We meet the director on the set of " Il Fantasma dell'Opera " of which he is concluding the filming. " It is my first story of love... " (article edited by Pia Maria Fusco, the Republic - Sunday 22 March 1998) Galleries, caverns, underground passages, an extraordinary maze that is opened to whim in wonderful " halls " in which stalactites and stalagmites furnishings and fantastic sculptures are combined, on which the reflected light of streams and small lakes formed for the " Dark Man " films, an underground river that tenaciously digs bizzarrly covered in the heart of the mountain. They are the Coves of Pertosa, 70 kilometers from Salerno, a tourist place that Dario Argento has transformed in the basements of the Opéra of Paris, or moreover the dwelling of the most famous phantom of literature and the cinema, Il Fantasma dell'Opera, destined "monstrous" creature living in the dark, legacy to the external world from the music that arrives to it from the stage. Published in 1911, set in the second half of the 800's, the novel of Gaston Leroux is beloved to the cinema. Between the seven versions most notable, in 1925 of Julian with Lon Chaney, that one of Lubin of the ' 43 with Claude Rains, and " the fastasma of the stage " of Brian De Palma in ' 74. It is in Argento's version, that one, that he has set the Opéra in the lyric theatre of Budapest. Pertosa (Salerno) - For Dario Argento "Il Fantasma dell'Opera" is " a dark story of love ", but the true surprise is that, for the first time in his career, he declares the intention to make a " political " film. The story is set in 1877, less than 30 years after the publication of The Manifest of Marx and Engels, and the tie in is easy: A phantom goes around Europe... "my" phantom is " the new " man, lover of music and the stolen books in the library of the Opéra, who with his way of thinking succeeds in seducing Christine, the young singer. But Beauty in the historical moment is the Epoque, after a century of revolutions and of dead women, people wanted to divert, to eat, to dance, only to make love, to laugh, and a man who recalls culture, the respect of the differences and the human values is seen like an annoying disturbance, to be eliminated ". REPUBLIC: But in imaginary filmmaking the phantom is a physically repellent man... Argento: The cinema has embroidered a lot on the novel of Leroux, the most faithful film has been that one with Lon Chaney of ' 25, the best one. I am coming from the novel, also in the logistics. The Coves of Pertosa are perfect, I had need of basements with a lake, the water that separates him from the world strengthens the isolation of the character. I have only made two great "betrayals": I have removed the mask of the phantom and have filled up the empty bits of the text. Leroux for example is very vague about the past of the man, from where he came, who has raised him. "Because of fortuitous circumstances, a mysterious alliance has been born between the abandoned child and the inhabitants of the darknesses...", writes Leroux. In my film the baby is saved by rats, it is the rats that raise it. And I have recovered all the ironic parts that were in Leroux and that the cinema has sacrificed. The reactions of the external world to the phantom are grotesque, are grotesque in the character of the lyric singer - Nadia Rinaldi - that the phantom wants to eliminate for love of Christine, because she is to have the Daisy role in Faust. REPUBLIC: With the political film definition it wants to say that there is also a resentment for the present time? Argento: Why not? We do not live a period of total disengagement? In the film there is also the character of a Communist that, after battered for his ideals, has been transformed into one that only thinks of the next monies and what happened to one personally. REPUBLIC: The script is written by Gerard Brach. What has he contributed to it? Argento: Brach has been passionate about the history of this man who has never left the theatre, because also he suffers from the strongest kind of progressive agoraphobia. At this point he does not only not exit his home, but he is difficult to decoy from his room, where he lives safe between the books. And therefore he very well knew the phobia of the phantom. REPUBLIC: It says that Christine is enamoured of the phantom. But Julian Sands who plays him, with long unkempt hair, a scar on the cheekbone, the tenebrous appearance of skin and the spectral whiteness, is surely not a desirable man... (SITEMISTRESS' NOTE: we know better about him in real life, but Julian manages to look quite startling in the Phantom's guise...) Argento: Frightening enough, but the sections (feelings?) are noble and kind. Christine is chaste, ingenuous, loves the young baron Raoul, who is beautiful, elegant, the corteggia with grace. But the speeches of the phantom, the force of his passion and the dedication without reserve with which the protege to the end fascinates him, and as he is not a true phantom but a man in flesh and bones, making love with mutual satisfaction. The problem is that it seems impossible to love two men at the same time. Young, ingenuous, she still does not know that these things happen... She before that time had one love