La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film

La Dolce Morte Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film

Mikel J. Koven

THE

S C A R E C R O W PRESS,

Lanham, Maryland

•

Toronto

2006

•

INC. Oxford

S C A R E C R O W PRESS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Scarecrow Press, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of T h e Rúwman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4 5 0 1 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 2 0 0 , Lanham, Maryland 2 0 7 0 6 www.scarecrowpress.com P O B o x 317 Oxford OX2 9RU, UK Copyright © 2 0 0 6 by Mikel J. Koven All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication D a t a Koven, Mikel J. La dolce morte : vernacular cinema and the Italian giallo film / Mikel J. Koven. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. I S B N - 1 3 : 9 7 8 - 0 - 8 1 0 8 - 5 8 7 0 - 1 (pbk. : alk. paper) I S B N - 1 0 : 0 - 8 1 0 8 - 5 8 7 0 - 3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Detective and mystery films—Italy—History and criticism. 2. Horror films—Italy— History and criticism. I. Title. PN1995.9.D4K68 2006 791.43'6556—dc22

-

2006015624

T h e paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information S c i e n c e s — P e r m a n e n c e of Paper for Printed Library Materials, A N S I / N I S O Z 3 9 . 4 8 - 1 9 9 2 . Manufactured in the U n i t e d States of America.

Contents

Preface

v

Acknowledgments

ix

Chapter 1

W h a t Is Giallo?

Chapter 2

Toward an Understanding of Vernacular C i n e m a

Chapter 3

S p a c e and Place in Italian Giallo C i n e m a :

Chapter 4 Chapter 5

Chapter 6

1 19

T h e A m b i v a l e n c e o f Modernity

45

Murder and O t h e r Sexual Perversions

61

W a t c h i n g the Detectives: A m a t e u r Detectives and the Giallo as Detective C i n e m a

77

T h e Killer's Identity

97

Chapter 7

"Weird S c i e n c e of the Most Egregious Kind": 111

Chapter 8

T h e Ambivalence of Belief in the Giallo Film "A Perverse Sublime": Excess and the S e t Piece in the Giallo T h e Giallo as C i n e m a of Poetry

141

Chapter 9

iii

123

iv

•—'

Contents

Chapter 10

From Giallo to Slasher

159

Filmography

173

Bibliography

179

Index

187

A b o u t the A u t h o r

195

Preface

T h i s hook has three aims. T h e first, obviously, is an exploration of the giallo, albeit from a synchronic, rather than diachronic, perspective, with particular attention to some of the thematic concerns that arise from a textual study of these films. T h i s book is categorically not a review of the films, debating whether or not they are good or bad; nor does it fall into the "cult of the auteur," helping to establish a pantheon of "rediscovered" Italian horror c i n e m a artistes, putting Lucio Fulci, Sergio Martino, and A l d o Lado into the same revered echelons as Dario Argento and Mario Bava. S e c o n d , this book aims to refocus the discussion of genre (particularly "subgenre") into the Italian c o n c e p t of the filone. Seeing the interrelationships between films, how one influences others, how certain filmmakers take ideas and build off of them, and t h e n how those ideas are further transformed by other filmmakers, is an underdeveloped aspect in genre study. A n d I h o p e this book contributes to that discussion. Third, this book situates the discussion of the giallo within what I call "vernacular c i n e m a " as a replacement for the term "popular cinema." To look at a film from a vernacular perspective removes the a priori assumptions about what constitutes a "good" film, how a particular film is, in some way, "artistic." Vernacular c i n e m a asks, to paraphrase T i n a Turner, "what's art got to do with it?" Vernacular c i n e m a seeks to look at subaltern c i n e m a not for how it might (or might n o t ) conform to the precepts of high-art/modernist c i n e m a , but for what it does in its own right. W i t h the exception of die-hard aficionados of European or Italian horror c i n e m a , I suspect that most people

v

vi

'

'

Pretace

reading this book will not have heard of many of these films. Proper vernacular cinema is below most of our cultural radar. Go to any local video store and take a look at some of the genre films on display—any genre will do, but the best choices are those genres you are not necessarily a big fan of, or where your knowledge is less. How many of these titles have you heard of? Of course, you will be familiar with the more famous examples; if you read the credit listings, maybe you'll know some of t h e stars or directors. But when you look on these shelves and find yourself saying, "I've never heard of that" or " W h o ? " the c h a n c e s are you are entering a vernacular c i n e m a realm. T h e power of vernacular c i n e m a , in fact what makes it vernacular in the first place, is that these movies are not necessarily for us; the filmmakers have their audience and we are not (necessarily) them. Vernacular c i n e m a does not care if we see these movies. T h e s e films are an insider's discourse among themselves. We do not matter. A n d that is what I find particularly liberating about these films. My academic background is as a folklorist. T h a t may seem like a strange admission to begin a book on the Italian giallo film with, but I think it is important. My doctorate is in folklore studies, and although I lecture in film and television, my training as a folklorist permeates my research into film and T V , even if not about explicitly folkloristic topics. I have published dozens of film/television papers in academic journals and edited collections, but still my folklore orientation tends to bleed through, like some twisted academic palimpsest. Throughout the vast majority of my writings, my own intellectual project has been to address popular film and television texts within an academic folklore c o n t e x t and to demonstrate folkloristic ways of reading mass-mediated entertainment within a film and TV c o n t e x t . W h i l e I am certainly writing for the film studies academic market, particularly those academics working in cult, horror, and perhaps even European c i n e m a arenas, I am still a folklorist working on popular film, which perhaps explains why I am approaching the topic the way I am. A n d while I am not entirely sure I would recognize this book within a folklore c o n t e x t , this academic perspective obviously informs what I do. My hope for this hook is to not only have it recognized by film scholars as, to my knowledge, the first English-language academic study of the Italian giallo film, but also that folklorists, too, would recognize that how I approach these films fits within contemporary folkloristics (beyond the obvious relevance of chapter 7, which is about folklore in the

giallo). A c a d e m i c research is a dialogue, not a monologue. O n e of the problems

of writing on an area that has not been as well trodden as others is that such a project must be inherently preliminary. I invite all readers to disagree with

Preface

•

•

vii

me and point out where I am wrong, what I have misinterpreted, and what new ideas are generated when you apply your own pet theories that I should have included here but didn't. I sincerely look forward to reading your work. A n d perhaps, if t h e publishing gods are with me, I'll address those issues in the second edition. 1 do not believe any scholarship is, or should even attempt to be, definitive. If the "last word" on a topic was even possible, t h e n the rest of us would be out of work. Despite my intended readership of this book being predominantly academic, as a horror movie fan myself, I am very aware that fans of the genre buy, and more importantly read, academic books on their favorite subject. W h i l e I hope my discussion o f the giallo is intelligent enough for the academic market, I equally hope that my writing style and approach does not alienate the nonacademic reader. I hate the phrase "dumbing down," and I categorically reject doing that. T h e r e is no reason why complex ideas c a n n o t he explained fully and in such a way that those not academically trained in film studies (or folklore) should not still he able to read and understand my discussion. At the same time, I was not about to alienate my academic readership with excessive description at the expense of analysis, or present m o v i e reviews instead of cultural discussion. T h e films included in this book are those I could get my hands on. M a n y are out of print, or very hard to find. It is pointless to whine that I have not discussed Death Laid an Egg (La Morte ha fatto l ' u o v o ) (Giulio Questi, 1 9 6 9 ) or Strip Nude for Your Killer (Nude per I'assassino)

(Andrea Bianchi,

1975).

