Not a common choice, I'd agree. It doesn't appear on any American Film Institute or BFI list, nor has it featured on any critics' poll (as far as I know). Roger Ebert likes it but still prefers Casablanca and La Dolce Vita. Nor would I claim my greatest film ever made doesn't have its problems; there's numerous continuity errors and some atrocious acting (the porkpie hat-wearing policeman outside the Pittsburgh tenement building is particularly notable). The scene where the zombie has the top of his head cut off by the helicopter is probably not a homage to Carry On Screaming. But love, like it so often does, filters out the flaws.
What Dawn of the Dead does have is atmosphere. It really feels like the end of the world. Few directors attempt to show society coming apart at the seams, preferring to start their story after the fall. George Romero starts in mid-collapse, all with a 1977 budget of $1.5 million. It looks several times more, with a wonderful location in the Monroeville Mall. Romero met Mark Mason, one of the mall owners, at a party in 1975. Romero said:
Away from the survivors, there's something oddly similar about the dead, dumbly shuffling around from store to store, and modern rapacious consumers. The satire is obvious, but the point is drilled home with a surprisingly light touch and Romero doesn't allow it to dominate the entire film, which is perhaps why Dawn of the Dead hasn't dated nearly as badly as some more celebrated satirical films of the period (Shampoo, anyone?) While it may be filled with post-sixties socio-political angst and the allegory of zombie as the complete, final consumer, it doesn't seem to despise the seventies 'me' generation. In fact, the zombies are morally neutral.
It's revealing talking to people who've seen the film but wouldn't normally watch something like Dawn. The first thing they mention is the gore, of course, but then they'll probably tell you it didn't scare them at all at the time, but they had subsequent nightmares about being chased or hunted. Why does it leave this residual but largely vague fear behind? There's primal stuff here, perhaps fetched by accident, as Romero never really captured it again. But for all that, Dawn of the Dead is the zombie genre's true cinematic classic, its Sistine Chapel, its Garden of Delights.
Half of Dawn's budget was raised by the Italian film director Dario Argento, his producer brother Claudio and another Italian producer, Alfredo Coumo, after they'd read an early incomplete draft of the script. Romero was probably influenced by Argento, consciously or otherwise, and Dawn's loud, bold colours often resemble Argento's own Suspiria, albeit in a more muted fashion; blood spurts in bright red arcs, and the palette is heavy with primary colours. Romero was also introduced to Goblin, an Italian progressive rock group who provided the score for Suspiria. Their score for Dawn of the Dead is a dark, thumping mass of bass guitar and organ.
There's numerous versions of Dawn of the Dead, Romero's first 139 minute edit for a test screening (now erroneously known as the 'director's cut') was pared down by twelve minutes for the US theatrical version. Dario Argento and his Italian co-producers had the non-English foreign rights and cut a tighter-paced 118 minute version, renamed Zombi with a louder (and more Goblin-heavy) soundtrack. It also uses different takes in a number of scenes. There's a Dutch edit, released on VHS, which seems to mix the European edit and the US theatrical version. Bizarrely, a Japanese television version cut most of the violence, used the Goblin score from Suspiria and credited Dario Argento as the director.
Like the music of Gil Scott-Heron, there's a Dawn of the Dead version for every mood. Want atmospheric and brooding? That's the extended cut. Want fast, noisy and violent? There's Zombi with the volume turned up. Want downbeat and depressed? There's Day of the Dead, the third part of Romero's Dead trilogy. But that's for another day.
