Italian vernacular cinema of the 1970s attracted middle and working class audiences. Films aimed at the middle class in major cities featured directors like Fellini and were seen as artistic, while those for working classes in rural areas were more formulaic and popular. The documentary discusses genres that emerged like Giallo mystery-thriller films directed by Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Lucio Fulci. These stylish yet exploitative films featured American or British tourists in Italy encountering graphic violence and psychopathic killers. Giallo films influenced later American slashers with their visual motifs and subjective point-of-view camerawork.

2. Italian Vernacular Cinema
1970s
"Film is not the art of scholars, but of
illiterates." - Werner Herzog.

3. Fellini is taken seriously as an auteur
• Comments on the superficiality of middle class
existence
• Films are associated with style and
sophistication
• Seen as worthy of critical appraisal

4. La Dolce Vita (1960) Fellini

5. La Dolce Vita (1960) Fellini

6. 8 1/2 (1963) Fellini

7. There is a lot more to Italian cinema …
• Audiences
• Historical and social context
• Economics

8. “A forkful of westerns: industry, audiences and
the Italian western,” Christopher Wagstaff
• prima visione and seconda visione – cinemas
that attracted a middle class sophisticated audience
usually in major cities, audience selected a film to
watch
• terza visione – less populated areas, cheaper
tickets, audience went to cinema based on habit
rather than selecting a film. Films were more
formulaic and popular films

10. Italian working classes 1970s
• Go to Cinema every night – Italian film
industry needs a lot of films
• Conventions of watching film are different
• People may talk, drink and eat during the film
• People enter the cinema at beginning, half
way through, near the end
• Cinema is a very social space

11. • Wagstaff notes that the terza visione
audience was more like a television
audience, going to the cinema after
dinner, without any particular film in
mind, arriving without respect to start
time, and often using the outing as a social
event, to talk during the screening, meet with
friends, etc.
• (in some churches mass was conducted in a
similar way)

12. Filone/genre
• Filone is similar to the term genre but not
quite
• Based in the idea of geology – layers of veins
within a larger layer
• In the tradition of…

13. Examples of filone
• Giallo – based on detective novels
• Spaghetti Westerns
• Mondo/Cannibal film
• Poliziottesco – police procedural

14. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly 1966
directed by Sergio Leone
• Use of sound
• Use of Music
• Lack of dialogue
• Use of eye line and cutting
• Differences in scale
• Use of camera to tell a story
• Fragmentation of body
• Catholic references

15. Focus on Giallo
• Italian for "yellow" and stems from the series
of cheap paperback crime and mystery novels
with trademark yellow covers.

16. Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Lucio Fulci
(Giallo Directors)
• These films may be stylish and
expressionistic, but at their worst they
challenge our senses and the standards of
‘good taste’
• Exploitation movies
• Gross out movies
• Similar to American Grindhouse/Drive-in
movies
• Wonderful titles used to sell the concept

17.  The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento, 1970)
 The Black Belly of the Tarantula (Paolo Cavara , 1971)
 Don't Torture a Duckling (Lucio Fulci, 1972)
 The House with Laughing Windows (Pupi Avati , 1976)
 A Lizard in a Woman's Skin (Lucio Fulci,1971)
 Five Dolls for an August Moon (Mario Bava,1970)
 The Bloodstained Butterfly (Duccio Tessari, 1971)
 Four Flies on Grey Velvet (Dario Argento, 1971)
 Death Walks on High Heels (Luciano Ercoli, 1971)
 The Case of the Bloody Iris (Giuliano Carnimeo, 1972)
•

18. The Girl Who Knew Too Much (Mario,
Bava, 1963)
• First Giallo with many of its defining
characteristics

21. Amateur detective as tourist
• The protagonists are usually American or
British, visiting Italy
• They usually work in the creative industries
(artist, writer, musician, fashion, photography)
• They seem to evoke a cosmopolitan ‘jet set’
life style

22. City scape: Rome, Milan

23. Rome

31. The Baroque

32. La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian
Giallo Film by Mikel J. Koven
• An in-depth study of giallo

33. Giallo Killers
• Black Gloves
• Black Hat
• Black over coat
• Disguises gender
• Priests often used as part of gender confusion

