Table Of ContentItalian Giallo
in Film and^
Television 1
A Critical History
ROBERTO CURTI
Italian Giallo
in Film and Television
Also by Roberto Curtí
and from McFarland
Elio Petri: Investigation of a Filmmaker (2021)
Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1980-1989 (2019)
Mavericks of Italian Cinema:
Eight Unorthodox Filmmakers,
1940s-2000s (2018)
Bracali and the Revolution
in Tuscan Cuisine (2018)
Italian Gothic Horror Films,
1970-1979 (2017)
Riccardo Freda: The Life and Works
of a Born Filmmaker (2017)
Tonino Valerii: The Films (2016)
Italian Gothic Horror Films,
1957-1969 (2015)
Italian Crime Filmography,
1968-1980 (2013)
Italian Giallo
in Film and Television
A Critical History
Roberto Curtí
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
All illustrations are from the author’s collection
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Names: Curti, Roberto, 1971- author.
Title: Italian giallo in film and television : a critical history / Roberto Curti.
Description: Jefferson, North Carolina : McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2022 |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022019993 | ISBN 9781476682488 (paperback : acid free paper) @
ISBN 9781476646459 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Detective and mystery films—Italy—History and criticism. | Motion pictures—Italy—
History—20th century. | Detective and mystery television programs—Italy—History and criticism. |
Television—Italy—History—20th century. | BISAC: PERFORMING ARTS / Film I Genres I Horror |
LCGFT: Film criticism. | Television criticism and reviews.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.D4 C87 2022 | DDC 791.43/655—dc23/eng/20220502
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022019993
British Library cataloguing data are available
ISBN (print) 978-1-4766-8248-8
ISBN (ebook) 978-1-4766-4645-9
© 2022 Roberto Curti. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover: Poster art for the 1970 film Paranoia (Tritone Filmindustria)
Printed in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
In loving memory
of my father
Giancarlo Curti (1933-2021),
who taught me about the beauty of cinema
Acknowledgments
My most sincere thanks for helping during the mak
ing of this book to the following: David Alff, Edgard
Baltzer, Stefano Isidoro Bianchi, Davide Cavaciocchi,
Alessio Di Rocco, Christoph Draxtra, Matthew Edwards,
Mario and Roderick Gauci, Julian Grainger, Christoph
Huber, Peter Jilmstad, Steve Johnson, Stefano Loparco,
Jurij Meden, Paolo Mereghetti, Domenico Monetti,
Alberto Pezzotta, Davide Pulici and Nocturno, Bruno
Terrier, Pete Tombs, David C. Tucker and Gary Vani-
sian. Very, very special thanks to my beloved wife Cris
tina, whose help during the making of this book was
invaluable.
vi
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction 1
1. Telefoni Gialli: Detective Stories in Fiction, Stage, and Film, 1929-1943 11
2. A New Giallo for a New Italy: From the Post-War Years to the Boom,
1945-1961 43
3. Kriminal Tango: The Giallo’s Evolving Imagery in the 1960s 65
4. The Drooling of the Devil: Tales of Sex and Intrigue, 1967-1970 117
5. On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts: The Cinema
of Dario Argento, 1970-1975 155
6. The Name of the Game Is Kill: The Argento-style Giallo ...
and Beyond, 1970-1980 187
Between pages 278 and 279 are 16 color plates
containing 30 photographs
7. Smoke and Mirrors; Other Perspectives in the Genre, 1969-1979 279
8. ... And Give Us Our Daily Murder: Made-for-TV Gialli in the 1970s 329
9. Murder Most Foul: The Changing Face of the Giallo in the 1980s 344
10. What Is Left of the Night? Different Shades of Giallo, 1990-1999 395
11. New Maps of Hell: Italian Giallo in the New Millennium 416
Chapter Notes 445
Bibliography 465
Index 467
vii
Introduction
Giallo. Yellow. A term originating from the West Germanic and with the same
common root as other languages (the Old English geolu; the Dutch geel; the Ger
man gelb; the English gold) which not only indicates one of the seven colors of the
iris between orange and green but signifies much more in the Italian language. Over
time, words change their original meaning, embracing wider and sometimes quite
different ones, even misleading sometimes. To an English-speaking person, for
instance, “yellow-bellied” means also cowardly; to Americans, “yellow press” indi
cates sensationalistic, scandal-mongering journalism. To us Italians, “giallo” opens
(both as an adjective and a noun) to a whole spectrum of connotations. Some are
shared with other languages: “febbre gialla” indicates a tropical disease, just like
the English term “yellow fever”; when our grandmother mentions egg yolk, she
doesn’t use the proper term “tuorlo” but the informal “giallo d’uovo” (egg yellow),
as opposed to “bianco d’uovo” (egg white, or albumen); “pagine gialle” are the collo
quial name for phone books, or yellow pages; “sindacati gialli” is the literal transla
tion of the French syndicats jaunes and corresponds to the English “yellow unions.”
Not to mention the old anthropological classification, “razza gialla” associated with
Eastern people and bearing a blatant racist innuendo: In Hollywood World War II
films set in the Pacific, the terms “Japs” or “Nips” were usually translated as the
equally pejorative “musi gialli.”
Other connotations are typically Italian, such as “erba gialla” (literally, yellow
grass) for dyer’s rocket. Most importantly, though, according to Italy’s illustrious
Treccani dictionary, the word giallo figuratively refers to crime and detective novels,
films, TV series, stage plays, comics, and radio dramas “which keep the ... interest
awake through the narration of mysterious crimes and unexpected, sensationalis
tic events.”
This, dear reader, is whatgza//o means for the average Italian since 1929, the year
Mondadori’s I Libri Gialli book series came out: a metonymy for an entire literary
and film genre, whose boundaries are as wide as they are somewhat blurred, overlap
ping and occasionally intertwining with other genres. It means Agatha Christie and
Cornell Woolrich, Alfred Hitchcock and Mario Bava, Mickey Spillane and Georges
Simenon. Old-style detective fiction and mystery stories, legal thrillers, inverted
crime stories, romans de la victime (suspense tales adopting the victim’s point of
view), true crime, serial killer yarns—and more. “Giallo” encompasses a whole
range of works, authors, threads and subgenres, replacing an array of expressions in
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