I

tried, but 1 kept getting outbid on eBay for them. S o , if your favorite obscure giallo is not mentioned in this book, my apologies. If you have a copy, I'd love to take a look at it, and maybe I c a n include it in a second edition, again depending on the caprices of the publishing gods. A few c o m m e n t s on the organization of this book: the first chapter, " W h a t Is Giallo?" is intended as an introduction to not only the history o f the giallo, but also t h e c o n t e x t of Italian popular filmmaking. T h e second chapter, " T o ward an Understanding of Vernacular C i n e m a , " is a methodological chapter: here I discuss the c o n t e x t of the study of Italian c i n e m a and how such studies tend to ignore horror cinema, how journalistic film critics deride these films as "incompetent," and how such criticisms reveal more about the reviewers' own prejudices than any problem with the film. As a counter to t h e middle-class bias inherent in the giallo's omission from the academic study o f Italian c i n e m a and t h e poor press these films tend to get, I argue for studying these films by approaching them as vernacular c i n e m a . Together the first two chapters are largely contextual; I am trying to lay a cultural foundation for the later chapters' study of the films themselves.

viii

Preface

In chapters 3 - 9 , 1 address various themes, motifs, and tropes in these films: their use of space; the murders; the role of the detective; the identity of the killer; issues of belief, excess, and the set-piece; and the giallo as "cinema of poetry." In each of these chapters my intention is to give an overview of the t h e m e discussed with cross-genre examples. Based on these textual analyses, I begin to hypothesize what such moments might mean culturally, specifically for vernacular audiences. In my conclusions to each chapter, I begin to point to where these discussions intersect with the critical theories of our disciplines. I apologize in advance if my analyses tend to be overly descriptive, but due to the unfamiliarity of many of the films under discussion, I felt that such foci were required. Finally, as a conclusion, I recontextualize the giallo in terms of how it influenced the N o r t h A m e r i c a n slasher movie of the late 1970s and early 1 9 8 0 s . It is also worth noting how the giallo influenced the slasher film then reinfluenced some Italian horror films in the mid-1980s. S o , put on your black leather driving gloves, open up your straight razors, pour yourself a highball of J & B , and let's go back to the sleazy seventies.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my colleagues at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, who have supported and encouraged my research into this bizarre subject: Ioan Williams and M a r t i n Barker b o t h actually believed I could pull off this book. T h a n k s also to Mick Mangan, now at the University of Exeter, who came back from Italy with a Mondadori edition of an Ed M c B a i n novel to inspire my work in gialli. T h a n k you to Kevin Donnelly and Kate Egan, who made some useful suggestions early on in this research. T h a n k s also to K a t e Woodward, whose i n n o c e n c e I helped to corrupt by showing her some of these movies, particularly Dario Argento's Opera. T h a n k s should also go out to my colleagues at large, S t e v e n Jay Schneider, Xavier Mendik, and especially my fellow explorer of vernacular c i n e m a , S h e i l a Nayar. A shy t h a n k you as well to Richard Dyer, who suggested I continue with this research; your encouragement meant a lot to me. T h e research for this book has taken several years to complete, but I would not have been able to complete this at all without the support from the U n i versity of Wales, Aberystwyth, Department of T h e a t r e , Film and Television, which granted me two semesters sabbatical leave to complete the project; diolch yn fawr! I would also like to thank the British Academy, which awarded me an Overseas C o n f e r e n c e G r a n t in 2 0 0 3 so I could present a preliminary version of chapter 7 at the Perspectives on Contemporary Legend Confere n c e in C o r n e r Brook, Newfoundland. Also a massive thank you to all of the International S o c i e t y for Contemporary Legend Research ( I S C L R ) , whose support over the years has been a great encouragement to me; a specific

ix

x

•—•

Acknowledgments

thank you to Carl Lindahl, whom I seem to have converted into a Dario A r gento fan due to this presentation. T h e same paper was also presented at the Fifth A n n u a l M e C C S A Conference in Brighton at the University of Sussex, so thank you to all who heard the paper and gave me such useful feedback. Based on these conference papers, an alternative version of this chapter was published in Midwestern Folklore 3 0 . 2 ( 2 0 0 4 ) : 2 1 - 2 9 ; thanks also to the journal's editor Greg Kelley. Also, an earlier version of chapter 3 was presented at the 2 0 0 3 European C i n e m a Research Forum conference at the University of Bath, and was eventually published in W e n d y Everett and A x e l Goodbody, eds, Revisiting Space: Space and Place in European Cinema (Bern: Peter Lang, 2 0 0 5 ) , 1 1 5 - 3 1 ; thanks to Wendy and A x e l for their work on the volume. An even earlier version was first published in the online journal K'inoe^e 3 . 1 2 ( 2 0 0 3 ) as "La Dolce Morte: S p a c e , Modernity and the Giallo." T h a n k you as well to Sue C o h e n at J & B W h i s k e y and Danilo Vogt at Marketing-Film for the D V D copies of AM the Colors of the Dark and Dance of Satan. Special thank you to A l a n Simpson at the Sex, Gore, Mutants website— probably the best horror fan site in cyberspace

(www.sexgoremutants

.co.uk)—for bringing me on as a D V D reviewer, particularly the giallo discs. A n d to Adele Hartley at Edinburgh's "Dead by Dawn" film festival, the best damn film festival in the world! Special thanks also to Harvey Fenton at F A B Press—probably the best publisher of horror and extreme c i n e m a fanoriented materials; without FAB's books, this study could not have been done. Very special thanks to Kelly Jones, whose support, encouragement, coffee, and proofreading skills I could not have done without. Now if 1 c a n just get you to watch o n e of these movies. . . . A n d finally to my wife, G i a n , and son, Isaac: your support, love, and affection gave me the strength and encouragement to persevere with this work. T h a t my (now) five-year-old can talk intelligently about Dawn of the Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a bit worrying, but I assure S o c i a l Services he's never seen one of these movies! He does do a terrific zombie impersonation, however. G i a n , my love and best friend, your idea to demand a first draft of this manuscript as a Christmas present was inspired and with only six more hours till midnight—I might just make it! T h a n k you for everything.

C H A P T E R

O N E

What Is Giallo?

Several years ago, I produced a lengthy article on the relationship b e t w e e n contemporary urban legends and the slasher films largely produced in Canada and the U n i t e d States in the later 1970s and early 1 9 8 0 s . As part of that piece, I characterized three different types of the slasher film: those slashers that are based on urban legends, which I called "terror tales"; "psycho-character studies," those films that attempt to understand the serial killer from the psycho-sociological perspective, using the killer himself (they are usually male) from the inside; and finally what I called " S c o o b y - D o o movies"—which I characterized thus: n a m e d after t h e children's a n i m a t e d television series w h i c h deals with a gang of teenagers solving what appear to the adult, outside world as supernatural mysteries, but are ultimately revealed to be non-supernatural in nature, and are usually the result of some adult who uses the supernatural legend to distract o t h e r people from discovering his/her own illegal operation. In the " S c o o b y D o o " slasher films, however, the killer is revealed to be h u m a n and using some kind of killer-legend to distract from their own motives. T h e s e slasher films are, in reality, gory murder mysteries, where t h e " g a m e " for t h e audience is to a t t e m p t a hypothesis as to w h o m t h e killer may be out of a set group of people. ( 2 0 0 3 a : np)

O n e of t h e readers for this article queried t h e relationship b e t w e e n what I was calling the " S c o o b y - D o o " movies and the Italian giallo, and in t h e final published version of t h e paper I made a vague and n o n c o m m i t t a l