34. Blood and Lace

36. Dario Argento
• The Italian Hitchcock
• Places himself in the film – as the killer’s black gloved
hands
• Visually stunning ‘set pieces’
• Shot without sound so films could be dubbed
• Worked with Sergio Leone on Once Upon a time in the
West
• Son of Salvator Argento (film producer)
• Brother of Claudio Argento (producer)
• Father to Asia Argento –actress
• Long term partner and collaborator Daria Nicolodi

37. The Bird With the Crystal Plumage
(Dario Argento, 1970)

38. Typical beginning on aeroplane

39. Protagonist is an American writer

40. Changing POV

41. The beginning of the ‘set piece’

42. Connection to art

44. Fast cutting using eye-line shots

48. End of set piece

49. Run of the mill dialogue joins the set
pieces together (like a musical)

50. Argento always plays the killer’s hands

51. Typical Giallo killers

52. Story told visually

53. References to Hitchcock

55. Solution of the mystery is within a
piece of art

56. Stylish disorientating POVs

57. Ending mirrors the beginning

58. Subjective POV
• Killer-cam
• Eye line shot – killer/victim/amateur detective
• Set pieces
• Art and cultural references
• Semiotics
• Ambivalence towards modernity, religion and
superstition
• The Fall

59. Dubbing and heightened sound
• Like Leone, Argento shot his films without
sound then added dialogue and sound effects
later.
• This allows the film to be dubbed using many
languages
• Often sold to America and Britain as ‘B’
movies – drive in movies

60. Product
placement
J&B brand
evoking a
sophisticated
life style

61. Five Dolls For An August Moon
(Mario Bava)

62. Bird with a Chrystal Plumage (Dario
Argento)

63. Black Belly of the Tarantula

64. Don’t Torture a duckling

65. Freudian Psychology
• Many giallo demand to be read from
psychoanalytical point of view
• Based on false memory
• Childhood trauma
• Fetish (eyes, gloves, cut-throat raiser)
• Solution of mystery lies in art

66. • Works of art in gialli are often subverted and
associated with the madness of the
psychopath and regularly provide a conduit
into the past and into the mind of the
antagonist.

67. Are exploitation films worthy of
examination?
• Innovation and auteurship
• Necessity is the mother of invention
• Technical mastery
• Visual critique based on spectacle rather than
literary critique based on narrative
• Tells us about different kinds of audiences and
modes of viewing
• Tells us about the context in which theses films
were made
• Challenge to Hollywood’s continuity cinema

68. Is vernacular film dead?
• Multiplexes aimed at people with cars
• Going to cinema is a special event
• Cinema tickets are expensive
• DVD and digital formats mean audiences
watch in own home or on the move
• Social aspects of film-watching done on line
rather than at the cinema

69. American/Canadian Giallo
• Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky,2010)
• Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino,2007)
• Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma, 1980 )
• Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
• Black Christmas (Bob Clarke, 1974)

70. • Bondanella , P (2009) A History of Italian Cinema Continuum Publishing Corporation
pp 419-424
•
• Clover, C J. (1993) Men, women and chain saws: gender in modern horror film
U.S.A.: Princeton University Press
•
• Eleftheriotis, D (2001) Popular cinema of Europe: texts, contexts and frameworks.
London and New York: Continuum
•
• Hunt, L (2000) A Sadistic Night at The Opera: Notes on the Italian Horror Film in
Gelder, K (2000)The Horror Reader London, Routledge p324
• Koven, M (2006) La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film The
Scarecrow Press, Inc.
•
• Maltby, R & Stokes, M (1999) Identifying Hollywood's audiences: cultural identity
and the movies. London: BFI p175
•
• Wagstaff, C. A Forkful of Westerns: Industry, Audiences and the Italian Western. In
Richard Dyer and Ginette Vincendeau. (Eds) ( 1992.) Popular European Cinema.
London: Routledge,
•
• Discussion http://www.offscreen.com/index.php/pages/1011/

71. • La Dolce Vita 1960 Fellini – The Trevi Fountain
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8G3bBNUgENg&feature=relate
d
• The Good, the bad and the ugly 1966 Sergio Leone The end ‘dig’
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP9cfQx2OZY
•
• Set piece - The girl who Knew too much 1963 – Mario Bava
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgPvJyL0gRI
•
• Famous window ‘set piece’ from The bird with the crystal plumage
1970 – Dario Argento
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjDuIpIUJYQ