At one or two points during this film, various characters wonder aloud if they have been struck by the "Macbeth curse" - the longstanding theatre superstition that the play of that name is unlucky... if of course you refer to it by name, that is. Considering that all these superstitious people never once refer to it as "the Scottish play" as the legend tells them to, one could argue that they only have themselves to blame for what happens...
After the female lead storms out of rehersals and gets hit by a car, young understudy Betty is given the role of Lady Macbeth in Verdi's opera of the Shakespeare play. Unfortunately for Betty, this news also awakens a deranged stalker whose method of showing affection is a strange one: he repeatedly attacks Betty, ties her up and tapes needles under her eyes so she cannot close them, thus making her watch as he murders her friends in front of her. The only ones who can identify the killer are an unkindness of ravens who saw the killer slaughter three of their number, and want revenge...
On the face of it, Opera (sometimes known as Terror at the Opera) should be a good film. It has an original method of torture for the protagonist (and one that the audience will cringe in sympathy over), the killer could really be anyone and so there is legitimate tension built through the film, and the sub-plot involving the ravens and their desire for revenge is wholly original and pretty damn good (Trivia note: during the filming of Opera they released about 140 ravens in the theatre. They got back about 60-odd; the rest escaped the theatre and flew into the night). The biggest problem, therefore, with Opera is with its protagonist, Betty. She is one of the most passive protagonists I've ever seen in film, never doing more than letting events happen around her and then running away from them afterwards - twice after witnessing the killer butcher her friends, she not only flees the scene but tries to avoid telling the police that she was even there, thus hindering their efforts to catch the killer. What's more, she has so little reaction to their deaths other than the initial horror of seeing them that you have to keep reminding yourself that these were people she supposedly had feelings for. Betty relies on those around her to actually do the important things - rescue her, expose the killer - and is really just too much of a passive victim to really be an engaging protagonist.
It's a shame really, because Opera really does have some very good touches that really deserved a stronger protagonist/heroine (again, those damned ravens, because those wicked curved beaks are going to haunt me now). But when I'm watching a film and thinking to myself, "I'd really like to see this opera that they're all doing more than I want to watch the actual movie right now," then possibly something has gone wrong somewhere along the way (Apparently Dario Argento had some similar thoughts as well, as in 2013 he actually directed his own version of Verdi's Macbeth, using many of the same ideas he had first come up with in this film). Between the passivity of its protagonist, the half-hearted "revelation" that is only vaguely alluded to for most of the film before being abruptly brought up near the film's climax, and the obviously telegraphed "twist" at the ending, Opera is sadly one of Argento's more mediocre films.
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