Download Download
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
22 “Te sound, it looks wonderful.” — Dario Argento If the colour yellow once evoked the pleasant imagery of bright summer days and blooming bush daisies, it certainly took a dark turn in the cinematic world of twentieth century Italy. Murder mysteries shot in saturated colours depicting grim, twisted nightmares of brutal killings became the new yellow—the giallo flm. But before referring to a genre of graphic Italian horror flms, giallo, the Italian word for yellow, was used to describe a genre of paperback mystery novels with bright yellow spines and covers introduced by the Milanese publishing house Mondadori in 1929.1 Most of the stories were translations of English whodunits and hard- boiled detective novels, including work by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie 2, with translations of Edgar Wallace novels appearing to be some of the most popular during the 1930s and 1940s.3 Despite the fact some critics, such as Alberto Savino, believed that mysteries were “unnatural” and “foreign” to Italian culture, these novels managed to inspire not only an Italian literary tradition with authors such as Giorgio Scerbanenco, Andrea Camilleri, and Carlo Lucarelli 4, but also some of the most terrifying and visually striking flms to come out of Italy during the 1960s and 1970s. Gialli frequently cross generic boundaries of crime flms, horror movies, and thrillers, and therefore may be more appropriately considered flone, as they are by many Italian critics, rather than part of a genre.5 Meaning large thread, the term flone is used to indicate a looser collection of similar themes and styles.6 Gialli can be more generally related to each other in this way, and thus a flm like Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) can be called giallo despite its greater resemblance to the supernatural horror thriller. For the most part, however, gialli do have underlining similarities. Tey can be characterized by their spectacular visual richness, displaying “set pieces” (as some critics call them7) of brutal murder orchestrated with symphonies of gushing bright red-orange blood and musical horror that grips the heart of its viewers and rips their sanity from their chests. Te murderous maestro is more ofen than not an elusive, traumatized mental 23 AMANDA GRECo case in black leather or latex gloves and a suspicious trench coat. Te killer also almost always manages to stay one step ahead of the amateur pursuers, and the victim is almost guaranteed to be a woman whose murder is executed with the intimacy of a romance but with all the fnesse of a demented butcher wielding a hatchet. According to Peter Bondanella, “…the world of the giallo is one of cynicism, greed, sexual depravity, and violence: everyone, not just the murderer, has something to hide”.8 Although a formulaic structure is generally present, the narrative plotting is fairly loose, frequently bordering on a lack of rational sense. Gialli privilege dramatic visuals and music over narrative logic, which arguably is what makes them so memorable. A few great directors associated with the giallo flone include Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Lucio Fulci. Just as the look is iconic, the sound is vicious and cutthroat. Music has a strong presence—a horrifying compliment to the disturbing imagery. Giallo scores tend to be a whirlwind of repeated motifs that may tread dangerously on the boundary between diegetic and nondiegetic. Te music also accompanies the sounds of the murders themselves, which linger in a suspended romance between stabbing knives, choking, and screams of abject fear. Anne Billson describes the giallo sound as “typically an intoxicating mix of groovy lounge music, nerve-jangling discord, and the sort of soothing lyricism that belies the fact that it’s actually accompanying, say, a slow motion decapitation” (Billson, “Violence, mystery, and magic: how to spot a giallo movie”).9 Many of these characteristics are present in the flm music for Dario Argento’s Profondo Rosso (1975), written by the progressive rock band Goblin and jazz pianist and composer Giorgio Gaslini. Profondo Rosso exhibits many of the classic giallo narrative tropes with an enthralling score; Goblin’s music is a vortex of repetitive themes and leitmotifs that fow deceptively between the realm of diegetic and nondiegetic. Te score frequently combines strange rhythms, atonal colouring, and electronic sound efects that provoke a very corporeal engagement with the flm. For the most part, the music is saved for parts of extravagant violence with long sections of silence in between, and rather than enhancing the image subtly, the music charges head-on with the image into the foreground during almost every one of the most dramatic moments. Tis essay will focus mainly on Profondo Rosso as a giallo (thematically and musically), but will also briefy touch upon Goblin’s musical contribution to Argento’s Suspiria and Tenebrae (1982). Afer Profondo Rosso, Goblin scored