The Giallo That Did So Much. . .

Excerpt:

Much has been written regarding the influence that Mario Bava's THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1963) has on the giallo's narrative structure. Indeed, it is credited as being the first movie to typify the giallo genre. In his treatise, La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film (2006), Mikel J. Koven generalizes the movie's influential narrative structure, thereby summarizing the plot of the murder mystery giallo in general:

"An innocent person, often a tourist, witnesses a brutal murder that appears to be the work of a serial killer. He or she takes on the role of amateur detective in order to hunt down this killer, and often succeeds where the police fail." (2006: 3-4).

THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH is to the giallo what DR. NO is to the James Bond franchise. It establishes the basic structure of the genre, a structure that is generic yet refreshing in the sense that a pre-existing template is being used while being reinvented and filtered by a strong vision. It wouldn't be until the following year that the genre's idiosyncratic style and imagery would emerge--from Bava again--with BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964), in which all the elements come together to create a familiar paradigm. The GOLDFINGER of the giallo genre, if you will.

The titular girl of Bava's movie happens to be both a tourist and an American woman, setting into place a very important and common characteristic that will surface in subsequent gialli throughout the next four decades: In a lot of the gialli, the protagonist is typically a very independent and professional woman. She's not a student, not the male hero's girlfriend or wife. And unlike the heroines of the North American slasher genre, virginity isn't a requirement to make it to the very end of the thriller either. Unlike Nora Davis in GIRL, a typical giallo heroine is not necessarily identified as being American, despite the fact that most gialli were dubbed in English to attract a wider audience. . . .

2009. All works published by Marvin Miranda are under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Please make me aware of any such use. . .

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Enter the American: John Saxon Talks Bava, Argento, and Other Things That Go Bump in the Night

John Saxon's career in Hollywood dates back to 1954, when he appeared in the George Cukor double feature A STAR IS BORN and IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU. From those uncredited performances Saxon would go on to spend the next five decades in front of the camera, starring alongside such Hollywood heavyweights as Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn (THE UNFORGIVEN), Marlon Brando (THE APPALOOSA), and most memorably, alongside Bruce Lee as the wily gambler Roper in ENTER THE DRAGON. In 1963, Saxon would be among the first to inject an American presence into Italian Cinema by appearing in Mario Bava's THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH. Besides GIRL, Saxon would occasionally return to the giallo in such classics as Dario Argento's TENEBRE (1982), Sergio Martino's THE SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS (1982), and the mind-bending giallo/poliziotteschi hybrid, BLAZING MAGNUMS (1976), directed by Alberto De Martino. Giallo is the Color of Death recently had the pleasure to briefly meet with the legendary Hollywood actor, who was generous enough to take some time out of a schedule with no signs of slowing down and talk to us about making movies in postwar Italy, inventing a genre with Bava and Dario Argento, and how that genre compares to the North American slasher flicks he starred in during the '70s and '80s.

Giallo is the Color of Death: What was it like being an American making films in Italy in the early '60s?

John Saxon: For an American actor to go there work, back in 1962, it seemed like a picnic. If any one day the director finished at 3pm, everyone went home. I'd been working for the [Hollywood] studio system and if at three they finished, they would have another set ready for you to work until six or 6:30, or whatever it was. Working in Italy was kind of playful and very interesting because it was the development of what they called "La Dolce Vita." People were enjoying themselves, it was after the war, things were going well. The movie business in Italy at that time was making more movies than the United States. In the U.S., there was a crisis of production because television had come in and taken over.

GCD: What was it like working with Mario Bava on THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH?

JS: Well, he didn't speak any English and his son's [Italian Director Lamberto Bava] was slightly better, so we didn't get to talk too much on the set. But there was a scene, in particular, where they had placed a mat, and as I walked over it, I accidentally slipped and fell, and I remember [Mario] saying, "Oh, he has to come over here and show off!" (Laughter).

GCD: Did you know you were making a giallo? Was the term being used at the time?

