GIALLO!!!

Police thriller, mystery, horror, noir – that’s almost enough. But for a true giallo, you need 1970s Italy, which means creativity, vitality, eroticism, sadism, cynicism, conspiracy, irrationality, strong color contrasts, art. What’s it all about?

At the end of the 1960s, as the era of spaghetti westerns with their unprecedented violence was coming to a close, and the gothic novel subgenre was testing innovative characters – especially female ones – Italian reality was in turmoil. The student and worker rebellions of 1968, the growing politicization of society at the dawn of the 1970s, and, on the other hand, the strategic profiling of the young generation by the capitalist machine as a key target of modern consumerism – all these phenomena created enormous opportunities for cinema on all possible fronts: war and play at the same time – politics and pop art, idealization and depravity.

In the world of genres, alongside the ubiquitous commedia all’italiana, all formulas are hybridizing and subgenres are flourishing: spaghetti westerns steeped in sadism; gangster and police chases; plastic musicals featuring the hits of the season; silly erotic comedies; caricatures of famous films served in a comical, infantile sauce; erotic-Nazi perversions against the backdrop of the Holocaust; war pastiches; cannibalistic massacres; satirical- political manifestos; splatter and slasher horror films. Only somewhere on the sidelines do we find the works of Pasolini, Ferreri, Bertolucci, and the Taviani brothers, while Fellini, Visconti, and even Antonioni already belong to the past.

Young creators and young audiences – new ideas, new demands. Dario Argento, debuting with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage in 1970 (after a key experience as a screenwriter on Sergio Leone’s cult classic Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968), inaugurates the golden five years of giallo in the best possible way. He immediately becomes the maestro of the genre, imitated by a whole host of low-budget director-craftsmen who experiment with new solutions on both the aesthetic level and in terms of narrative structure. On the one hand, there is a lack of money; on the other – creative freedom, with the full approval of producers and distributors. A freedom so eagerly awaited that it fills cinemas. New filmmakers unscrupulously begin to exploit what young people adore: thrills, excitement, fear.

Lucio Fulci is just such a jack-of-all-trades, nicknamed the “terrorist of genres” for the cunning with which he blows up formal canons and moral conventions, and the author of visionary, unconventional ideas, as in A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971). The Italian director shows how fear and a “labyrinthine” sense of helplessness are not merely emotional components of the plot, but a very concrete effect of a political strategy of power, dominated by lies and ignorance. Even Elio Petri, a leading creator of politically engaged “civil” cinema, skillfully adapts the giallo convention to expose the brutality of the system in the Oscar-winning Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970). Meanwhile, Francesco Barilli, in The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974), presents the psychological turmoil of female characters, dominated by disturbing and hallucinatory developments – an example of giallo cinema’s use of a perception of reality characteristic of the era, where nothing is as it seems.

After the triumphant Animal Trilogy and dozens of Argento imitations, in 1975 he changes the rules of the game with another masterstroke. Violence, sadism, eroticism, slasher, splatter; murder as an aesthetic object, as an act of art. These means of expression and forms of communication, reflecting a highly politicized Italy – where acts of terrorism by fascists and communists are commonplace – characterize the poetics of giallo in the years 1970–1974. But Deep Red (1975) opens a door from which there is no return. This time, Argento measures a different physics of fear – or, in other words, enters the realm of metaphysics. It is no longer people entangled in conspiracies, betrayals, or pathological behavior who become the perpetrators of murder, but the very reality that surrounds human beings: broken window glass, boiling water from a bathroom tap, a chain pulled by the movement of an elevator, the hard edge of a sidewalk block, or the weight of an axe accompanied by a children’s barrel organ. Dario Argento’s world slips into a macabre space full of unknowns – a place where everything can conspire to make a murder happen. Suspiria, as well as The House with Laughing Windows by Pupi Avati, both from 1976, reveal the mysterious life of intricate dynamics that still harmonize with the well-honed mechanics of a thriller. Fulci, too, by amplifying the parapsychological visions of the protagonist of The Psychic (1977), demonstrates a sophisticated awareness of the medium he employs, taking the form of a reflection on the experience of seeing in cinema.

An important clarification: the magnetic and elusive power of Italian giallo would not have been possible without composers of music and sound effects: Riz Ortolani, Ennio Morricone, Stelvio Cipriani, Piero Piccioni, Armando Trovajoli, Carlo Rustichelli… Morricone’s avant-garde explorations, including those with Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, transformed the musical landscape of giallo films, introducing dissonant sounds, jazz, lounge music, and choral voices that create a unique atmosphere of horror and sensuality at the same time.

In the 1980s, culture changed, society changed, and politics changed dramatically. The “Years of Lead” and the class struggles of the 1970s – the pursuit of a more effective democracy through abrogative referendums, the expansion of workers’ rights, the introduction of the right to divorce and abortion, and a more inclusive healthcare system, with unprecedented levels of public support for the Italian Communist Party – are submerged in the following decade by a culture of competition, exclusivity, and privatization. Giallo, with its aggressive language of violence as a mirror of political struggle, loses touch with reality and turns toward the fusion of fairy-tale conventions with the world of zombies and extravagant fantasy. This marks the decline of the genre, as well as the end of a certain mode of expression and way of perceiving the world, including through cinema. The privatization and commercialization of Italian television, at the expense of movie theaters, is in full swing. Dario Argento’s Tenebrae (1982) is one of the last trap films worthy of the “master of suspense” – with as many as thirteen murders, a record in his filmography – and at the same time a penetrating self-reflection on the art of crime at the edge of fiction and reality.

The evolution of giallo would not have been possible without the key contribution of Mario Bava. A director, screenwriter, cinematographer, and special effects creator known for his tireless creativity in overcoming budget constraints, he introduced new and surprising tricks, along with a masterful use of lighting, color, and framing. As early as the 1960s, in pioneering masterpieces such as Blood and Black Lace (1964), he proposed new narrative forms in genre cinema – from proto-slasher to gothic, pulp, gore, and fantasy. The Three Faces of Fear, also known as Black Sabbath (1963), composed of three novellas (The Telephone, The Wurdalak, The Drop of Water), is a valuable example of the director’s craftsmanship, attention to detail, and virtuoso creation of an atmosphere of horror.

Bava, Argento, Fulci, and many other artists – too numerous to mention here – whose work can be partially experienced in this selection, practiced the art of transformin children’s fairy tales into stories for adults, and vice versa, in their adventure with giallo. Perhaps this is why, as a unique accident of pop culture, the color yellow – giallo – took on a dark glow.

When night falls and imagination opens its winged eyes, fear and awe remain the same in children and adults alike – like a fist that clenches and trembles. Only its dimension changes: bloody and merciless.

GIALLO!!!

Stanisław Bardadin

Translated by Barbara Feliga.