GIALLO IDENTIKIT #005 [SO SWEET, SO DEAD aka RIVELAZIONI DI UN MANIACO SESSUALE AL CAPO DELLA SQUADRA MOBILE (1972)]

Giallo Iconography: The credit sequence is one of several proofs that the film, despite being firmly lodged in the sleaze-exploitation end of the genre, has a definite (and artful) aesthetic point of view. (The quality of the a/v on the Camera Obscura disc also helps sell this.)

Note: The Giallo List that I'm currently rebuilding for the blog includes "Six Key Components of the Giallo." It's a purely subjective list, but is used as my personal pocket guide for deciding whether or not a film can be classified as a Giallo. Since the page is still under construction, I'll simply list the components here, with the aim of expanding on each point when the finished list appears: 1. TRAUMA-AS-NARRATIVE (childhood or historical or sexual); 2. DREAM LOGIC (esp. at the expense of narrative sense); 3. EXCESSIVE STYLE AND SET PIECES (both in terms of A. murder and B. architecture); 4. TRANSGRESSIVE OR TABOO SEXUALITY; 5. DETECTIVE FICTION CONVENTIONS (esp. hard-boiled, Krimi, and noir); 6. DISTINCTIVE SOUNDTRACKS.

[Note: This is the seventeenth post in a continuing series discussing and analyzing all the Krimis and Gialli I've seen. As with every post on this site, SPOILERS SHOULD BE EXPECTED.]

[UPDATE 12.05.14: Added a third section of analysis, re: the "decadent" aspects of the movie's universe and style.]


My Giallo Rating: ★★★★☆ 
Subcategory (if any): 
     i. Sleaze-Art-Sleaze Giallo (aka, Exploitation Giallo)
In My Giallo Top 50 (Y/N): Yes (Letterboxd List)

Though it largely depends on one's personal tolerance—tolerance for asinine, cynical exploitation; lowest-common-denominator sexploitation; the shameless rip-off—at some point the Giallo fan seems obliged to come to terms with how seriously they take the sleaze end of the genre spectrum. 

E.g., when someone accuses an Argento film of misogyny, or numbing levels of hyperviolence, or clunky scripts, or a general lack of good taste, an Argento fan can always counter with the high-art and experimental sensibilities that exist, side-by-side, with the exploitation parts: The unbroken Louma Crane shot in TENEBRAE (inspired by the unbroken, through-the-wall shot that ends Antonioni's THE PASSENGER). Or the sophisticated use of narrative elision and editing in FOUR FLIES ON GREY VELVET (inspired by its equally sophisticated use in Cornell Woolrich's BLACK ALIBI). Or the "wall of sound" design that is an almost constant overlay in INFERNO, that becomes (as much as anyone else in the film) a Gothic character unto itself, another layer of atmosphere, momentum, and dread. Or the breathless, constantly mounting tension harnessed so perfectly in every second that leads to the first killing in SUSPIRIA. Etc. (And yes: I know the last two examples aren't Gialli. But they are "key texts" for thinking about Argento's work.)

Can the same sort of arguments be made, though, in defense of a sleaze Giallo like, say, STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER**? Or the really hard-to-sit-through THE WASHING MACHINE (directed by Ruggero Deodato***)? Can their "merits" (beyond low-level baseness and button-pushing) be recommended to fledgling fans? Do they deserve feature-length commentaries, like the one that accompanies Camera Obscura's fantastic release of SO SWEET, SO DEAD? (Interestingly, rewatching the movie with this commentary mirrors this same dilemma: the German critics veer between true insight into the history of the genre and sexist, almost panting comments about whatever nude actress happens to be on the screen right then.)

(Another way of approaching this problem is to consider De Palma's “Red Light” films. Is it possible for them—with their tongue-waggling, bald-faced revel in all things "bad taste"—to be as well-regarded, or taken as seriously, as Hitchcock's films? Considerably more restrained, as they are, in their onscreen depiction of nudity, sexuality, gore, etc. And what do you do when the baseline director—in this case, Hitchcock—engages in a similarly explicit display [i.e., the legitimately shocking explicitness of certain scenes in his film FRENZY]?)

