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Citation:
Balmain, Colette Jane (2004) Genre, gender, giallo: the disturbed dreams of Dario Argento. PhD thesis, University of Greenwich.
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______Contact: [email protected] GENRE, GENDER, GIALLO: THE DISTURBED DREAMS OF DARIO ARGENTO
COLETTE JANE BALMAIN
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Greenwich For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
JANUARY 2004 DECLARATION
This thesis is the result of the independent work of Colette Jane Balmain. All other work reported in the text has been attributed to the original authors and is fully referenced in the text, and list in the Reference section.
Signed:
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-11 - ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis is dedicated to my parents, David Balmain, and Peggy Balmain, and my sister, Louise Balmain, without whose emotional and financial support and belief in me, it would not have been possible.
I am extremely grateful to a wide number of people who have supported, encouraged and enabled me to produce this work. My special thanks go to my supervisor, Carolyn Brown, for her time and effort and unstinting encouragement during the process of writing. I also thank my ex-colleagues at Greenwich University who all contributed in some way to the intellectual space of this thesis - in particular: David Pattie; John Williams; Denise Leggett; Peter Humm; Susan Rowlands and Ann Cormack. I am also particularly grateful to Ann Battison and Mavis James for helping me negotiate the administrative backdrop to the final production of this thesis.
My colleagues at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College have also played a part in enabling me to complete - Ruth Gunstone; Lois Drawmer; Alison Tedman; John Mercer and Andy Butler in particular. Also thanks to Lorna Scott for her help with proofreading and printing.
Finally special thanks must go to my examiners: Professor Sue Golding (Greenwich University); Dr Simon O'Sullivan (Goldsmith's College, University of London) and Dr Jenny Bavidge (University of Greenwich).
Dr Colette Balmain January 2004
- in - ABSTRACT
This thesis presents an examination of the giallo films of Dario Argento from his directorial debut The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) to The Stendhal Syndrome (1996). In opposition to the dominant psychoanalytical approaches to the horror film generally and Argento's giallo specifically, this thesis argues that the giallo, both textually and meta-textually, actively resists oedipalisation. Taking up from Deleuze's contention in Cinema I: The Movement Image that the cinematic-image can be consider the equivalent to a philosophical concept, I suggest that Argento's giallo are examples of what Deleuze calls cinema of the "time-image": provoked and extended "philosophical" acts of imagining the world which opens up a theoretical space of thinking differently about questions of gender and genre in horror film, which takes us beyond the fixed images of thought offered by traditional psychoanalytical and feminist paradigms of horror.
In the opening chapters of this thesis, I argue that the cinematic-image has to be thought "historically", and that it is only be understanding the emergence of the "giallo'" in the 1960s within the wider picture of Italian national cinema, that we can understand Argento's films as specific cultural expressions of thought, which are not reducible to paradigms based upon analyses of the more puritan and fixed American horror film (via Mulvey et all). In my subsequent discussion of Argento's "Diva" trilogy, I consider an assemblage of Deleuzian becoming and poststructuralist feminist thought (Kristeva / Cixous / Irigaray) as a mechanism through which to explore the increasingly feminised and feminist spaces of his later work. This thesis concludes by assessing Argento's critical and creative legacy in films such as Toshiharu Ikeda's Evil Dead Trap (1988) and Cindy Sherman's Office Killer (1997).
In these terms, a Deleuzian "approach", enables a set of readings, which open up the texts to a more productive consideration of their appeal, in a way which other more traditional approaches do not, and cannot, account for. The close textual and historical analysis demanded by Deleuze is both a reconsideration of the [feminist] politics of Argento's work, and a response to criticisms of misogynism.
- iv - CONTENTS
Page
Declaration ii
Acknowledgements "'
Abstract iv
Contents v
Illustrations vi
Introduction Argento: Philosopher / Practitioner 1
Chapter 1: Italian Film History: iconography, aesthetics and politics 26
Chapter 2: Giallo: Bava's The Evil Eye and Blood and Black Lace 61
Chapter 3: The Difficulty of Detection: The Bird with the Crystal Plumage 102
Chapter 4: Sight and Sound: The Components of the Image: The Cat O'Nine 134 Tails
Chapter 5 The powers of the false: Four Flies on Grey Velvet 167
Chapter 6 The crisis in the truth: Deep Red 189
Chapter 7 The end of his-story: Tenebrae 218
Chapter 8 Coldness and Cruelty: Opera 250
Chapter 9 Abjection and Anorexia: Trauma 274
Chapter 10 The Laugh of the Medusa: The Stendhal Syndrome 301
Conclusion Argento's legacy 322
Bibliography 334
Filmography 349
- v - ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure Title Page
Figure 1 Woman as Corpse in Suspiria 2
Figure 2 Dario Argento: Philosopher / Practitioner 7
Figure 3 Abject terror personified: Sally in The Texas Chain Saw 15 Massacre
Figure 4 Theatrical constructions of space in Rome, Open City 37
Figure 5 "All the world's a stage": horror as theatre in Michele Soavi's 38 Stagefright
Figure 6 "Pulp Fiction": The most recent video cover for Visconti's 46 Obsession
Figure 7 Opening sequences of Obsession 48
Figure 8. Desire outside the binary: Lo Spagnalo and Gino in Obsession 52
Figure 9 Giovanna as "la dolente" in Obsession 57
Figure 10 A picture of "suffering": Giovanna and Gino in Obsession 69
Figure 11 The torture of Manfredi: piestic imagery in Rome, Open City 83
Figure 12 Nora as "the final girl" in The Evil Eye 97
Figure 13 The female body as commodity in Blood and Black Lace 99
Figure 14 The "Blank Mask" of terror in Blood and Black Lace 109
Figure 15 The "caging" of the "colonial other" in Bird with the Crystal 129 Plumage
Figure 16 Monica as Lady Macbeth in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage 129
Figure 17 Sight and Sound in The Cat O 'Nine Tails 158
Figure 18 The deconstruction of faciality in Four Flies on Grey Velvet 169
Figure 19 Murder as performance in Four Flies on Grey Velvet 172
Figure 20 Gender transgression in Four Flies on Grey Velvet 179
Figure 21 The death of the "Jew" in Deep Red 200
- vi -