I testi della paura e dell’incubo. Il cinema horror italiano dal 1960 al 1980. by Carlo Coen A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Italian Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Carlo Coen, 2013 I testi della paura e dell’incubo. Il cinema horror italiano dal 1960 al 1980. Carlo Coen Doctor of Philosophy Department of Italian Studies University of Toronto 2013 Abstract Between 1960 and 1970 Italy undergoes a major anthropological change, triggered by the mass migration to the industrialized cities of the North from the rural areas that had been the cradle of an old and profoundly rooted culture. In this historical frame, the Italian film industry becomes the most powerful and successful in Europe, starting a period of dominance and unparalleled growth that lasted almost twenty years. Genre films represent the backbone of the industry, and horror films, even though not the majority in numeric terms, become a significant section of the Italian production; Italian horror films establish and define new trends for the genre, largely imitated and admired. The thesis analyzes and discusses these films against the broader background of the years spanning from 1960 to 1980. The most important theoretical issues concerning the subject of the research are dealt with in Chapter one, where intertextuality is viewed as the most stimulating characteristic of the genre. Through the analysis of the Gothic tradition and the enumeration of several semantic elements linked to the genre, the thesis finds in the concepts of authorship and parody its essential critical tools for the following chapters. ii The evolution of the genre through the period 1960-1980 is examined in Chapter two. Films and directors are discussed not simply for the aesthetic value of their works, but mainly the for the contribution brought to the setting of the trends of the genre. This chapter examines also the influence of other media (the comic books and the television) on the process. The career of the two most important masters of the period, Mario Bava and Dario Argento, is explored and discussed in detail in Chapters three and four. The originality of their work marks the entire evolution of the genre. The Italian horror cinema cannot be conceived or thought of without the films made by Mario Bava and Dario Argento in the period examined by the research. iii Long Abstract: The thesis explores the theoretical and semiotic aspects of some Italian films belonging to the horror genre, through their relationship with other works generally labeled as “popular cinema”, within the time frame delimited by the years 1960 and 1980. The analysis of the rich intertextuality that characterizes these films is the most prominent feature of the research. Not only do these films borrow widely from the tradition of the genre, but also refer to literary works, in a complex system of intertextual devices – both stylistic and narrative -, thus enabling each text to find its background in other texts. Therefore, the thesis is analyzing the specific structures of the Italian films taken into consideration, but is also aimed at searching the origin of other elements present in them: the Gothic tradition, the subgenres they utilize, the themes and the motifs of the “fantastic”, seen as a narrative mode. In a study of this kind it is also important to view the filmic texts against the backdrop of the historical, social and industrial context of the period examined. It is not possible to underestimate the profound changes undergone by large masses of Italians in the first decade of the above timeline. Between the end of the 1950s and the middle of the 1970s Italy, traditionally rural, becomes an urban and industrialized nation at a pace unknown to any other Western Country. Such changes, both in quantitative and anthropological terms, are extremely rapid, very profound, irreversible and – in many regards – culturally devastating. This larger picture affects the evolution of the entire film industry in Italy, and the birth, the evolution and the eventual decline of horror cinema find one of their explanation in the dynamics triggered by such an epochal mutation. iv The year 1960 marks the debut of the most important exponent of the Italian horror cinema, Mario Bava, but also the release of several other films that establish the canon of the genre. The year 1980 has been indicated as the ending side of the timeline, because it brings to completion the profound crisis that was lurking behind the Italian film industry since the mid-1970s and manifested itself only at the end of the decade; the 1976 deregulation of the air waves, which marks the end of the 25-year-old monopoly of RAI brings the Italian film industry in all its sectors to the deepest crisis ever experienced. The year 1980 should be considered, with the release of Inferno by Dario Argento, a symbolical farewell to long-established narrative, stylistic and productive patterns in the horror genre. The Introduction discusses some significant methodological issues, necessary to clarify the subsequent and more analytical sections of the thesis, and summarizes the prevailing trends of the historical background. Chapter one dwells on the major theoretical debates relevant to the analysis of the films and the directors discussed in the following chapters; in Chapter one the reader finds the main criteria used for connecting the genre - as well as the single films - with its literary background; with the concept of “fantastic”; with single elements of the horror tradition (mainly the Gothic tradition) used in the films; and finally with the terms “auteur” and “parody”, which constitute the main critical tools to establish the close relation between originality and intertextuality that has been identified as the distinctive feature of the works examined in the research. The chapter starts by summarizing and discussing the definition of “fantastic” given by Tzvetan Todorov in his pivotal essay Introduction à la literature fantastique (1970). The scope of the discussion is to establish whether or not such definition could be a useful critical tool for the research. By contrasting the positions of Todorov with those found in the essay by Remo v Ceserani Il fantastico (1996), the thesis states that it is much more useful to consider the “fantastic” as a narrative mode, rather than as a genre. Such definition allows the critical view to be better tuned for understanding the differences and the similarities between the various works. This methodological necessity is even clearer (and better resolved) if the approach to the films is, as defined by Rick Altman, both semiotic and syntactic. Altman’s methodology avoids the constraints caused by an excessively broad definition of the genre on one side; and on the other side by the problems arising from a too close attention to the obvious peculiarities present in each film, thus obliterating any possibility to classify them. Chapter one discusses also the relationship of the films with the Gothic tradition and the large deal of narrative elements that constitute its heritage. The one aspect of Gothic that is deeply inherent with the subject of the thesis is the definition of Gothic as the "poetics of excess", in the definition of Fred Botting. Botting mentions the "gloomy and mysterious" atmospheres created by Gothic literature, signalling the "disturbing return of pasts upon presents" and "displaying the underside of enlightenment and humanist values". Such tradition has expressed images and narrative patterns. The most significant of them are described and defined in relation to their presence in the texts analyzed and discussed in the thesis. The thesis analyzes the ones that appear more frequently in the Italian horror films. The theme of the double and its motifs (mannequins, statues, portraits, automata and cyborgs, mirrors) is discussed at length, with reference to its psychoanalytical implications. Other semantic elements are also listed and described: thresholds, staircases, mazes, cobwebs, storms, religious symbols, hands, blood and fire have been indicated as narrative devices largely employed in the genre. Other major concepts are presented in this chapter, namely “authorship” and “parody”, because of their importance in the following chapters of the thesis. The debate on authorship and parody is summarized in the last section of Chapter one. The discussion begins with the various vi positions of critics on the controversial notion of auteur, and proceeds by exemplifying the use of the terms in the thesis: auteurism indicates the personal imprint of the creator on his/her work. It is in this broad sense that it will be used in the following parts of the research. Parody is discussed along the lines of Linda Hutcheon's pivotal essay of 1985. Hutcheon defines parody in relation to broader intertextuality, and widens the realm in which it is applied. "Ironic distance" becomes the most recognizable characteristic of parody, even if it is based on "a loss of that earlier humanist faith in cultural continuity and stability". As far as the implications of parody for the subject of this research is concerned, the thesis discusses the contribution of Roy Menarini. Menarini finds the roots of parody in Italian cinema through the concept of "re-use" of materials, sets and props, a practice widely present in the popular cinema since the mid-1950s. Such practice, even though it stems from the constraints of low budgets, has important aesthetic implications. Chapter two deals with numerous directors and films that are significantly different from each other, because this section of the thesis intends to analyze the evolution of the horror genre from the 1960s to the end of the period examined (1980) through its various expressions, while taking into consideration the common features present in each film.