1

2

Chapter O n e

c o n n e c t i o n b e t w e e n t h e two in a f o o t n o t e . But almost immediately after submitting that final edit of the paper, I c o n t i n u e d thinking about the relationship b e t w e e n t h e giallo and the slasher m o v i e and realized my term " S c o o b y - D o o " m o v i e was inaccurate: this particular form of slasher was a c tually ( N o r t h ) A m e r i c a n gialli. My intention at the time was to continue my research into the slasher film, and in preparing that research I wanted to firm up the c o n n e c t i o n between the slasher and the giallo. To do this, I sought out an article or two that defined the giallo, as genre, and gave some reference to the defining characteristics of these films. T h e giallo at this stage in my research was highly peripheral to my study. Unfortunately, no such articles or pieces of research could be found. Disappointed and discouraged, I decided that I would have to write those articles myself; but as I dug deeper and deeper into this genre of Italian vernacular filmmaking, I identified increasingly significant issues that had not b e e n discussed within film studies—that were not only essential to a discussion of the giallo, but to a larger form of c i n e m a language that oft e n falls below the radar of most "serious" film watchers. T h i s was back in 2 0 0 2 , and for the next three years I found myself exploring the labyrinthine world of the Italian vernacular c i n e m a of the 1 9 7 0 s . T h e s e are the results of that exploration. First, before discussing the giallo film as vernacular cinema, some definition of the genre itself is required. T h e word giallo simply means "yellow" and is the metonymic term given to a series of mystery novels that the Milanese publisher Mondadori began producing in the late 1 9 2 0 s . T h e s e paperback novels, often translations of English-language novels by writers like Arthur C o n a n Doyle, Ngaio Marsh, A g a t h a Christie, and Edgar W a l l a c e , were presented with vibrant yellow covers. A few years earlier, Mondadori had achieved success with a series of romance novels published with bright blue covers, and so their "giallo" series was an extension of this color-coding of popular literature. T h e "giallo" series is still going strong, with Mondadori continuing to publish gialli paperbacks with vibrant yellow covers. Very quickly other Italian publishers joined in on the demand (or at least availability) of mass-market murder mystery novels. Dozens of competing series were produced, all using the term giallo, further defining the literary genre within an Italian c o n t e x t . A quick perusal of a list of those books published in the 1930s and early 1940s reveals that Edgar W a l l a c e seems to have been o n e of the most popular authors—certainly translations of his novels are plentiful in the various series, followed closely by Agatha Christie, C o n a n Doyle, and Dorothy Sayers. T h e term giallo acts as a metonym for the entire mystery genre: in a British or N o r t h A m e r i c a n bookstore, if we wanted to

W h a t Is Giallo?

~

3

find, say, an Agatha Christie novel, we would look for a section called "Mystery"; however, in an Italian bookstore, that section would likely be called "Giallo." So at the most basic level, any murder-mystery narrative could be classed as giallo. 1

Despite their popularity during this period, gialli were seen as corrupt and decadent by the Italian Fascist government; it viewed the books as advocating the worst kinds of criminal behavior (as opposed to the "right" kinds of criminal behavior, like their Racial Laws). In spite of this, or maybe because of it, filmmakers tended to overlook the giallo as potential source material. Fascist cinema tended to prefer the facade of sophistication in the so-called " W h i t e Telephone" films. Literally the first giallo film was made under Mus2

solini's nose toward the end of Italy's participation in the S e c o n d World War. Luchino Visconti's Ossessione ( 1 9 4 2 ) , although mostly heralded as the first neorealist film, since the film is loosely based on James M. Caine's novel The Postman Always Rings Twice ( 1 9 3 4 ) , is also the first giallo film. Perhaps sig3

nificantly, Visconti did not read C a i n e either in the original English or in an Italian translation, but in French; the novel was given to him by J e a n R e n o i r (Liehm 1 9 8 4 : 5 2 ) . S o , whether or not Ossessione was literally a giallo—that is whether or not an Italian translation published by Mondadori or any of t h e other competing publishers was then currently available—might be moot; the crime film, based on the popularity of the crime novel {giallo) was seen as potentially ideologically subversive, at least under Fascism. T h a t being said, perhaps it is ironic that, although the script for Ossessione passed by Mussolini's censors untouched, Vittorio Mussolini, II D u c e s son, was said to have been appalled by the film, and officially it was condemned by the government ( L i e h m 1 9 8 4 : 5 7 - 5 8 ) . W h a t is significant for this current discussion of Ossessione in respect to the giallo is that part of the filmmaker's mandate was to "reopen Italian film to foreign influences and to re-establish c o n t a c t s with the world culture disrupted by the fascist isolationism" (Liehm 1 9 8 4 : 57).

4

T h e later giallo filmmakers tend to be contextualized within other forms of exploitation horror cinema, although often they worked in as many different genres as were being produced within Italian cinema at the t i m e — m o n d o documentaries, zombie pictures, police action films (poliziotto), and sex comedies. So most histories of giallo cinema, such as are available, c o n t e x t u alize the genre within the history of Italian horror cinema, rather than the crime film, with Mario Bava unofficially credited with inventing the giallo as a cinematic genre. T h i s invention can be said to have occurred through two specific films. Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much (La Ragazza che sapev troppo) ( 1 9 6 2 ) established the giallo films' narrative structure: an i n n o c e n t

4

York Times, defined filone (in the sense I am discussing i t ) as "streamlet," as in a small stream off a main river (quoted in M c D o n a g h , 1 9 9 4 : 9 5 ) . Putting these together, if we think of a larger generic

6

•—'

Chapter O n e

pattern as a river, in this c o n t e x t the giallo as genre, several smaller "streamlets" branch off from that genre-river, occasionally reconnecting to the main flow farther "downstream." Perhaps, in some cases, what we think of as a film genre, like the giallo, may be a cluster of concurrent streamlets, veins, or traditions—filone. It should be understood then that the giallo is s o m e t h i n g different to that w h i c h is c o n v e n t i o n a l l y analysed as a genre. T h e Italians h a v e the word filone, w h i c h is often used to refer to b o t h genres and cycles as well as to currents and trends. T h i s points to the limitations of genre theory built primarily on A m e r ican film genres but also to the need for redefinition c o n c e r n i n g h o w o t h e r popular

film-producing

nations

understand

and

relate

to

their

products.

(Needham 2 0 0 3 : 1 3 5 - 3 6 )

On the one hand, as Gary Needham does, we c a n see the giallo as less a distinct genre of film than as a filone of the larger horror or crime genres (this latter, of course, in Italian, is giallo). On the other hand, from a more c o n servative literary perspective, if we see the giallo as referring to the entire crime genre of literature (which it does, at least in the original language), then it should be possible to identify smaller variations on that genre—the various filone that make up the genre, at least in popular cinema. Or, as I am here, we can see filone more idiomatically, as a "tradition" to be followed; and, as we shall see below, the giallo appears more as a tradition of film narrative than as a genre. Seeing the generic diversity of the giallo in terms of its various filone strikes me as more productive than the subordinated term "subgenre." I noted above that Mario Bava introduced the theme of "the unlikely witness becomes amateur detective" in The Girl Who Knew Too Much, and t h e n introduced what was to become the sine qua non of giallo-killer disguises—black hat, black overcoat, black gloves (sometimes wearing a m a s k ) — i n Blood and Black Lace, but that it was Dario Argento who brought these two together in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. From Bird's release in 1 9 7 0 , a slew of similar films were produced that likewise featured this archetypal killer disguise and the amateur detective role. Using filone in this sense, A r g e n t o was sullo stesso filone Mario Bava, but then a number of films were produced that were sullo stesso filone Dario A r g e n t o , that is, in the tradition of first Bava and t h e n Argento. T h e s e films make up the central core of the giallo film, and perhaps we should designate them as "classic giallo." T h i s corpus of films includes, in addition to those already mentioned, Giuliano Carnimeo's The Case of the Bloody Iris

(Perche quelle stran gocce di sangue sul corpo di ]ennifer?)

Massimo Dallamano's Solange (Cosa avante fatto a Solange?)

(1971),

( 1 9 7 2 ) , Aldo

W h a t Is Giaüol

Lado's Who Saw Her Die? Death

Walks at Midnight

Crispino's

Autopsy

(Chi I'ha vista moriré?)

