Lecture 6 - Film Theory -Italian Vernacular Cinema

1970's: 'film is not the art of scholars, but of illiterates' - Werner Herzog

• Vernaculate in the sense that the Films made for the modority of people, partially the working classes if the italian city.
• Fellini is taken very seriously as an Auteur and comments of the superficiality of middle class existence. His films are associated with style and sophistication and seen as worthy of critical appraisal.
• Can be interpreted in different ways, this means that the modernity of films rant made for the intellectual its made for normal people
• Film its self isn't about literacy or dialogue, its more about visuality and the specucal.
• The vernacular cinema is the opposite to the Auteur theory from the previous lecture involving the theory and method of Hitchcock. looking at other factors that construct a film.
• Involves allot more than regular views of cinema ; audiences, historical and social contexts.

•prima visioneand secondavisione– cinemas thatwatchattracted a middle class sophisticated audience usually in major cities, audience selected a film to
•
•terzavisione– less populated areas, cheaper tickets, audience went to cinema based on habit rather than selecting a film. Films were more formulaic and popular films

• 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)

Filone/Genre 

Instead of using the word genre the italians would use the word filone. 

Filone is a very similar term for genre but not quite. 

Based on the idea of geology- layers of veins within a larger layer. 

Speggetti wastern is an offshoot an vein within the larger starter 

Filone is more respectful it means in the tradition of, by emulating someone else you are been

respectful 

Examples of Filone are, Giallo – based on detective novels, Spaghetti Westerns, Mondo/Cannibal

film, Poliziottesco – police procedural. 

 Giallo is interesting as it mixes the detective novel with the sequences of the spectacular horror 

Typicall sequence of a spaghetti western is the film "  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

 

Giallo

  

Giallo is italian for 'Yellow' and stems from the series of cheap paperback crime novels and mysteries novels the 

films are based on.  

Literature for the working classes  

Giallo Directors making films for mass audiences are: Mario Bava, Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci.   

generic 

stylish and expressionistic.   

challenge your good taste, there is a lot of gore and sex appealing to the audience.   

exploration movies  

Theses film were cheaply made that sometimes just went out as a title without a script.

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

  

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

Product placement Evoking a sophisticated lifestyle within the films

Signifies lifestyle associated with the product

 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 

Works of art in Giallo 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 

 Are exploiation 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

  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