La Storia dei Gialli

As promised... a brief introduction to the giallo genre.

The term giallo dates back to the mid-1920s, when the Italian Publishing Houses began producing murder-mystery/crime novels, printed with garish yellow covers. Closely related to the pulp fiction magazines popular in English-speaking markets at the time, they quickly captured Italian imagination, the term becoming synonymous with mystery and crime.

In the 1960s, giallo began to refer to a cinematic genre of rising prominence in Italy, with Mario Bava's La ragazza che sapeva troppo (1963) and Blood and Black Lace (1964) laying the genre foundations that would be emulated, elaborated, and celebrated throughout the 1960s, yet to an even greater extent during the genre's pinnacle in the mid-1970s. Often, the story of a giallo movie is rooted in the penny-dreadful literature of the 1930s - Bava's Cinque bambole per la luna d'agosto (1970) draws inspiration from Christie's Ten Little Indians, and Sergio Martino's Il tuo vizio è una stanza chiusa e solo io ne ho la chiave (1972) updates Poe's The Black Cat.

Alongside Mario Bava, argued by many as the "founder" of the celluloid gialli, you won't get very far into the genre until someone mentions Dario Argento. His internationally-successful film The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is generally thought to be the film that bought about the wave of movies in the early 1970s, and would call his 1975 movie Profondo Rosso the apex of the genre. Sergio Martino's Torso would come in the middle of the genre's heyday.



Here's the trailer for Bava's Blood and Black Lace. Last time I checked (March 2008), someone had uploaded the whole movie onto YouTube, along with several Argento movies, including the INSANELY RARE Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971). If they're still there (and trust me, these "whole film" accounts come and go in days), go and watch. :-D

Back to the topic at hand. As for the genre characteristics and conventions, Stephen Thrower provides a neat summary in his book Beyond Terror: The Films of Lucio Fulci, an excellent book about the famous Italian director who made several contributions to the genre before moving into zombie territory in the early 1980s. Anyway, here goes...

"[The giallo is] murder and intrigue, staple features of popular drama... taken to extremes. Suspicion... is ubiquitous because everyone is hiding something. The general tone is one of moral decay and cynicism, with ever more convoluted plots emphasizing morbid details in a Janus-faced world of paranoia or betrayal. The killer flits with credulity-straining ease from crime scene to crime scene, [their] motivation usually as tenuous as his methods are elaborate." (p.63)

Alongside those narrative conventions, gialli films are famous for their visual style, often featuring elaborate lighting and disjointing camera angles. And of course, the fact the genre reached the height of its popularity in the early-1970s means those with a taste for all-things kitsch are rarely left disappointed - just check out Edwige Fenech's giant rotating bed in 5 bambole...

There, that should clear things up for those new to the genre. Coming soon, a few recommended gialli if you're interested in acquainting yourself further, and of course more stills and stories from the production. Stay tuned!