[Spoiler ahead!!]

JS: No, as far as the production was concerned, we were making a lighthearted, playful "detective story," one that was interesting because it's a story within a story since it's all happening in the girl's head.

GCD: How did you end up working on the film?

JS: The lead actress [Leticia Roman] called me from Italy and said, "John, do you want to make an 'art film' in Italy?!" And of course, that was exactly what I wanted to make! So, I jumped on a plane, landed in Italy, read the script, and realized it wasn't that at all!

GCD: It wasn't Fellini. (Laughter)

JS: No, it wasn't Fellini! (Laughter). But I didn't know anything about Bava until many years later, and then I found out what an important director he was.

GCD: What was it like working with Argento two decades later in TENEBRE?

JS: And I just worked with him again recently on "Pelts" [Masters of Horror episode]. Working with Argento is great. He likes actors very much. I remember him being an intense guy on the set of TENEBRE. He would come over and say something like, "You know, you were great!" and then he'd leave you alone and go to a corner by himself and think intensely.

GCD: Speaking of recent work, a few years back, you filmed an episode of CSI directed by Quentin Tarantino. These series hold their viewers' attention due largely in part by the fact that the viewer, along with the characters, is trying to solve a case or figure out the identity of the killer, much like in a giallo. To me, there's a whole other level to these shows that resembles the giallo: the medical/scientific way in which the mystery is solved. It is not uncommon for a giallo to have a "cutting-edge," convoluted, far-fetched medical or scientific explanation for the killings, or to use such nonsense to solve the crime and figure out the killer's identity. I recall, in particular, Argento's early gialli. What was it like working with Tarantino, a professed admirer of the gialli, and did it feel at all like working on a one of those Italian murder mysteries?

JS: Working with Tarantino was great. He's obviously a very knowledgeable person. He knew more about the stuff I have done than I do. We talked a little bit about those giallos [sic], and it did feel like we were making something very similar with that CSI episode.

GCD: In 1974, you starred in what many consider one of the first North American modern slashers, BLACK CHRISTMAS. Did you see any similarites between it and the giallo?

JS: BLACK CHRISTMAS was a great movie and a great script that did remind me a lot of those early giallos [sic]. The problem was that the studio didn't like the title. They said, "People are going to think that it's about black people celebrating Christmas--it's not gonna sell!"

(Laughter)

It's true!

GCD: I know, that's why I'm laughing. . .

How would you compare a later horror classic like A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, which you also starred in, to the giallo?

JS: I liked the script for NIGHTMARE a lot, and I said to the director, whom I'd never met before, "You know, what I really like is the fact that this takes place in a dream world!" I think in the end, they became too enamored with the whole special effects aspect of the movie (what with the tongue coming out of the phone and all), and its suspense thriller essence was lost.

2009. All works published by Marvin Miranda are under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Please make me aware of any such use. . .

Curious to see what else I'm writing about? Visit: http://www.examiner.com/x-4240-LA-Alternative-Film-Examiner

Let's follow each other on twitter: http://twitter.com/MEMiranda

I Am Curious (Giallo): Everything You Always Wanted to Know About "Sex 'n' Slash" But Were Afraid to Ask. . .

Excerpt:

Of all the colors of the dark, yellow is the most degenerate. Degenerate in the purest sense of the word: to be or grow worse than one's kind, or than one was originally; hence, to be inferior; to grow poorer, meaner, or more vicious; to decline in good qualities (Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1996, by way of dictionary.com). Such is the unfortunate lot given to that most piss-colored, maligned, and misunderstood of all Italian subgenres, the giallo. Yes, it can be ridiculous and over the top, as excessive as a Caligulan orgy on crack, particularly in its fetishistic portrayal of fake blood, guts, and gore. But to this writer and lover of all things giallo, rarely is it ever dull or poorly executed. To quote the oft-quoted Greek filmmaker and French film critic, Adonis Kyrou, "I urge you: learn to look at 'bad' films, they are so often sublime." Let's take look at this "bad,"--no, "terrible"--subgenre.