(1972),

(La Morte accarezza a mezzanotte)

(Macchie

solari)

(1973),

Umberto

•

7

Luciano Ercoli's ( 1 9 7 2 ) , Armando

Lenzi's

Eyeball

(Gatti

rossi in un libirinto di verto) ( 1 9 7 5 ) , and Argento's Deep Red (Profondo rosso) ( 1 9 7 5 ) . As c a n be gleaned from the selection above, the "classic" period of the giallo film ran from approximately 1 9 7 0 until 1 9 7 5 . If the film takes the narrative perspective of the police in investigating and finally revealing the machinations of the plot, then rightly the film is more of a police procedural thriller than a classic giallo. Italian vernacular cinema recognizes the poliziotto as a separate filone: films where the police are the protagonist. Despite the differences between the giallo and the poliziotto film, both focus on the hunt for a serial killer or the investigation into some kind of drug or white slavery ring. Often these filone are difficult to tell apart, with many poliziotto referred to as giallo in their marketing (at least in the contemporary marketing of these films on D V D to horror fans). A number of films in this period and under consideration here clearly fall within the cycle of the police procedural. In particular, Paolo C a v a r a s The Black Belly of the Tarantula (La Tarantula dal ventre nero) ( 1 9 7 2 ) runs the gamut between b o t h giallo and poliziotto, privileging the investigative perspectives of both an amateur detective Paolo Zani ( S i l v a n o Tranquilli) and police officer, Inspector Tellini (Giancarlo G i a n n i n i ) . Massimo Dallamano's A Black Veil for Lisa (La Morte

non ha sesso)

(1968)

and

What Have

They

Done

to Our Daughters?

( 1 9 7 4 ) are much more poliziotto than classic giallo, with the centrality of the police reflected in the latter's original Italian title (La Polizia chiede aiuto, literally, " T h e police need help"). Flavio Mogherini's The Pyjama Girl Case (La Ragazza dal pigiama giallo)

( 1 9 7 7 ) , despite the use of the word giallo in the

original Italian title, focuses more on Inspector Thompson's (Ray M i l l a n d ) investigation than the events leading up to the murder being investigated. Significantly, Dallamano's Black Veil was made before the classic giallo began to dominate Italian terza visione screens (i.e., those films sullo stesso filone Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage) and Mogherini's The Pyjama Girl Case is fairly late in the cycle. So while the classic giallo dominated Italian vernacular c i n e m a roughly between 1 9 7 0 and 1 9 7 5 , this filone was topped and tailed by more traditional poliziotto films. S t e p h e n Thrower noted "Italy's exploitation directors had, during the seventies, turned from the labyrinthine narrative excesses of the giallo to the right-wing law enforcement wet dreams of the poliziesco [sic.]" ( 1 9 9 9 : 1 0 9 ) . W h i l e Thrower's dismissal of the poliziotto is perhaps overly simplistic, films such as Lucio Fulci's The New York Ripper (Lo Squartatore di New York)

( 1 9 8 2 ) and Argento's The Stendhal Syndrome

(La

Síndrome di Stendhal) ( 1 9 9 6 ) , both more poliziotto than classic giallo, seem to

8

•

Chapter O n e

support his point. Contemporary gialli, like Occhi di cristallo (Eros Puglielli, 2 0 0 4 ) , focus almost exclusively on the police investigation. T h i s suggests to me that the classic giallo existed as filone in the first half of the 1970s and emerged out of an existing demand for more traditional poliziotto films. O n c e t h e cycle had run out of steam, the filone returned back to t h e more familiar cop dramas. S o m e gialli tended to avoid b o t h the police and the amateur detective, c o alescing around plot lines that are more akin to suspense thrillers than either of the two gialli forms noted previously. As Charles Derry defined it, " T h e suspense thriller [is] a crime work which presents a generally murderous antagonism in which the protagonist becomes either an i n n o c e n t victim or a nonprofessional criminal within a structure that is significantly unmediated by a traditional figure of detection" ( 1 9 8 8 : 6 2 ) . In the classic giallo films, the amateur detective looks for the killer "out there," somewhere in the city; the investigation is external to the film's protagonist, even if the killer may be a friend or relative of the amateur detective. Likewise, in the poliziotto films, the investigation is externally driven, despite the possibility of uncovering internal corruption within the force. But in the "suspense thriller" gialli, the criminal activities (murder, blackmail, adultery, incest) are internally driven. T h e s e films tend to feature fewer settings and locations, restricting most of the action to o n e or two locations. For example, in Enzo Castellan's Cold Eyes of Fear (Gli occhi fredda della paura)

( 1 9 7 1 ) , most of the film occurs in

the h o m e of a wealthy solicitor whose nephew, Peter Flower ( G i a n n i G a r k o ) , has been living there. Two escaped convicts, W e l t (Frank Wolff) and Quill (Julian M a t e o s ) , break in holding Peter and his girlfriend A n n a ( G i o v a n n a R a l l i ) hostage as revenge for Juez Flower's (Fernando R e y ) botched defense of W e l t . Instead of any external investigation in the public spaces of the city, these "suspense thriller" gialli are internalized within more private and domestic spaces. Aldo Lado's Night Train Murders (L'Ultimo treno della notte) ( 1 9 7 5 ) , an Italian version of W e s Craven's Last House on the Left ( 1 9 7 2 ) , limits its action to a train c o m p a r t m e n t and the h o m e of Professor Giulio Stradi (Ernico Maria S a l e r n o ) . T h e liminal space of the train compartment is particularly highlighted in this film—while a semipublic space (anyone who has a ticket c a n occupy the space), it is a closed space with doors and curtains. O t h e r films in this filone include Mario Bava's Hatchet for the Honeymoon (¡1 Rosso sego della follia) d'agosto)

(2969),

(1970),

Five Dolls for an August Moon (Cinque bambole per la lima and

Bay

of Blood

(Reazione

a

catena)

(1971);

Umberto

Lenzi's Paranoia ( 1 9 6 9 ) ; Lucio Fulci's One on Top of the Other (Una sull'altra) ( 1 9 6 9 ) and A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (Una Lucertola con la pelle di donna) ( 1 9 7 1 ) ; Sergio Bergonzelli's In the Folds of the Flesh (Nelle pieghe della came)

W h a t Is Giallo?

—

9

( 1 9 7 0 ) ; Luciano Ercoli's The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (Le Foto proibite di una signora per bene) ( 1 9 7 0 ) ; and Fillippo Walter Ratti's Crazy Desires of a Murderer (1 Vizi morbosi di una governante) ( 1 9 7 4 ) - Troy Howarth noted: An over-simplification of the codes of the giallo would be that the genre focuses on the more unsavoury aspects of c r i m e d e t e c t i v e fiction, specifically sexual peccadilloes a n d gruesome acts of v i o l e n c e . In fact, n o t all gialli dwell on t h e morbid details of v i o l e n t death ( L u c i o Fulci's Una sidl'altra/One on Top of the Other,

1 9 6 8 , and R i c c a r d o Freda's A doppia faccia/Double Face,

1 9 6 9 , have nary

a v i o l e n t c o n f r o n t a t i o n to their c r e d i t ) , but the threat of v i o l e n c e is always there, and voyeurism, sexual dysfunction and the like are n e v e r far behind. T h e ultimate result is a totally c h a o t i c spectacle w h i c h inevitably bends, twists and destroys the (typically n a i v e ) world views of their protagonists. ( 2 0 0 2 : 71-72)

Again, with a quick perusal of the films in this filone, it appears that this was a popular form quite early on in the cycle, to some e x t e n t overlapping the move from poliziotto to classic giallo. W i t h o u t denying Argento his historical role in developing the giallo film with Bird, in the same year, 1 9 7 0 , Sergio Martino s Next! (Lo Strano v'mo della Signora Wardh) fused the internal suspense thriller plot of deceit and murder, with the external investigation of the "Classic giallo." Martino's Torso nale)

