Roma De Profundis: Post-Economic Miracle Rome and the Films of Dario Argento (1970-1982) By Michael Loren Siegel B.A., University of Michigan, 2000 M.A., Brown University, 2003 A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University Providence, Rhode Island May 2010 © Copyright 2010 by Michael Loren Siegel This dissertation by Michael Loren Siegel is accepted in its present form by the Department of Modern Culture and Media as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date___________ ___________________________________ Professor Mary Ann Doane, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date___________ ___________________________________ Professor Philip Rosen, Reader Date___________ ___________________________________ Professor Massimo Riva, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date___________ ___________________________________ Professor Sheila Bonde, Dean of the Graduate School iii VITA Michael Loren Siegel was born on July 31, 1978 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He earned his B.A. in Film and Video Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2000, and his M.A. in Modern Culture and Media at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island in 2003. His work on Italian cinema, television, urbanity, and visual culture has been published in the anthologies Cinematic Rome (ed. Richard Wrigley) and The Place of the Moving Image (eds. John David Rhodes and Elena Gorfinkel), and is forthcoming in A Companion to Italian Cinema (ed. Peter Brunette) and the British Film Institute’s centenary collection on Michelangelo Antonioni (ed. John David Rhodes). ! iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing a dissertation can be an intensely isolating experience. There is simply no way I could have completed this project without the support and guidance of loved ones, mentors, and colleagues whose presence I could always detect just beyond the margins of the page. My committee not only offered excellent feedback on my work, but they also gave me a great deal of freedom and respect, encouraging me to take creative risks and forge my own independent path. Mary Ann Doane’s rare combination of humility, brilliance, and humor made this a very enriching process. Philip Rosen is a wonderfully acute critical reader, and Massimo Riva’s ability to ground my thinking within a specific historical and geographic location was absolutely invaluable. This project owes an enormous amount as well to various colleagues with whom I have developed relationships over the years. Angelo Restivo and Edward Dimendberg, in addition to being my undergraduate mentors, have also been extremely helpful readers and respondents throughout my graduate career. Alan Ceen offered me unlimited access not only to his personal archive in Rome, but also to his wealth of knowledge and opinions. Jacopo Benci was a source of both friendship and invaluable logistical support in Rome. His curiosity and energy are truly inexhaustible and inspiring, as is his knowledge of Roman urban history and Italian culture. John David Rhodes does not know this, but without his unwavering belief in my work and his intellectual and personal generosity, I very well might have ended my graduate career early. The Department of Modern Culture and Media provided an incredibly supportive and nurturing environment for graduate study, thanks largely to the work of Susan McNeil, Liza Hebert, and Richard Manning. My fellow graduate students have been bibliographic sources, sounding boards, readers, editors, mock lecture audiences, group therapy interlocutors, and, above all, friends. Thank you especially to Manu Chander, Gill Frank, Eric Larson, Marc Steinberg, Yuriko Furuhata, Julie Russo, Braxton Soderman, David Bering-Porter, Derek Seidman, Genie Brinkema, Pooja Rangan, Josh Guilford, Erika Balsom, and Daniel Block. To my dear friends Ben Smith, Patrick Kuschak, Andrew Brunsden, Matthew Weiser, George Ristow, Jeremy Sphar, Andrea and Alessio Fioravanti, Alexander Provan, John Gruen, and Eva Struble, I could not have accomplished this without your love, patience, generosity, and humor. My sister Lori has been a model of maturity, accomplishment, and sincerity since I was a child, and she will never know how important her compassion and steadiness have been to me. My mother and father, Lynne and David, are an infinite source of pride and strength. I owe everything I am to their unconditional love and support. I thank my wife Yvette for always seeing in me someone that I am not always able to see myself. Her strength, wisdom, beauty, and faith are unmatched in this world. This dissertation is dedicated to Michael Silverman, whose passion for thinking and commitment to teaching has inspired me and countless others. v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: READING ARGENTO READING ROME.......................................1 Reading Argento Reading Rome.................................................................1 Abstract Space, Global Space, and Spatial Representation.......................10 The Abstract Spaces of Economic Miracle Rome.....................................32 1. The Grande Raccordo Anulare (Gra)....................................... 35 2. The 1960 Olympic Games and the Piano delle Olympiade...... 36 3. Società Generale Immobiliare (SGI), the Monte Mario Hilton, and Casal Palocco...................................................................40 4. L’Aerporto Intercontinentale Leonardo da Vinci......................47 The Transforming Italian Media Landscape and the Emergence of New Audiences........................................................................................52 Argento’s Audience................................................................................... 58 Chapter Summaries....................................................................................65 CHAPTER ONE: TRANSPARENCY, OPACITY, SEGMENTATION: THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE........................................................................74 Faces in the Window..................................................................................74 Argento’s Third Rome...............................................................................80 The Shifting Terrain of Italian State Power...............................................93 Rome, (Il)legible City................................................................................95 Conclusion...............................................................................................108 CHAPTER TWO: PROFONDA ROMA: DEEP RED’S DOMESTIC AND URBAN UNCANNY..........................................................................................................115 Locating Deep Red...................................................................................115 Inter-spatiality..........................................................................................123 The Violence of Demarcation..................................................................129 The Return of the Spatial Repressed........................................................136 Dislocating Deep Red...............................................................................145 Conclusion: An Identity Crisis in Contemporary Dwelling.....................155 CHAPTER THREE: TENEBRE, EUR, AND THE POSTMETROPOLIS.....................159 Rome, Overexposed City.........................................................................159 The Postmetropolitan Genesis of Tenebre...............................................162 EUR and the Proleptic Eternal City.........................................................170 vi The Dissemination of Violence..............................................................178 From Christiano Berti to Peter Neal: Tenebre’s Killers.........................190 Beyond City and Country Alike: Collective, Yet Without People.........196 Conclusion: The Violence of Dissemination..........................................202 BIBLIOGRAPHY...........................................................................................................210 vii INTRODUCTION Reading Argento Reading Rome Reading Argento Reading Rome This dissertation is about the confrontation between the film work of the Italian horror-thriller director Dario Argento and the city of Rome. It focuses on three key films within Argento’s oeuvre, all of which are set in Rome – L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo / The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970), Profondo rosso / Deep Red (1975), and Tenebre / Unsane (1982).1 Each of my three body chapters is a close reading of one of these films. These chapters are ordered chronologically. I close this work with an epilogue in which I revisit the problematic developed in these films twenty-five years later with a brief reading of one of Argento’s most recent Roman films, La terza madre / The Mother of Tears (2007). The films that I analyze were made at an important historical conjuncture – namely, both on the heels of the intense period of economic modernization and socio- cultural transformation known as il boom or the “economic miracle” (which began in the mid-1950s and lasted until the early 1970s), and in the midst of the politically and socially turbulent period between 1968 and 1982 that has been widely seen as a response !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 In addition to Unsane, Tenebre, which literally means “shadows” in English, was released