“I grew up in a house that was like a library or a museum. I feel I refined Dario’s taste very much. I went with him to many art exhibitions. […] I feel I guided Dario to something outside the scope of just cinema, towards art, music, theatre, and other things.”
“For me, I did not want to be a star; I just wanted to act well.”
A true icon of the silver screen, and one of the most significant figures in Italian genre cinema of the 20th Century. Daria was born in Florence, in 1950, into a talented family of intellectuals and artists: her father was a lawyer, her mother an academic; her maternal grandfather was Alfredo Casella, a composer and conductor who counted Stravinsky, Mahler and Strauss among his friends.
Daria moved to Rome while still a teen, and by 1970 she was beginning to find work on stage and screen. Elio Petri was quick to spot her talent, guiding her through her first theatrical roles, and ultimately casting her as the female lead in La proprietà non è più un furto (Property Is No Longer a Theft, 1973), a highly political satire about wealth and class in modern Italy. The following year, she attended auditions for Profondo Rosso (Deep Red), where she met director Dario Argento. Until this point, she had mostly played attractive blondes and love interests; Argento could see that she was capable of more nuance, and had her cut her long hair and dye it red, adopt a more masculine style of dress, and bring her wry sense of humour to the character of Gianna. In return, Daria adopted some of the director’s mannerisms and habits for her character, particularly in her physical movements and hand gestures. The two worked well together, on screen and off; they soon became romantically involved, and in 1975 Daria gave birth to a daughter, Asia Argento (her second, having previously had a child with sculptor Mario Ceroli).
Daria and Dario would remain together for the next ten years. In the process she became not only his partner, but his closest collaborator, and in many ways his muse. Before Asia was born, the two took a holiday in northern Europe, travelling around France, Germany and Switzerland. The trip reminded Daria of her grandmother - another artist, the French pianist Yvonne Müller Loeb Casella - who had a keen interest in the supernatural, and thrilled the young Nicolodi with tales of her time at an academy on the Swiss/German border, where the faculty had all practised black magic. Those stories would form the basic outline of Argento’s next film, Suspiria (1977). The couple developed the idea between them, and worked together on the script, incorporating everything from fairy tales to Nicolodi’s dreams. In later years, Argento would downplay the contribution made by Daria to the finished script, but her influence - and in turn, the way Suspiria would influence the entire horror genre, and develop Argento’s work - is undeniable. Her fight for official recognition - and a screen credit as co-writer - left the actor exhausted.
Daria had also intended to act in the film, but was prevented by injury. She returned for Inferno (1980), the spiritual sequel to Suspiria, and once again contributed behind the cameras: the original concept was Nicolodi’s, and she worked on the script with Dario. Unwilling to fight him again, her writing work went uncredited this time. With their professional relationship strained, Nicolodi would only agree to a small supporting role in Argento’s next film, Tenebre (Tenebrae, 1982). However, when the American actor who had been cast as the female lead dropped out just before the start of shooting, Daria once again found herself starring in an Argento horror film. The shoot was not a happy one; as Daria bonded with her onscreen love interest, Anthony Franciosa, over a shared passion for theatre, Argento became jealous and difficult. The atmosphere on set deteriorated to such a point that, when directed to give a short, sharp scream for the final shot of the film (her final day of shooting), Daria instead unleashed a long, deafening howl of terror. What she described as her “cathartic release from the whole nightmare” would become one of the most iconic moments in the film.
By the time they were making Phenomena (Creepers, 1985), the relationship between Nicolodi and Argento was beginning to fail. They would separate that year, and although she initially did not express any interest in working for the director again, she was tempted back for Opera (1987) by an elaborate death scene. Outside of her work with Dario, Nicolodi had built up a modest but significant filmography with other big names in Italian genre cinema. For the great Mario Bava, she starred in his final film, Shock (1977); for his son, Lamberto, she took a supporting role in Le foto di Gioia (Delirium, 1987). Michele Soavi, a protégé of her former partner, cast her in La Setta (The Sect, 1991), but mainly she would concentrate on the stage from this point on, describing theatre as her first love. The tragic death of her elder daughter, Anna, in 1994, only kept her further away from the limelight. It was the burgeoning career of younger daughter Asia, both as actor and director, that would tempt her back in front of the cameras.
Although she made comparatively few films, Daria’s impact on Italian horror cinema has been huge. What’s most fascinating is how deeply individual and unique each of her performances were. It’s tempting, in looking at her work with Dario Argento, to perhaps project a potential pattern in her different roles, that aligns with how he may have viewed their relationship. In Profondo Rosso, shot whilst they were still getting to know one another, she is self-contained, confident, attractive and capable. By Inferno, when their relationship was well established and they had a child together, her character is much more vulnerable, an innocent caught up in something terrible and in need of protection. In Tenebre, one of Argento’s most accomplished films, she has her weakest part - she was unhappy with the role, which is notably underwritten compared to the characters around her, and in which her main purpose seems to be to react to the events unfolding. As their relationship faltered on the set of Phenomena, she took her ugliest role of all - a dark distortion of obsessive motherhood. Perhaps it might seem like a disservice to her, to make these comparisons, but it is also true that Daria was an incredibly obliging actor - always at pains to give her director (Argento or otherwise) exactly what she thought they needed, whether requested or not. Petri had told her she reminded him of a figure from his past, so she consciously exaggerated those mannerisms to please him; Argento originally struck her as egocentric, so she mirrored his stance and his gestures. A consummate professional, I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibilities that by Phenomena she was channeling their dysfunctional relationship and distorted self images into one of the most intense and disturbing performances of her career.
I would have first seen Daria in ProfondoRosso, more than a decade ago now. It remains one of my favourite films, and her performance in it quite simply one of my favourite performances ever given by an actor. Gianna is such a complete and unique creation, unlike not only any female character in Italian cinema at that point, but quite unlike any character in a horror film. Profondo Rosso is a giallo film, perhaps the finest giallo film - it is a bloody, terrifying slasher film in which horrific violence is visited on the undeserving. And as Gianna, Daria spends the entire film incredibly, almost deliriously happy. She grins, she poses, she spins her cigarellos between her fingers. She teases David Hemmings, pricks at his ego, challenges him to arm wrestling contests. She drives a broken down car, tricks her way into crime scenes, and takes photographs of witnesses even when strictly forbidden to. She is among the most likeable, endearing, and thoroughly real protagonists to ever appear in what is essentially a fantasy film. She is so very human that she grounds what should be a totally absurd concept, and in the process provides exactly what it is that makes that film work so well - and it did work, the film was a huge critical and commercial success, and revitalised Argento’s career after an early 70s slump.
There are two cuts of Profondo Rosso, and I know there is a school of thought that the shorter, international cut (which removes much of Nicolodi’s work, trimming all the more jovial and character-building scenes) is the superior one - that it makes for a sharper, more suspenseful thriller. I absolutely disagree. To cut the relationship scenes is to take out the heart and soul of the film: Hemmings is the purported lead, but his character is detached, emotionally stunted. The heart of the film is in Nicolodi - in her sharp suits and twinkling eye, in her laughter and her fear - and the only reason the suspense works at all is because the audience has a reason to care, someone to care about. Profondo Rosso was the first time I saw an Italian film not as a garish thrill, but as something much deeper, more profound. It was perhaps the first time I realised that a horror film could also be art. I fell in love with Italian cinema, with gialli, and with Daria Nicolodi.