(J Corpi presentano tracce di violenza car-

( 1 9 7 3 ) , again begins as a classic giallo, but approximately halfway

through, moves indoors to the older form of the "suspense thriller"; but this particular fusion of external serial killer stalking an internally bound group of young women may be the first proper slasher film, a discussion I will return to toward the end of this book. As crime fiction, the giallo must conform to the demands of Cartesian logic, no matter how baroque the solutions to the crimes may be (a topic I discuss in a later c h a p t e r ) . Most of these films intentionally eschew a supernatural explanation in favor of a more rational one. S o m e supernatural explanations may be used as a cover for the murders (as in Crispino's Autopsy), but the murderer is always human. But with their focus on the more e x ploitative aspects of crime fiction, namely the graphic depiction of violence and murder, these gialli films are often linked directly with the horror genre, despite the absence of any supernatural agency. T h e r e are, however, a small number of gialli-like films, which draw from the visual rhetoric of the giallo but situate

that rhetoric into the c o n t e x t of a more traditional supernatural

horror film. Kim N e w m a n refers to these films as giallo-fantastico in a quite reasonable coinage ( 1 9 8 6 a : 2 3 ) . Perhaps the most explicit of these is Dario

10

•—'

Chapter One

Argento's Phenomena ( 1 9 8 5 ) , wherein the traditionally dressed giallo killer is hunted down by the traditional amateur detective, Jennifer (Jennifer C o n nelly), but in this film, the young detective also is able to telepathically c o m municate with insects, and through this c o n c e i t is able to track down the killer. Mario Bava's Kill, Baby 7

.

.

. Kill! {Operazione paura) ( 1 9 6 6 ) features

a traditional C o n a n Doyle-type murder mystery plot, wherein the detective tries to disprove the belief that a rash of suicides are the result of seeing a ghost, but in fact, the ghost of a young girl is haunting this G e r m a n village and is compelling all who see her to kill themselves. Likewise a killer pussycat is on the loose in Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat (Il Gatto nero) ( 1 9 8 1 ) , despite all the film's giallo trappings. Sergio Martino's All the Colors of the Dark (Tutti l colori del buio) ( 1 9 7 2 ) , while availing itself of the tropes of the giallo, specifically t h e killer's disguise and the t h e m e s of adultery, blackmail, and murder, contextualizes these within a plot about a witches' coven. W i t c h e s ' covens and giallo killers also appear in José Maria Elorrieta's Feast of Satan (Las Amantes del diablo) ( 1 9 7 1 ) and in Riccardo Freda's The Wailing ( L ' O b sessione che uccide) ( 1 9 8 0 ) , while a S a t a n i c sex-cult is featured in Aldo Lado's The

Short Night of Glass

Dolls

(Malastrana)

(1971).

But these giallo-fantastico

are largely infrequent, worth mentioning in passing but not significant enough to dwell on. However, the beliefs these films engender are significant enough to discuss in a later chapter.

giallo in the Context of Italian Popular Cinema Exploitation c i n e m a , by its very nature, is derivative. W h e t h e r we are talking about horror movies, action films, or even pornography, these movies are rarely taken seriously. Pam C o o k noted: Exploitation is a derogatory term, implying a process of "ripping off." It also implies an e c o n o m i c imperative—very low budget, tight production schedules, low-paid,

inexperienced,

n o n - u n i o n personnel,

minimal

production values,

"sensational" selling campaigns and widespread saturation booking aimed at specific markets (predominantly the youth/drive-in audience generally uninterested in critical reviews), all in the interests of making a fast buck. ( 1 9 8 5 : 3 6 7 )

G i v e n Cook's characterization of the reception environment of exploitation cinema, it becomes even easier to dismiss certain films if they are "foreign," or someone else's exploitation trash. Italian popular cinema, particularly horror cinema, is highly derivative. Italian screenwriter and director Luigi Cozzi is quoted as noting: "In Italy . . .

W h a t Is Giallo?

11

when you bring a script to a producer, the first question he asks is not 'what is your film like?' but 'what film is your film like?' That's the way it is, we can only make Zombie 2, never Zombie 1" (quoted in Newman 1 9 8 6 c : 9 2 ) . 1 have already 8

noted that Aldo Lado's Night Train Murders is an Italian reworking of Wes Craven's Last House on the Left. Sergio Martina's All the Colors of the Dark is 9

highly derivative of Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1 9 6 8 ) . As Maitland M c Donagh noted, "Italian cinema, lacking Hollywood's dense multi-studio structure and with a great deal of power concentrated in a very few hands, is simply more so: a hit unleashes a veritable flood of imitations in record-breaking time" ( 1 9 9 4 : 9 5 ) . It is this culture of production that creates the environment of the filone. But first we need to contextualize this culture. W h e n one thinks of Italian c i n e m a one tends to immediately focus on high-art filmmakers and internationally recognized "classics" of world cinema. "Historical surveys of Italian c i n e m a prefer to concentrate on n e o realism, existential angst and Visconti, rather t h a n on films that are every bit as Italian but that tip their hats to Hollywood" (Frayling 1 9 9 8 : x i i ) . Luigi Cozzi noted: In that period [the 1 9 6 0 s ] , only directors like Fellini or V i s c o n t i were considered, at least by intellectuals, as representative of Italian c i n e m a , whereas somebody like B a v a was primarily ignored, because [of] those low i n d e p e n d e n t c o m p a n i e s that often went bankrupt e v e n before the movies c a m e out in t h e atres (usually third-rate suburban c i n e m a s ) . Indeed, Bava's films n e v e r surfaced in first-class theatres, and were seldom reviewed in newspapers. ( 2 0 0 2 : 5)

I discuss these "third-rate suburban" movie houses in the next chapter, as well as the dominance of high-art filmmakers like Fellini within the scholarship on Italian c i n e m a . But at this preliminary stage, it is worth noting, at least in passing, that those c a n o n i c a l filmmakers rose to their status on the shoulders of "jobbing" filmmakers, making films for the working-class audiences. As S t e p h e n T h r o w e r noted: T h e success of the industry was not, however, based on the artistic credibility of its emerging international directors. Italy was producing its own specific brand of mainstream e n t e r t a i n m e n t : populist, and keenly attuned to audience demand, it provided a c o n s t a n t whirl of different genre amusements. It was this ingenious mainstream product that accounted for the industry's high level of activity. It also provided for the financial security necessary to make Italy's "art" c i n e m a viable. Producers could afford to gamble on critically lauded but "difficult" directors like M i c h e l a n g e l o A n t o n i o n i because the h o m e market provided a steady flow of cash from the less esoteric, more populist entertainments. ( 1 9 9 9 : 4 2 )

12

Chapter One

Thrower's point is a significant one and needs highlighting: the only way an intellectual and critically acclaimed film culture can exist, particularly without c o m p l e x studiolike systems as in Hollywood, is through an exploitation and populist c i n e m a . It is in this c o n t e x t that new filmmakers can gain experience, ideas c a n be explored (albeit oftentimes quite roughly and crudely), and revenues gained from "lower" films c a n be used to help finance more "prestige" pictures. A n d parallel to all of this is the hegemonic domination o f Hollywood (see C o o k 1 9 8 5 ) . In response to Hollywood, Italian filmmakers produced a steady flow of popular films, including the gialli discussed here. Certainly the most famous of these popular genres is the "spaghetti western," Italian-made (often in S p a i n ) movies about the A m e r i c a n W e s t that were often more violent and grisly than anything Hollywood had produced to date. Equally popular, at least in the early 1960s was the peplum, the "sword and sandal" epics, often taking place in a mythical Classical world, that dominated popular c i n e m a in the wake of Hercules {Le Fatiche di Ercole) (Pietro Francisci, 1 9 5 8 ) . A n d by the time the 1 9 7 0 s rolled around, Italy was producing hundreds of horror and spectacle films, cheaply and quickly.

