Yellow Mysteries: The Giallo.

Monday night, I stepped back into the present day and screened the latest film from the great Dario Argento, which is titled Giallo.  If the film had been given any other title, it may have been more successful with his fans.  But no other title is truly appropriate.

Allow me to explain.

Giallo is the Italian word for "yellow".  In the mid-20th century, a Italian publishing house began reprinting American mystery and crime novels (by the likes of Ellery Queen, Ed McBain, Agatha Christie, and others) in Italian, and the inexpensive and quite popular paperbacks were graced with distinctive yellow covers.  Other publishing houses followed suit, retaining the yellow covers.  So it began that giallo began to mean more than just the third color of the rainbow.

It is generally thought that the first giallo film is Mario Bava's La Ragazza Che Sapeva Troppo (translated as The Girl Who Knew Too Much) from 1963, first released in America in a cut version as The Evil Eye, now available on DVD uncut, under its' original title.  Starring Leticia Roman and the great John Saxon, The Girl Who Knew Too Much established the basics of the genre: a protagonist who saw something, but isn't sure what; unnerving camerawork; and the slow buildup until the murderer is revealed in the final reel.  Bava was a master filmmaker, easily the most respected Italian horror director, even to mainstream critics, and the film is still as much a gripping, suspenseful ride as it was fifty years ago.

I've been doing some research (there are so many gialli and the term is so loose that it would take years to see them all) and the consensus seems to be that the two films that really defined the genre are Mario Bava's 1965 Sei Donne pour L'assassino (literally Six Women For The Murderer, but more commonly referred to as Blood and Black Lace), and Dario Argento's directorial debut L'uccello Dalle Piume di Cristallo (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage).  I am a little ashamed to say that I have not seen either one of these films...but the fact that I get to enjoy them for the first time as soon as I can get my hands on them is very exciting.  Bava's film was one of the first "body count" films, and (along with his later work Twitch Of The Death Nerve) set the stage for every North American slasher film ever made.

(Right now, you very well might be shouting something about Hitchcock's Frenzy, and you almost have a point, but Frenzy was made at a time when Italian theatres were flooded with gialli and Hitchcock's film is more of a British giallo than an inspiration point.)

Argento's 1970 debut was what really opened the floodgates, with his intense colors and audacious camerawork.  Bird was a huge (1.65 billion lira in 1970) hit, and as is usual in Italian cinema, the knockoffs were not far behind.  Lucio Fulci, Umberto Lenzi, Sergio Martino, Pupi Avati, Massimo Dallamano, and a host of others offered their own takes on the style, and the giallo genre was truly born.

Describing just what makes a giallo is like describing autism: there's a spectrum.  But the general guidelines are as follows:
A mixture of horror, mystery and thriller, often (but not always) with a splash of sex and nudity.
The pursuit of the killer, and discovering the killer's identity, are what drives the story.
The killer often wears black gloves and carries a shiny metal weapon.  (Guns are rarely seen in a killer's hands in a giallo.)
Intense, strident music.
Elaborate setpieces.
Gory, sensational murder sequences.
The solution to the mystery is almost always a shock ending...and sometimes a cheat.
And, most importantly, the twisted not-there logic of Italian cinema that allows for the atmosphere to be more important than the plot.

And the rules are also often broken.

See what I mean about it being a hard genre to pin down?

In relation to the Video Nasties...there's only two on the list: Dario Argento's Tenebre (originally released to America in a butchered cut titled Unsane), and Mario Bava's Blood Bath (aka Twitch of the Death Nerve).  See, there they are again.

Getting back to the latest Argento film, Giallo: fans of the genre were upset.  The killer's identity is revealed halfway through the picture.  Gore is kept to a minimum.  The style was restrained.  If watched back to back with a picture from earlier in Argento's career, such as Tenebre or Profondo Rosso (arguably the finest giallo ever filmed), Giallo would fall flat...but there's more there.  The style is not the point of this film, the subtext is.  The subtle inclusion of bright yellow objects in almost every shot, references to Argento's earlier films in the setpieces, and the dynamic in personalities between cop and killer are the focus here, not the giallo-style murder mystery.  The more I think about it, the more impressed I am, and I am becoming convinced that a second viewing will be required.  I think that Argento's fanbase has become so jaded and demanding (a dangerous combination) that what he tried to do was lost in what the viewers think he could or should have done.

Not fair, horror fans.  Not fair.

So there you go.  I hope to talk more about the giallo later on, it's a fascinating topic and there are so many films that can lay claim to the title, but this is enough for now.  In case I get quizzed, it's time for more research.  Because my name's Justin.  JustinCase.