So: How seriously to take the sleaze end of the Giallo spectrum? Obviously punched-up, foregrounded, hyper-aestheticized sex and violence are as deeply important to the shape and mechanic of the genre as anything else. But what do you do when they become the thing, the only thing? And where are the tipping points, the places where the tension between out-and-out exploitation and arthouse sensibility actually intersect, and strengthen, the creative frisson fueling the best Gialli? 

In the next few weeks, I'm going to tackle three titles that engage with (wallow in) these issues: Roberto Bianchi Montero's SO SWEET, SO DEAD (1972), Silvio Amadio's AMUCK! (also 1972), and Federico Zampaglione's neo-Giallo TULPA (2012). All with an eye toward making a case for their legitimacy as Gialli that should be taken seriously.

[CURATIVE MEASURES]
Though for this film (and for the discussion of whether it can be taken seriously as a Giallo) the plot seems the least important thing to me, I'll describe it in brief, in order to touch on the ways that its elements (and their execution) clearly align it with the genre's sleaze subcategory: 

Farley Granger plays Inspector Capuana. He and wife Barbara (played by Sylva Koscina, one of the many, many recognizable female faces in the film) live amid the upper class of their city, rubbing elbows (sometimes uncomfortably, in the case of the Inspector) with politicians, military officials, and captains of industry. A series of murders targeting the wives of these upper crust officials threatens this relationship, though, as Capuana is obliged to investigate (even suspect) the high society who's who that live and prosper around him. (A common theme in these movies, he repeatedly complains to his superior that his investigation is being hamstrung by the concern of the powers that be, that the rich, respectable citizens of their town aren't bothered by his investigation. This critique of power, and the unavoidable, systemic corruption that it breeds in Italian society, could be counted as one way the film aims higher than sleaze-exploitation.)

The cases are further complicated by the fact that the killer is littering each crime scene with photos of the murdered women, all showing them in the midst of cheating on their husbands. Capuana "stumbles around in the dark" as he seeks to get a handle on the investigation, leaning heavily on police doctor Chris Avram for the forensic particulars of the case, and trying to eliminate the suspects that he can: I.e., the ones who aren't politically connected (like creepy Luciano Rossi, who enjoys his job of reconstructing the victims' bodies for their funerals just a little too much).

Before Granger-as-Capuana is done, he will discover the killer's identity and—more importantly for his own character arc—the killer's motive. A motive that reinforces the genre convention of the "powerless male hero" and gives Granger room to deliver a conflicted, grimacing, quiet performance (one that stands in stark contrast to the hyper-macho police heroes that were part and parcel of the Eurocrime being made at this same time: think Maurizio Merli for one).

The plot itself doesn't have to be rendered as sleaze necessarily, but it is. In its execution. In the graphic, never-implied, always-shown instances of nudity and brutal, gory death (also: the aftermath of that brutal, gory death; if memory serves, the first line of the movie is "Make sure to get plenty of closeups" and is one detective talking to another, who is photographing the nude dead body of the first victim). Clearly the filmmakers were intent on playing up this angle, were unapologetic about playing it up, and (probably) had purely economic—as opposed to artistic—reasons for repeatedly providing the audience those awful "closeups".

So what are the elements that temper (that help “cure”) what's shamelessly exploitative, potentially derivative about SO SWEET, SO DEAD, and make it a legitimate film worth discussing alongside “better,” more well-known examples? What counterbalances the impulse toward lowest-common-denominator sleaze film-making, and instead makes it a movie that warrants our time and attention? 

I'd argue there are four things: 1. The cumulative strength, associations, and “pleasures” generated by the casting. 2. A level of style that both connects this film to a larger web of better-known Gialli and establishes a successful aesthetic pov of its own. 3. Its seeming connection to the notion of decadence in art (esp. other Italian art films). 4. That melancholy soundtrack.

[ECHOES & INTERTEXTUALITIES pt. 1: WHAT LEE HOWARD SAID]
Lee Howard, during an episode of Movie Matters, pointed out that one of the particular pleasures of watching Italian cinema of a certain vintage is becoming familiar with shared cast and crew—growing to appreciate the overlap and intertextuality that's created by such a geographically confined movie industry producing films at such a prodigious pace. Not just appreciating the work of character actors across dozens of Gialli, but seeing the way their work or persona gets altered when they appear in “serious” productions from the same time period. E.g., in 1982 you could have watched Lara Wendel get chased by a Doberman and bloodily dispatched in Argento's TENEBRAE, and then engage in an oblique and flirtatious poolside conversation with Tomás Milián, playing the elusive “girl by the pool” in Antonioni's IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN.