10

Christopher Frayling, in his study on

the spaghetti western, noted: Italian formula films o f t h e 1 9 6 0 s and early 1 9 7 0 s were certainly popular, a n d were t h e product of an industry w h i c h seems to h a v e b e e n directly in t o u c h with its a u d i e n c e : toward the end of this period, Italy, with help from c o producers, was producing o v e r 2 0 0 feature films a year (a total surpassed o n l y by India, especially Bombay, and J a p a n ) , could support nearly 1 3 , 0 0 0 c i n e m a s ( a total surpassed only b y t h e U S S R and t h e U S A ) , and registered over 5 4 0 million c i n e m a a t t e n d a n c e s per a n n u m ( a total surpassed only b y t h e U S S R and I n d i a ) ; perhaps this h a d s o m e t h i n g to do with the fact t h a t Italians (mainly N o r t h e r n and C e n t r a l Italians) o n l y o w n e d 11 million television sets ( a total surpassed b y the U S A , U S S R , J a p a n , W e s t G e r m a n y , the U K and France). ( 1 9 9 8 : xxi)

S t e p h e n Thrower, writing from a more explicitly British perspective and about the giallo specifically, noted similar statistics. Figures for t h e early 1 9 7 0 s illustrate t h e strength of t h e Italian film m a r k e t in comparison to the U K . In 1 9 7 2 , Italy's total population was around 5 4 . 8 million. C i n e m a admissions for that year totalled 5 5 3 . 6 million, m e a n i n g that on average e a c h citizen attended t h e c i n e m a ten times a year! C o m p a r e t h a t with t h e figures for t h e UK in 1 9 7 2 : t h e population was approximately 5 5 . 7 million, almost t h e same as Italy; but with c i n e m a admissions r e a c h i n g a mere 1 5 6 . 6

W h a t Is Giallo?

~

13

million, the average n u m b e r of visits for the year per head of population was only 2 . 8 1 . . . . S m a l l wonder that the Italian pastiche and parody of w h a t e v e r was popular, was able to flourish on such a hyperactive scale. ( 1 9 9 9 : 6 6 ) Although this will be discussed in more detail in the n e x t chapter, it is worth noting here that Italians, particularly in the working-class neighborhoods where gialli, as well as spaghetti westerns, peplum, and o t h e r forms of popular cinema were shown, would, as likely as not, go to the movies every night; therefore the demand on a sufficient supply of film product was quite tremendous. U n l i k e t h e Hollywood S t u d i o system, w h i c h produced movies w i t h i n a strong Fordian industrial tradition, the Italian "studio," Cinecittà, operated very differently. C h r i s t o p h e r Frayling outlined several significant aspects of the C i n e c i t t à way of making movies including the need to a t t r a c t co-production money, if possible; the key role played by S p a n i s h producers and audiences (and c h e a p S p a n i s h labour on l o c a t i o n work);

11

the hasty shooting schedules and the necessity of dubbing ( m o r e up-

m a r k e t products, by contrast, b e i n g shot in various foreign-language v e r s i o n s ) ; the use of pseudonyms (a relatively r e c e n t p h e n o m e n o n — m o s t directors of muscleman epics worked under their own n a m e s ) ; the flexibility about scripts, and the strange compulsion to make this film more bizarre t h a n the last o n e . T h i s s y s t e m — e v i d e n c e of the t e n d e n c y of C i n e c i t t à producers to capture audiences rather t h a n to k e e p them, to seize on any immediately available c o n sumer p o t e n t i a l — h a s b e e n interpreted by L i n o M i c c i c h è as "in many ways typical

of

the

popular

populachera of M e x i c o ,

cinema the

of

underdeveloped

Egyptian song-film,

regions—the

the Brazilian chanchada,

comedieta the In-

dian 'picturised song,' the S o u t h A m e r i c a n telenoi»e!a, and Italy's film-fumetto." B y the time o f the S p a g h e t t i W e s t e r n b o o m , this "capturing" o f audiences ( M i c c i c h è calls it "rape"), this pitching of a fresh "genre" at (predominantly S o u t h e r n ) Italian urban audiences w h e n the products of the assembly-line ceased to get top figures on the h o m e market, had b e e n a characteristic of the C i n e c i t t à production system for over ten years. ( 1 9 9 8 : 7 0 ) Thrower, again, characterizes h o w this kind of low-budget e x p l o i t a t i o n film could be produced so quickly, in what within the industry is referred to as the "presale" ( 1 5 0 ) . Giallo screenwriter Dardano S a c c h e t t i explains t h e presale thus: [Italian exploitation films are] made for foreign investors, because

in Italy there's

no market for them. G r e a t Britain, Germany, Denmark, France, Japan, and even the U S A are very hungry for strong hon"or movies, thrillers or adventures. T h e

14

'—'

Chapter O n e

problem is t h e foreign market is tougher, there is greater competition; at M I F E D , in the C a n n e s market, there are movies from everywhere in the world. So t h e producers go to the markets with a brochure, a title, a synopsis, saying: "I've got this movie to sell." Actually they sell the idea: when and if they find a buyer, they make h i m sign a c o n t r a c t promising to buy the movie for a certain amount of money. On the basis of this paper they are able to obtain the financing from the banks. T h e y m a k e the movie, sell it to the buyers and give back the money to the bank. So the budget of the movie depends upon the number of buyers and the a m o u n t they are willing to pay. (Fulvia) would go to M I F E D with a couple of posters, ten lines of plot and a tentative title: w h e n they found a buyer they would call me from M i l a n o and say: "Dardano, we've sold ' W h a t c h a c a l l i t ' — s t a r t writing now! You have six days, we're giving t h e m the finished copy in three months!" (quoted in T h r o w e r 1 9 9 9 ; 1 5 0 )

G i v e n the fast turnaround required in producing these films, it is not surprising that so many of these Italian vernacular films are derivative of (often) Hollywood products. W h i l e Kim N e w m a n refers to these films as "RipOff/Spin-Off" films ( 1 9 8 6 b : 5 4 ) , S t e p h e n T h r o w e r coins the phrase "premature emulation" ( 1 9 9 9 : 1 9 3 ) . We h a v e to t h a n k A m e r i c a n movies that give us s o m e t h i n g to eat! . . . O b viously, it's easier for a producer to get m o n e y if he cashes in on the success of a n o t h e r film. So w h e n they call you to m a k e o n e of these movies, it's up to you to profit from the o c c a s i o n to make s o m e t h i n g different and personal, or to chose to m a k e a bad copy of t h e original; I always try to m a k e s o m e t h i n g different. It's easier w h e n you work with intelligent people; sometimes you write one way and t h e n t h e movies c o m e s [sic] out as a copy of the model, and t h e n sometimes n o t . T a k e Zombi 2, w h i c h was based on R o m e r o ' s Dawn of the Dead, Zombi in Italy. A producer decided to make a small horror film, although my inspiration c a m e n o t from t h e R o m e r o movie, but from the comic-strip h e r o T e x Miller." ( D a r d a n o S a c c h e t t i , quoted i n T h r o w e r 1 9 9 9 : 1 4 8 )

D o n a t o Totaro noted that t h e Italian horror industry has c o n t i n u a l l y struggled against cultural stigmatisation, f i n a n c i a l c o n s t r a i n t s , industry apathy and t h e over bearing presence of A m e r i c a n c i n e m a . B e c a u s e of this latter fact, t h e industry developed a parasitic relationship w i t h A m e r i c a n c i n e m a . S o m e t i m e s out o f financial necessity, sometimes out of c r e a t i v e laziness, Italian c i n e m a b e c a m e . . . e x t r e m e l y derivative o f popular A m e r i c a n c i n e m a . B u t the Italians, with their spirit o f r e c o n c i l i a t i o n and ability to m a k e t h e best of a bad situation ("arte di anangiarsi"), managed to turn a negative into a positive by adapting their own cultural a n d artistic t e m p e r a m e n t t o a n A m e r i c a n model. ( T o t a r o 2 0 0 3 : 1 6 1 )

W h a t Is Giallo!