Argento’s Suspiria in which they create a terrifying musical experience with an even simpler, but 24 CAMéRA StyLo possibly more efectively fear-inducing, soundtrack than their previous efort. Goblin also worked on a number of horror flms, such as the Italian versions of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) and a list of B-Movies both in Italy and in the United States.10 [“Furthermore,”] they composed the score for Tenebrae (but they were not credited as Goblin due to contract issues), and Phenomena (1985) along with Bill Wyman, Motörhead, Iron Maiden, and Andi Sex Gang from Te Sex Gang Children.11 Other notable giallo composers include Ennio Morricone, who scored Argento’s Te Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), and Bruno Nicolai, who scored Emilio Miraglia’s Te Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972). Some historians see a number of early Italian mystery and crime flms as antecedents of the giallo flm, such as Guido Brignone’s Corte d’Assise (1930), Nunzio Malasomma’s L’uomo dall’artiglio (1931), and Mario Camerini’s Giallo (1933), while others credit Luchino Visconti’s neorealist classic Ossessione (1942) as having started the giallo flone.12 Despite this, Mario Bava is unofcially credited as the director who brought giallo’s violent eroticism to flm with Te Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) and Blood and Black Lace (1964).13 Having begun his career as a cinematographer and special efects artist in the department of the Istituto LUCE before turning to directing, Bava’s frst gialli introduced many of the traits that would become associated with giallo, such as the amateur investigator, red herrings, the killer’s disguise, and brutal acts of murder against women.14 However, unlike Argento’s gialli and the majority of others that followed, Bava’s frst giallo, Te Girl Who Knew Too Much, looks and sounds more like a traditional Hollywood flm noir. It is shot in black and white, makes use of chiaroscuro lighting, and the music by Roberto Nicolosi sounds more like smoky lounge jazz than Italian horror. Blood and Black Lace, on the other hand, looks much more like the gialli to follow. Shot in lavish Technicolor, the flm features music by Carlo Rustichelli, which will contribute to the creeping suspense, but without the intense atonal quality prevalent in later gialli. Bava may have brought giallo literature to the screen, but Dario Argento added a graphic and operatic touch that really pushed the giallo flone forward in the 1970s. Visually, the flms’ baroque sets and over- the-top colour palette display some of the most beautiful scenes of bodily destruction. In addition, musical collaborations between Argento, Ennio Morricone, and Goblin would also push and defne the giallo sound. According to the documentary Dario Argento: An Eye For Horror (2004), 25 AMANDA GRECo Argento had a strong appreciation for visually striking imagery and he admired Sergio Leone for this reason. It was Leone who gave Argento his frst opportunity to write for movies. Argento co-wrote Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) with Bernardo Bertollucci, and this experience inspired Argento to start writing flms of his own. His frst giallo thriller and commercial success was Te Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970). Argento chose Morricone to score the flm, and the resulting music would help defne the giallo sound. Morricone was also writing music with Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza that formed in 1964, which was an experimental music group at the forefront of European modern music based around him, Franco Evangelisti, and Egisto Macchi.15 Morricone’s score for Argento can be described as experimental atonal jazz with haunting disembodied vocals (including frequent collaborations with famous Italian singer Edda Dell’Orso), hard rhythms, and twinkling notes that add a haunting dream-like feel. Combining elements of classical music, jazz, and rock with an atonal edge, the score is reminiscent of future gialli scores. According to John Bender in Morricone: Te Triller Collection (1992), “[T]he giallos [sic] provided [Morricone] with an enhanced psychosexual canvas upon which he could paint some of the boldest concepts of his career.16 Morricone also scored Argento’s Cat O’ Nine Tails (1971) and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971). Goblin would then continue to push musical boundaries when they team up with Argento on Profondo Rosso. Argento’s next 1975 giallo, Profondo Rosso, is a classic example of the narrative formula that was present in earlier flms, such as Te Bird with the Crystal Plumage. First, the plot repeats the trope of the amateur detective. A British pianist named Marcus Daly (David Hemmingsi) witnesses the murder of a German psychic named Helga Ulman (Macha Méril), who heard the demented thoughts of her murderer during a psychic demonstration. While returning home one night, Marcus meets up with his drunk best friend Carlo (Gabriel Lavia) in a piazza by the Blue Bar.