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Giallo - The World of Italian Thrillers

Also to be hosted on "The Offbeat Marquee" are editorials discussing a specific topic relating to film or television. Our first is a discussion of a movement and niche genre of Italian film.


 
An Italian lobby card for the iconic Argento giallo, Deep Red.

In my pile of DVDs, there exists a case that contains three films, The Fifth Cord, Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion, and The Pajama Girl Case. These films have three things in common: they're all Italian, they're all from the 1970s, and they are all gialli.

Giallo is a term with two meanings. In Italy, the term refers to the films of the thriller genre, like Psycho or The Third Man. To most fans of exploitation cinema, the term refers to a certain type of Italian thriller. It was inspired by 1920s mystery novels, most pressed with yellow covers ("giallo" literally meaning "yellow" in Italian). The genre was first developed by director Mario Bava in 1961 with his film The Girl Who Knew Too Much, refined three years later with his classic Blood and Black Lace, and popularized by screenwriter-turned-director Dario Argento with his 1970 thriller The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.

Now, I have honestly grown to enjoy these films intensely. They are a solid example of visual film making. The camera work is key to these films' effectiveness. The use of handheld cinematography as a certain level of realism. But while this realism is welcome, a giallo is at its best when it's anything but real. Dreamlike shot structures, tilted camera angles, colorful art direction, and expressionistic lighting can make a giallo a beautifully tense experience. Tracking shots and POV shots are common staples, with Argento's 1975 bloodbath Deep Red and 1982 opus Tenebrae being prime examples of such shots being executed with overwhelming effectiveness.

Another key element to a giallo is its score. The music of a giallo reinforces the horrors of the visuals you see as well as the emotions of the characters. Sometimes, a score can be effective by being counter-intuitive, an example being placing a haunting work of romance under a violent death. These scores also took advantage of contemporary musical culture. In other words, lots of pop, jazz, funk, and rock instrumentation is used to create a contemporary landscape for the film, its characters, and its killers.

The only problem for some who wish to enter into this warped world of black-gloved killers and absurd mysteries is that these films tend to require a serious suspension of disbelief. The mysteries, while not always the focus, tend to be important to the plot. This is a problem because, if one was to try and follow the mystery itself, the conclusions drawn from the bizarre collection of clues these films leave can only be reached via massive leaps in logic. However, the focus tends to revolve around the protagonist, and his or her growing obsession with the crime they investigate or the paranoia that "they might be next," and they tend to execute this perfectly.

But the thing that has fascinated me the most about the giallo is its impact. The giallo has had a strong influence on the slasher genre, with deaths in the Friday the 13th films having been heavily influenced by Mario Bava's A Bay of Blood. In fact, there has been a small crop of neo-gialli like Deep Sleep and The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears. These films are rather promising in their ability to recreate the visual feel of a giallo.

So, my final thoughts on the niche genre of giallo, after that massive thought streaming, are as follows: I like them. I have no better words other than those three. If you are interested in this little area of the thriller genre: look them up. You're on the internet after all.

Short List of Recommendations for Newbies:
The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1961)
Blood and Black Lace (1963)
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)
Deep Red (1975)
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