15

N o t only were these Italian exploitation films derivatives of A m e r i c a n cinema in the first instance, but also since the vast majority of these films were actually produced with a global market in mind, Italian exploitation film producers were often highly successful at remarketing these films back to the United States. T h e r e were plenty more Italian gialli released on the A m e r i c a n e x p l o i t a t i o n circuit during the seventies. Hucksterish US distributors soon realised there was m o n e y to be made in the wake of h o m e - g r o w n independents like Night of the Living Dead and Last House on the Left.

Cheap,

bloodthirsty horror films,

though generally despised by Hollywood and the mainstream press, were doing just fine, b o t h in the big cities where h i g h levels of blue-collar custom k e p t the grind-houses o p e n and down in the southern states where the drive-ins flourished on a smaller basis. Enterprising distributors found the parallel excesses of t h e Italian horror/thriller genres a handy (and relatively c h e a p ) source of s h o c k - m i l k i n g revenue. T h e y could be marketed aggressively under lurid n e w titles, with attention-grabbing ad-copy that promised ever more traumatic sights in store for the curious; and of course the Italian films tended to stir plentiful nudity into the e q u a t i o n t o o . ( T h r o w e r 1 9 9 9 : 6 7 )

Conclusions So what is the giallo! T h e giallo is, on the one hand, a literary genre (genere), the Italian equivalent of crime fiction or mystery. But as understood within a filmic c o n t e x t , the giallo is a filone, or perhaps a series thereof, a short-lived cycle o f films "in the vein o f o r "in t h e tradition o f the murder mysteries o f Wallace, Poe, C o n a n - D o y l e , and Christie. T h e s e filone go even further by emulating previously successful films "in the vein of directors such as Mario Bava and Dario Argento. A n d to consider the giallo as filone is still to cast the net wide: there are several different kinds of gialli, or at least of films that have been marketed as such. While the classical giallo features a serial killer clad in black gloves, hat, and overcoat being hunted by an amateur detective, the poliziotto puts the police investigation front and center in the investigation. O t h e r gialli tend to focus on more private and interior settings, creating more of a suspense giallo. S t i l l others, embracing the strong connection between the giallo and the horror film, offer a more supernatural narrative, the giallo-fantastico. W h a t we mean by giallo, then is quite a broad spectrum of films, despite their formulaic narratives. T h e giallo film is a kind of vernacular c i n e m a . Its discourses, while neither subtle nor abstract in presentation, are directed toward a distinct vernacular audience, those predominantly of the terza visione theaters of the late 1 9 6 0 s

16

Chapter One

and early 1970s (discussed in the n e x t c h a p t e r ) . As such, by approaching these films as vernacular discourses, we gain insight into the cultures for which these films were predominantly made. If I am correct in asserting that vernacular c i n e m a depicts the cultural concerns of vernacular culture, then the giallo film depicts the cultural c o n cerns of vernacular Italian culture. If there is any single theme that binds the entire genre together, that is, any single discourse that is c o m m o n across the entire giallo cinema, it is that these films display a marked ambivalence toward modernity. T h e early 1970s was a period of marked change within Italian culture and society—stretching across the entire country—varying by region, but profound throughout. T h i n g s were changing, and while it might be academically advantageous to say the Italian "folk" were resistant to such changes, and viewed modernity with suspicion, such an approach is simplistic and only partially true. Modernity is n o t c o n d e m n e d in these films, but neither is it praised. T h e changes within Italian culture, across all the different regions of the country, can be seen through the giallo film as something to be discussed and debated—issues pertaining to identity, sexuality, increasing levels of v i o l e n c e , women's c o n t r o l over their own lives and bodies, history, the state—all abstract ideas, which are all portrayed situationally as human stories in the giallo film. T h e gialli were not intended for consumption in the first-run theaters in Italy or meant to circulate internationally through film festivals and arthouse theaters. T h e s e films circulated on the margins of Italian, European, and International film e x h i b i t i o n — t h e drive-ins and grind houses, rather than the art houses. T h e y appealed to the most salacious aspects of literary crime fiction, thereby making these films closer in spirit to horror films than to mysteries. A n d within this c o n t e x t , not only in terms of production but perhaps more importantly consumption, a traditional aesthetic consideration of the giallo alongside high-art filmmakers such as Fellini, Bertolucci, and A n t o n i o n i c a n n o t work. T h e giallo is not high art; it is vernacular in its marketing, consumption, and production. A n d it is vernacular cinema to which I now wish to turn my attention.

Notes 1. S e e A g n e l l i , B a r t o c c i , and Rosellini ( 1 9 9 8 ) . 2. A " W h i t e T e l e p h o n e " film is the term given to Italian Fascist-era r o m a n t i c melodramas. T h e s e films were set in the c o n t e m p o r a r y world and filled with e l e g a n c e a n d sophistication. W h i t e t e l e p h o n e s i n t h e d e c o r were s e e n a s indicative o f this e l egant lifestyle.

W h a t Is

giallo?

~

17

3. T h a t being said, w h e n conducting this research and attempting to discover t h e publishing history of J a m e s M. Caine's n o v e l in Italy, I put out an e-mail request on the Italian Cultural Studies listserve e-mail group. A l t h o u g h it was as a result of this query that I was able to confirm the J e a n R e n o i r c o n n e c t i o n , one respondent in particular was outraged that I was debasing this classic of neorealism by referring to it as a giallo. As 1 discuss below, the attitude of Italian c i n e m a scholars to the giallo is marked by such biases. 4. Troy Howarth ( 2 0 0 2 ) , while he recognizes Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much as the first "proper" giallo film, suggests that the earliest precursor is n o t Ossessione (which he does n o t m e n t i o n ) , but Cortocircuito ( G i a c o m o G e n t i l o m o , 1 9 4 3 ) . 5. A similar image occurs a few years earlier in G e o r g e Pollock's Murder She Said ( 1 9 6 1 ) , based o n A g a t h a Christie's novel, 4 : 5 0 from Poddington ( 1 9 5 7 ) . I n Pollock's film, Miss Marple (Margaret Rutherford) settles down on the ( n o v e l ' s ) titular train with a murder mystery n o v e l (giallo, by any o t h e r n a m e ) , just prior to her glancing out the window and seeing, in a passing train, a young woman being murdered by a black gloved, black-overcoat-wearing figure—a disguise B a v a will appropriate a few years later in Blood and Black Lace ( 1 9 6 4 ) , and will b e c o m e the archetypal giallo-killer disguise. 6. C h r i s G a l l a n t offered the following useful summarization of giallo: "Giallo, which translates literally as 'yellow' is the Italian term for the whodunit thriller, derived from the yellow covers of detective novels, rather like the F r e n c h serie noir. In the Italian language, t h e word may just as easily refer to an A g a t h a C h r i s t i e n o v e l as to an A r g e n t o thriller, and applies to whodunit d e t e c t i v e fiction in a broad sense. In the vocabulary of English-speaking audiences, its a p p l i c a t i o n tends to be restricted to the Italian whodunit-thriller film ( o n e wouldn't refer to an A g a t h a C h r i s t i e novel as an e x a m p l e of the 'giallo' in E n g l i s h ) . T h e genre as it tends to be categorized by English-speaking audiences has its own c o n v e n t i o n s and c l i c h é s : the visual e n i g m a , which may be solved through the gradual e x p l o r a t i o n of memory; a n x i e t y over gender confusion; the murder sequences as an elaborate and artistic tableau, a n d so o n . T h e 'giallo film' draws heavily upon the tradition of A g a t h a Christie's fiction, hardboiled A m e r i c a n d e t e c t i v e novels and film noir. Blood and Black Lace is o n e of t h e genre's earliest examples, the tale of a series of gruesome murders in a fashion house. Bava's film a n d Peeping Tom must share s o m e of t h e responsibility for ushering in a n d popularising the plot that revolves around the murders of a series of young w o m e n , with its overtones of misogyny and sexual aggression" ( 2 0 0 0 a : 1 9 ) . 7. M a i t l a n d M c D o n a g h refers to Phenomena as "a giallo with paranormal ( i f n o t quite supernatural) underpinnings" ( 1 9 9 4 : 1 8 7 ) . 8. W h i l e Cozzi's p o i n t is well taken, it is n o t entirely accurate. L u c i o Fulci's Zombie ( 1 9 8 0 ) , k n o w n in Italy as Zombi 2, seems to be Cozzi's e x a m p l e here; however, George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead ( 1 9 7 8 ) was released in Italy as Zombi. S o , c o n tra Cozzi, Zombi 2 did h a v e a precursor, although the two films are n o t very similar. 9. A n d , of course, Craven's film is an e x p l o i t a t i o n reworking of Ingmar Bergman's Tfie Virgin Spring ( 1 9 6 0 ) .