 
So when you watch Italian character actor Luciano Rossi in SO SWEET, SO DEAD, as a fan, it's not just watching his performance there, but also appreciating it in terms of the laundry list of other cracked, “weirdo” creeps he played over three decades in the compressed world of Italian cinema. His role in SO SWEET, SO DEAD makes me think quite a bit about his bleach-faced, greasy-haired performance as Rod Murdok's consumptive brother in DJANGO THE BASTARD (aka, THE STRANGER'S GUNDOWN [1969]). Or his wood-handed, cross-dressing caretaker Hallory in Luciano Ercoli's DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS (1971).

His various onscreen personae accumulating in a kind of layered character, a multiplier of appreciation for his work in film. This of course can be said of many categories of film—whether a series of films by a director who tended to work with recurring cast and crew (e.g., Hitchcock + Bernard Herrmann + the series of blond lead actresses that H.'s personal preoccupations drew him to dramatize over and over); or the screen time (and resulting persona) accumulated by somebody like Elisha Cook Jr. in multiple films noir; or the way that seeing Grace Zabriskie in TWIN PEAKS, and then seeing her again, in an abbreviated (but eerie as heck) role at the beginning of INLAND EMPIRE makes that role feel less abbreviated (more laden with back story that the TWIN PEAKS viewer's mind might tend to associate and supply). Etc. But the Italian version seems to accomplish it all the more. 

This aura around the casting, like in the best noir, adds levels and levels of narrative texture. Of viewing pleasure. Of additional, possible meaning that can be made from the film. Some movies work and others just *don't* (for me at least) solely because of the casting. When as little thought has been put into the casting, and the resulting performances, as has been spent on achieving anything other than bottom-of-the-barrel exploitation, it makes for a qualitatively different viewing experience than when a standout cast like the one here has been assembled. (Even if the reasons for that assembling were economic instead of artistic.)

Other cast members with notable, multiple Giallo personalities:

Nieves Navarro plays a callous high-society wife whose open disdain for her husband is one of the many cruel aspects of the film. She's perhaps best-known for her turn in the two DEATH WALKS films, directed by her husband Luciano Ercoli, but you can also see her as the "Black Widow" leader of a Eurowestern outlaw gang in Sergio Sollima's THE BIG GUNDOWN, as the devil-worshiping sister of Edwige Fenech in Martino's ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, and as a concerned social worker aiding the investigation in Fernando Di Leo's NAKED VIOLENCE.

Femi Benussi, familiar to genre fans in, among other things, the aforementioned STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER, in Bava's HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON, Di Leo's THE ITALIAN CONNECTION, Luigi Cozzi's THE KILLER MUST KILL AGAIN, and the rather old-fashioned Giallo DEADLY INHERITANCE.

Chris Avram. See him in Bava's A BAY OF BLOOD, and the obscure Giallo/Gothic THE KILLER RESERVED NINE SEATS (unbelievably, it's been released on Blu-ray by Camera Obscura).

Fabrizio Moresco, a familiar face from both the DEATH WALKS films, and Emilio Miraglia's underrated THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES.

Angela Covello. She is one of the college girls murdered in the villa in Martino's TORSO, and plays one of the models in BABA YAGA.

Silvano Tranquilli. Surely one of the hardest working men in Italy at the time. I've seen him in everything from THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK to BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA, from THE BLOODSTAINED BUTTERFLY to LA CONTROFIGURA (THE DOUBLE) to SYNDICATE SADISTS.

Annabella Incontrera. Another BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA alum, you can also watch her play Edwige Fenech's too-friendly neighbor in CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS and Margaret Lee's too-close friend in Freda's Krimi/Giallo hybrid DOUBLE FACE (aka, LIZ AND HELEN).