Giallo (rhymes with hallow, plural gialli) is, if you haven't already guessed, simply Italian for the word yellow. "Yellow" was the term of endearment given to these films in the '60s and '70s since they were mostly influenced by paperback novels of the same nickname. These whodunits published in Italy with yellow covers and printed in the trademark yellowish pulp paper were penned by such popular English writers as Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The giallo is not a proper film subgenre per se, but rather, falls within the categories of suspense thriller, murder mystery, and that most ostensible of '80s horror film subgenres, the slasher flick. The slasher would not exist at all if it weren't for the giallo's general template: an unknown (usually "sex") maniac going around creatively, if not necessarily constructively, slashing and hacking his or (gasp!) her victims. But that is where the similarities end. Throw in the fact that most gialli occur in the "adult world," i.e., a more "realistic" reality in which it is adults who are the ones involved with the more nefarious aspects of life and not college co-eds who are in real life typically, well, going to college. Add a Miss Marple-type of amateur sleuth or a Hercule Poirot-type of police inspector trying to get to the bottom of the killer's identity, subtract a bunch of idiots sitting around like, well, sitting ducks, waiting to get picked off one by one, and you have the essential ingredients of this Italian subgenre.

Most giallo academics (and by "most," I mean the two or three out there) tend to credit Mario Bava's homage to Hitchcock, THE GIRL WHO KNEW TO MUCH (1963), as the first giallo. In his giallo textbook, La Dolce Morte, Mikel J. Koven suggests that the first giallo is really Visconti's neorealist classic, OSSESSIONE (1943), starring DEEP RED's Clara Calamai--a suggestion that would have made my Italian cinema professor cough up his cannoli. OSSESSIONE is based on James M. Cain's crime novel, The Postman Always Rings Twice, making for a compelling suggestion since the giallo borrows heavily from the visual aesthetics and themes of the film noir, e.g., Dutch angles, stark light/dark contrasts, moral ambiguity, sexual motivation, etc. In his Bava textbook, The Haunted World of Mario Bava, Troy Howarth, however, suggests the Hawksian CORTOCIRCUITO (1943) as the giallo forerunner. This suggestion isn't too off the mark either, since CORTOCIRCUITO's "life imitates art" plot pops up in later gialli such as Argento's TENEBRE (1982) and Bruno Mattei's EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1994), not to be mistaken as a remake of Franju's masterpiece of the same name, incidentally. You can blame Jess Franco for such a remake. . . .

2009. All works published by Marvin Miranda are under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Please make me aware of any such use. . .

Curious to see what else I'm writing about? Visit: http://www.examiner.com/x-4240-LA-Alternative-Film-Examiner

Let's follow each other on twitter: http://twitter.com/MEMiranda

About The Book. . .

Thank you for visiting the making of the book, "Giallo is the Color of Death."

If you have found your way here because you're passionate about cinema and not by accident as you googled for, oh, let's say, Italian-made yellow granite tiles, then I can safely assume you've at least heard of the Italian '60s/'70s slasher-cum-murder mystery film subgenre known as the giallo. If you have landed here accidentally, however, and can't even pronounce the word "giallo," much less wrap your head around the above description, well, then, stick around and learn something new, especially if you like movies. What. . .you don't like movies? Learn about one of the most exciting, obscure, psychedelic, pop-art, horrific, brilliant, sublime, outrageous, entertaining, bizarre, insane, and influential film subgenres ever put on celluloid.

As time permits, I will post a new entry that will be an excerpt of from the upcoming book.

If you're curious and want to read some more of my writing, please check out my column as the LA Alternative Film Examiner at Examiner.com and see who else I've been interviewing and what movies I've been writing about! ;)

Thanks!

--M. Miranda

2009. All works published by Marvin Miranda are under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Please make me aware of any such use. . .

Let's follow each other on twitter: http://twitter.com/MEMiranda