18

Chapter O n e 1 0 . A l t h o u g h n e v e r using the word filone, Kirn N e w m a n produced a series of three

articles in the British Monthly Film Bulletin ( 1 9 8 6 ) where he defines and discusses a n u m b e r of these cycles. In these articles, N e w m a n discusses the peplum ( 1 9 8 6 a : 2 0 - 2 2 ) , the Italian G o t h i c horror film ( 1 9 8 6 a : 2 2 ) , the m o n d o d o c u m e n t a r i e s ( 1 9 8 6 a : 2 2 - 2 3 ) , the giallo ( 1 9 8 6 a : 2 3 - 2 4 ) , the "Superspy" movies ( 1 9 8 6 b : 5 1 - 5 2 ) , the spaghetti western ( 1 9 8 6 b : 5 2 - 5 3 ) , Italian sex and v i o l e n c e movies including the Nazi s e x p l o i t a t i o n film ( 1 9 8 6 b : 5 3 - 5 4 , also see K o v e n 2 0 0 4 : 1 9 - 3 1 ) , the tradition o f "ripping o f f popular Hollywood movies ( 1 9 8 6 b : 5 4 - 5 5 ) , " T h e G o t h i c R e v i v a l " ( 1 9 8 6 c : 8 8 - 8 9 ) , the c a n n i b a l films ( 1 9 8 6 c : 8 9 - 9 0 ) , the return o f the peplum i n the 1 9 8 0 s ( 1 9 8 6 c : 9 0 - 9 1 ) , and the cycle o f "Warriors o f the Future" movies ( 1 9 8 6 c : 9 1 ) . T a k e n together, N e w m a n ' s pieces are a remarkable introduction to Italian v e r n a c u lar c i n e m a and these articles should be better k n o w n t h a n they are. 1 1 . Frayling is discussing C i n e c i t t a ' s production operations, of course, within the c o n t e x t of the spaghetti western, but several gialli were also made in S p a i n , with S p a n i s h m o n e y (as coproducers), and utilizing Iberian actors. Giallo regular S u s a n S c o t t ( b o r n N i e v e s N a v a r r o ) is from S p a i n , to c i t e but o n e famous example, and U m berto Lenzi's Eyeball takes place in B a r c e l o n a as a handy c o v e r for the S p a n i s h funding of the film.

i

C H A P T E R

T W O

Toward an Understanding of Vernacular Cinema

As I argued in chapter 1, approaching the giallo as one would other kinds of Italian cinema, such as that of Fellini or A n t o n i o n i , is not productive, as this genre was never intended for the art house, but for the grind house. T h e s e films were produced for marginalized movie theaters (and people), and for no other reason than immediate enjoyment. T h i s chapter is an attempt to find a method for studying the giallo, one that does not displace these films, inappropriately, to some ersatz c a n o n of modernist high art, but looks at the giallo on its own terms, at its own level. We need to understand these films as vernacular, as a kind of c i n e m a intended for consumption outside of mainstream, bourgeois c i n e m a culture.

Studying Italian Cinema O n e immediate problem in studying Italian horror cinema in particular, and to a lesser e x t e n t popular Italian c i n e m a in general, is the absence of published material on Italian film culture. T h e main textbooks tend to omit references to "low-brow" films in favor of distinctly auteurist approaches to modernist, high-art works and/or movements. As Giorgio Bertellini noted, "Because the horror film genre was not germane to Italian film culture, many critics often concluded that films like [these] did not express a national filmic urge" ( 2 0 0 4 : 2 1 4 ) . A significant test of this bias comes from a glance at the British Film Institute's Companion to Italian Cinema: an encyclopedic volume with entries on "significant" filmmakers, writers, performers, and movements.

19

20

•—-

Chapter Five

More problematic, but also highly significant, is when the visual clues as to the killer's identity are again slightly high-heeled shoes, the hem of a black dress, and occasionally a veil—-and the killer is revealed to be a priest. W h e r e the killer in Who Saw Her Die? is assumed to be a transvestite, it is ultimately revealed to be a priest's cassock we have mistaken for a woman's dress. W h a t does this say about these films' presentation of the priesthood? Priests ate cross-dressers? T h e s e visual codes b e c a m e transparent very quickly. Dallamano, in Solange, uses icons that earlier that same year ( 1 9 7 2 ) in Lado's Who Saw Her Die? indicated ambiguity between woman and priest, but here they only refer to a priest, and in this case, the killer is only dressed as a priest. Avati reverses this trend even further in The House with LaughingWindows by having the local patish priest reveal herself as the second murderous Legnani sister.

The Amateur Detective as Flâneur To conclude this chapter I want to turn my a t t e n t i o n back to the figure of the amateur detective in the giallo, but recast him in light of Walter Benjamin's notion of the flâneur, in particular because the figure of the flâneur, and flânerie in general, is directly tied to issues of modernity, and, as I shall argue, the amateur detective signifies a strong ambivalence toward the modernity of the flâneur. Ralph Willett, in his The Naked City ( 1 9 9 6 ) , offers a useful summary of the figure of the flâneur, particularly as it has been appropriated to define the modern detective in crime fiction. W i l l e t t summarized the flaneur thus: As masterfully interpreted by W a l t e r B e n j a m i n , the flâneur is, on the o n e hand, an observant classifier of the city's population "who reads people's characters n o t only from the physiognomy of their faces but via a social physiognomy of the streets"; and on the other, a dandyish c o n n o i s s e u r of metropolitan pleasures and delights, increasingly the offerings of a c o m m e r c i a l culture. C e l e brated in the work of Balzac and later Baudelaire, he provides a surrogate for the watchful ( m a l e ) d e t e c t i v e of popular fiction, o n e w h o listens, searches and above all, like t h e private "eye," sees and deciphers the signifiers of that labyrinth of populated spaces a n d buildings w h i c h forms the modern metropolis—strange and m e n a c i n g but also i n t o x i c a t i n g . B e n j a m i n claims that whatever track the flâneur as h u n t e r follows will lead h i m to a c r i m e . ( 1 9 9 6 : 2 - 3 )

Benjamin's equation of the nineteenth-century flâneur with the twentiethcentury private detective is highly problematic. T h e s e problems derive largely from linguistic slippage: while Benjamin seems intent on using the de-

Watching the Detectives



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