And the star, Farley Granger. Of course he'll be eternally known for his work with Hitchcock, but his work in Italy in the 70s is equally worth remembering. Whether as the haunted, sexually obsessed artist chasing the ghost of Erika Blanc in THE RED-HEADED CORPSE, or the escaped outlaw Spike in SOMETHING CREEPING IN THE DARK, or the icy and arrogant writer in AMUCK! I've not talked a lot about the plot of the movie, as that's its least interesting aspect to me. What is of note is the way the plot reinforces Granger's role as a self-doubting, ineffectual husband-hero (a recurring convention in the Giallo genre). The killer, who some call a "moral avenger," is murdering high-society women who are "playing away" on their husbands. The killer's reason for this stems from the way his own marriage ended but, more interestingly, becomes a further way for the narrative to mark Granger's character as a failure. Not only does he fail for most of the movie to grasp the killer's identity/motive, he fails to grasp that his own wife (like the town's victims) has cuckolded him. He's not even capable of detecting the infidelity and death in his own marriage. The killer takes this blind spot and uses it to further goad Granger into failure, trying to crush his will to live through this crushing revelation. It's credit to Granger's performance that he adds nuance and weight to such a well-worn device (and further links his performance to Giancarlo Giannini's BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA [see below])  ... and I just realized I didn't take any caps of the actress who plays his wife, Sylva Koscina, probably best-known for her role in Bava's LISA AND THE DEVIL (edit: she does appear in the funeral footage below).

[ECHOES & INTERTEXTUALITIES pt. 2: ADDING STRANDS TO THE GIALLO WEB]
I wrote above that the movie manages a level of style that both connects it to a web of other Gialli and establishes its own aesthetic pov. As far as connections, it contains echoes of at least the following: BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, MONSTER OF LONDON CITY, BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA, CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS, SEVEN BLOOD-STAINED ORCHIDS, and TENEBRAE. And those are just the ones I noticed during this rewatch. Beyond the shared casting, the associations come through the use of genre iconography. Like, for instance, the appearance of the killer, as set down by Bava's film. And reconjured in many more.

In his introduction to the Giallo genre, Gary Needham has this to say about the purposes and meanings behind that iconic look:

"I am confident in suggesting that the familiar black raincoat associated with the Giallo killer stems from continental fashion trends in the 1960s and has since shifted its meaning over the decades to become the couture choice of the assassin by default in addition to serving as one of the Giallo's most identifiable visual tropes. Bava's SEI DONNE PER L'ASSASSINO (BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, 1964), set in a fashion house, confirms this observation as the use of a black Macintosh for disguise purposes potentially means it could be any number of the models and, at the same time, situate itself on the pulse of fashion." 

What Bava started ... Bava's killer look carried through SO SWEET, SO DEAD, BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA, CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS, and THE MONSTER OF LONDON CITY.

The staging of the murder set pieces also make it easy to draw lines back and forth between the movies. The opening murder in SO SWEET, SO DEAD, for instance, feels like it's staged as a sleazier, lower-budget aftermath of the murder of Barbara Bouchet in BLACK BELLY (in the interest of not taking things too far into NSFW territory, I'll have to make my point with only the closeups on the two actresses' faces; suffice to say, if you watch the scenes in their entirety [esp. back-to-back] their similarities jump out at you):

The victim of the aforementioned "closeups," as much a Barbara Bouchet ringer as anything.

The stylistic connections to BLACK BELLY (and the other Gialli mentioned up top) don't end with the staging of these opening murders. Both films share a character familiar inside the genre, the troubled male protagonist whose role (and skill) as a police detective are sapped by his own self-doubt: Both detectives lament their inability to solve the case, and question the belief that any case *can* be solved inside the framework of the corrupt system that employs them. Both men present as conflicted, incapable “heroes” whose official roles belie a profound lack of self-confidence, self-worth. In SO SWEET, it's Granger's role. In BLACK BELLY, it's Giancarlo Giannini (of recent Bond film fame): 

Second, both films share an obsession with photography and film. Watching and being watched. In SO SWEET, SO DEAD, the killer leaves defaced photos of the victims cheating on their husbands (the apparent “mad moral avenger” aspect of the plot). In TARANTULA, photos of cheating couples are used to blackmail the women, and prove to be the trigger for the killer (once he discovers the identity of each woman being blackmailed). The voyeurism angle is also employed by the police. Granger and his crew film those attending the first victim's funeral in much the same way as the detectives in SEVEN BLOOD-STAINED ORCHIDS.

Beyond the web of associations with other Gialli, SO SWEET's murder set pieces stand on their aesthetic own:

 Including one that feels like a proto example of the Tenebrae Moment:

In short, the film has an aesthetic point of view that exceeds what you find in artless, sleaze-exploitation entries; that surpasses what you would expect from a cynical genre knockoff. Even if that point of view sometimes falters—and never, tbh, quite reaches the heights of a Fulci or Argento at their level best.