history. REPUBLIC: How much time will it be next to a film from Leroux? Argento: At least twenty years. I wanted to film in Moscow, and it appealed to one connection with Rasputin, a black and diabolic spirit, politically meaningful. I would have had to turn to the Bolscioi, inasmuch as for years the Opéra is impractical, has become a museum. But then too many complications are fate and the plan is jumped. Il Fantasma dell'Opera is one of those films that they have marked to me, rather than has pushed to me towards the cinema. Remember still that I saw with my brother in a room to the open, when we were in vacation on the Dolomiti, the version with Claude Rains. REPUBLIC: After many monsters and fear, after much violence on the screen and in tv, then what in the cinema of the fear is new? Argento: By now it is difficult to invent something new that astonishes the public. Now it is the moment to return to another type of restlessness, to the " monster " within us, to the callback of the psychological identification. It is not a coincidence that Stephen King has returned to writing thrillers and that my great friend George Romero, that I have met magically in Budapest in means of the fog, is preparing one new version from " the crow " of Poe. A good militant catholic, Romero is one species of missionary of the dark part of us. In " Il Fantasma dell'Opera ", beyond that from the uneasiness that provokes the presence of the " various one ", there are classical elements of fear. The phantom that arranges several troubles, can be very cruel, when it feels hostility and hatred. Cruel like animals, for necessary defense. He, that has seen in the basements of the Opéra the ferocity with which massacred the Communist, is sentenced to the free cruelty of the men. REPUBLIC: There are many animals? Argento: Bats, scorpions, snakes, scarafaggi, worms. And rats naturally, many rats. There is a sequence in which Julian Sands is covered to the waist with 400 rats. All real, no special effect. In order not to succumb to the panic, he has used the technique of the Yoga concentration. I am not afraid of rats. REPUBLIC: There is something that you do fear? Argento: Women. Some of them I have had have made me indeed fear, if I rethink I still feel the thrills. It is not a case that never is not married me, my daughters say that they have become a monaco. The actress in the third film with her father: that challenge of a film in costume Pertosa (Salerno) - " I was scared, I did not feel myself up to the role", says Asia Argento. "And then in the beginning Christine was unpleasant, one little girl vitiated, virgin and chaste, one species of " little shit " posh girl, all withholding. Then, when the phantom seduces her, she lets go, free, and being with him in the basements she becomes also disgusting, liking the spiders, the rats and all the things that before displeased her ". According to Asia Argento, Christine is " the first romantic heroine that yields to the feelings and does not know how to handle them. Completeness between two loves is found. One with Raoul, he is tender, friendly, also brotherly, and one with the phantom, that is sweeping, passionate but also uneven, in the sense that he is adult, picked, illuminated, could be also her father. And as she does not know how to decide between the two, leaves that to the phantom to decide for her". Though her co-stars, Julian Sands and Andrea Di Stefano (the prince of Homburg) have already appeared in period films, for Asia Argento a role in costume is unusual. " And it is a beautiful challenge, someone also has written that I should not be set to roles in costume. But it is not true that the costume does not have importance, it is important that I " feel " the personage, and this, after the first days of filming, has happened. When we turn I feel it arrive, like it had its own life. I had never perceived such a feeling, perhaps why up to now in the girls who I have played there was always similarity, while Christine is much different from me". It is the third film of Asia Argento with her father, " but it is the first the time that I see my father so inspired and participating. He usually does not speak very much with the actors, but in the preparation of " Il Fantasma dell'Opera " has spoken much, has asked me what I thought, how I saw Christine, we have discussed. And during the previous filming he knew what he wanted, he decided, instead now he consults, he is to feel to us, he explains. Perhaps it is sincere that this is the film that he really has dreamed to make ". Daughter of art, actress from childhood, Asia retains one curiosity, tender insecurity. " I tend to star badly if they say negative things to me. I would not want to be so fragile, but my acting always depends on what people say to me ", telling the problem of the first days of filming " The New Rose Hotel" with Abel Ferrara, in which I have participated of recent in America. " Abel leaves the actors total freedom, indeed expects it, wants that everyone moves as it seems to them, he says that it tries to you with the taken machine from, the actor must ignore. The first days I was a lot preoccupied, but when I have understood the game, they are very amusing to me".