our modern societies.

2 – team and distribution

Adrien Amey (MS20 keyboard, soprano sax, flute)
Antoine Berjeaut (trumpet)
Antonin Leymarie (drums)
Baptiste Bouquin (alto sax)
Boris Boublil (keyboards, piano)
Clea Torales (flute)
Fabrice Theuillon (baritone sax)
François Roche Juarez (trombone)
Fidel Fourneyron (tuba)
Guillaume Magne (guitar)
Hanno Baumfelder (trombone)
Jeannot Salvatori (alto and baritone saxes)
Judith Wekstein (bass trombone)
Julien Rousseau (trumpet, flugelhorn)
Katia Petrowick & Anne Palomeres (alternating) (dance)
Laurent Géhant (sousaphone)
Maxence Tual (actor)
Nicolas Stephan (tenor sax)
Robin Fincker (tenor sax, clarinet)
Sylvain Lemêtre (percussion)
Sylvaine Hélary (flute, piccolo)
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Damien Christéa (lighting)
Zak Cammoun (sound)

Also reprising roles : Marc Chonier (actor), Julien Omé (guitar)…