[A LOLLING DECADENCE; A SPRAWLING MALAISE]
Another argument for the film's art-effectiveness can be found, likewise embedded, right there in its most infamous sexploitation scenes. E.g., much has been made of the sheer, startling amount of flesh on display, usually existing in the movie as a lolling sort of sensuality, a casual (though also deliberate) exposé. People cite the early scene in the day spa, where the attractive, bored, high-society wives discuss that first murder in the film where the cameraman was instructed to "get plenty of closeups." Most of the women appear unclothed at some point in the scene (more than one for the duration of the scene), and the camera makes sure not to cut, for instance, when a woman receiving a massage rolls over, first revealing her nude backside, then her nude front.

The bald-faced staging of the scene (esp. in regard to the duration of some shots)—the oh-so-tired, "we're totally over any physical pleasure life can offer us" looks on the actresses' faces—all of it points to a kind of world-weary, tragically decadent atmosphere for the film's characters to move through. They engage in one empty affair after another in order to try to restore meaning, vitality, energy to their bored and boring lives—they partake of every physical and creature comfort that money can buy and still look supremely bored while doing so. Their lives *are* emptied, are in an unfixable state of decline. This passage from good ol' Wikipedia sprang to mind:

"The word decadence, which at first meant simply 'decline' in an abstract sense, is now most often used to refer to a perceived decay in standards, morals, dignity, religious faith, or skill at governing among the members of the elite of a very large social structure, such as an empire or nation state. By extension, it may refer to a decline in art or literature, or (very loosely) to self-indulgent behaviour. Usage of the term frequently implies moral censure, or an acceptance of the idea, met with throughout the world since ancient times, that such declines are objectively observable and that they inevitably precede the destruction of the society in question; for this reason, modern historians use it with caution."  

(That a painting of a "Roman orgy" appears next to this paragraph is perhaps no coincidence.)

Think of the tired disinterestedness—the feeling of futility—that surrounds Helmut Berger's character as he engages in the threesome in Visconti's CONVERSATION PIECE. Or, in Bertolucci's THE CONFORMIST, the non-chalant, even bored sense of "intimacy" that exists in the bedroom "changing" scene between Dominique Sanda and Stefania Sandrelli (who also starred, only one year later, in BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA). Or the accusation leveled by some against Antonioni's IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN: that its gratuitous nudity and extended sex scenes make it little more than A.'s "dirty old man movie" (a movie whose cast is led by the star of one *the* sleaziest Gialli out there, Tomas Milian; he's the restless, sexually dissolute director in A.'s film; in Lucio Fulci's DON'T TORTURE A DUCKLING, he's the investigative reporter who has a hunch.)

Of course I wouldn't argue that SO SWEET, SO DEAD and IDENTIFICATION OF A WOMAN belong side-by-side in the cinematic universe, but I think an argument can be made that all of these films are accessing a certain tradition in art that, when done with remarkable stylization and skill, elevate them out of the exploitation-only conversation, and push them toward a shared sensibility, a malaise, that can be traced across all levels of Italian cinema.

[THAT SOUNDTRACK]
Instead of trying to describe the lilting haunt of Giorgio Gaslini's score, I'll link to this YouTube video that has the opening theme playing over the credits: 

Leonard Jacobs

November, 2014

[SHOW NOTES]

VERSION WATCHED: The Camera Obscura DVD (Mondo Digital review here) | LANGUAGE: Italian soundtrack with English subs | DIRECTOR: Roberto Bianchi Montero | WRITER(S): Luigi Angelo, Roberto Bianchi Montero, Italo Fasan | MUSIC: Giorgio Gaslini | CINEMATOGRAPHER: Fausto Rossi  | CAST: Farley Granger (Inspector Capuana); Sylva Koscina (Barbara Capuana); Silvano Tranquilli (Paolo Santangeli); Annabella Incontrera (Franca Santangeli); Chris Avram (Professor Casali); Femi Benussi (Serena); Krista Nell (Renata); Angela Covello (Bettina Santangeli); Fabrizio Moresco (Piero); Irene Pollmer (Giannina); Luciano Rossi (Gastone); Ivano Staccioli (The Liar); Jessica Dublin (Rossella); Nieves Navarro (Lilly); Benito Stefanelli (Lilly's Husband)