The gialli were not intended for consumption in the first-run theaters in Italy or meant to circulate internationally through film festivals and art-house theaters. These films circulated on the margins of Italian, European, and International film exhibition-the drive-ins and grindhouses, rather than the art houses. They appealed to the most salacious aspects of literary crime fiction, thereby making these films closer in spirit to horror films than to mysteries. (Koven, 2006 p16)

Koven here is pointing out that the giallo wasn't intended to be viewed by the same audience of those in the high art population being shown in various art houses; the giallo was being targeted to the audience of the drive-ins and the grindhouse scene where the audience is purely looking to be entertained and the narrative can almost play as a second fiddle, as it's target audience would have a more relaxed approach to consumption.

And within this context, not only in terms of production but perhaps more importantly consumption, a traditional aesthetic consideration of the giallo alongside high-art filmmakers such as Fellini, Bertolucci, and Antonioni cannot work. The giallo is not high art; it is vernacular in its marketing, consumption, and production. (Koven, 2006 p16).

Here I think that Koven really hits the nail on the head as to why the giallo and the high art works from Italian directors of the same era are kept from being linked. He points out that the aesthetics and consumption and production are so vastly different and the giallo itself cannot be considered high art therefore trying to juxtapose the giallo with the high art movement wouldn't be complementary or beneficial to either the high art or the exploitative horror.

But returning to the birth of the giallo as it is seen most commonly today; there are 3 films that together give birth to the traditional giallo that became hugely popular in the 1970s and early 1980s. Though it was Mario Bava who is credited with creating the genre as we know it, beginning with The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1962) and again 2 years later with Blood and Black Lace (1964) it isn’t until Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) that the giallo’s identity is set in stone and the masked killer becomes infamous.

Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much (La Ragazza che sapevo troppo) (1962) established the giallo films' narrative structure: 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. Two years later, Bava further developed the genre with Blood and Black Lace (Sei donne per l'assassino) (1964). This film, although the narrative structure is quite dif-ferent from Girl, introduced to the genre specific visual tropes that would be-come clichéd. Specifically, the graphic violence was against beautiful women; there were many murders committed (in Girl, all the victims ware stabbed the same way, but in Blood and Black Lace we see stabbings, strangulations, smothering, burnings, and other violent acts); but most important is the introduction of what was to become the archetypal giallo killer's disguise: black leather gloves, black overcoat, wide-brimmed black hat, and often a black stocking over the face. (Koven, 2006 p3-4)

Here Koven is telling us how Mario Bava created the now considered traditional giallo; he first points out that The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1962) builds the narrative structure of the giallo and 2 years later with his next film Blood and Black Lace (1964) Bava creates the graphic murder sequences adding more creative techniques and weapons that were missing in Girl and also adding the famous image of the giallo killer; dressed in disguise with black leather gloves etc…The combination of the two creating what is now consider the traditional giallo.

The year 1970 is generally considered the key threshold for giallo cinema, due to the international success of Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo) (1970), which takes the innocent eyewitness who becomes an amateur detective through a grisly series of murders from Bava's Girl and adds the graphic violence and iconically dressed killer (black hat, gloves, and raincoat) from Bava's Blood and Black Lace. It is this combination that really defines the giallo film as it is more commonly understood. An avalanche of similar films was quickly brought out by Italian producers looking to cash in on Argento's success, all using combinations and variations on the complexity of the mystery, with the standard giallo-killer disguise. (Koven, 2006 p4)

Here Koven tells us how director Dario Argento with his film The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) (which combines both elements of Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1962) and Blood and Black Lace (1964) to create the traditional giallo) and it’s international success created the opportunity for more Italian filmmakers to direct giallos in it’s vein as producers were keen to use Argento’s film as a template for financial gain.

Not only does The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) become the film that sets the rollers in motion for the giallo to take off into commercial success, but it is also the starting point for Dario Argento to becoming the widely regarded master of giallo and ultimately becoming the only director with the power of his internationally recognizable name to be able to continually direct gialli after the genres apparent demise in the late 1980s.

Behind the Mask of the Killer

Looking at the typical mystery killer that is ever present in giallo, on the surface they may just looked like a fashionable if not fetishistic dressed generic murder; but if we delve a little deeper into the killers identity and background then we find out some interesting facts that could very well prove that these killers might just have deeper meaning than just being you mad psychopathic killer.

Let us remind ourselves that these movies are thirty to forty years old now, made (predominantly) in the early 1970s. The characters are approximately in their thirties and forties, which means the characters would have been born between 1930 and 1950 If the past trauma these films' killers experienced was in childhood, or experienced by their par-ents, doing the math, we find they are traumas occurring during World War II under Mussolini's Fascist rule. (Koven, 2006 p109)

Here Koven points out an interesting fact about the giallo killers, that the characters including the killers themselves would have been children during the Mussolini era. The killers in giallo tend to suffer from past trauma from their childhood and I think Koven here is trying to make the allegoric connection between the giallo killers and those of the children growing up under Mussolini’s Fascist rule.

Most gialli killers have experienced some kind of trauma in their diegetic pasts, which erupts murderously in the diegetic present. Take, for example, the films of Dario Argento, whose films often rely on the revelation of some kind of past trauma to explain their murders. In Bird, for example, we are told a psycho killer attacked Monica Ranieri (Eva Renzi) as a young girl, and she was lucky to be left alive. It was this trauma that sparked off her own murder spree, which the film is about. (Koven, 2006 p104)

Here, Koven is telling us that most of the killers in giallo do suffer some trauma in the childhoods and it is this trauma that is the main reason behind them growing up and committing murders. This I feel provides a strong argument that the killers themselves and their pasts are directly linked to the traumas of those Italians that grew up under Mussolini’s rule. I personally feel that this can be read as a genuine fear amongst Italians that the trauma’s of Mussolini’s Fascist era could have unforeseen effects on future generations, especially the young generation growing up under his rule, who might be more mentally venerable to suffering from long term trauma. The fear of the medically unknown can be quite a scary prospect, of which Italy was unable to predict how far the traumas caused by Mussolini would stretch into the nation’s future.

The films' audiences are likely to be approximately the same age as the characters, so they either would have had early childhood memories of the war or been more than familiar with their parents' experiences. Are these films reflecting the more cultural explanation of 1970s Italian disassociation resulting from fascism, military defeat (consider how many of the audience members or their parents would have been soldiers during the war), and postwar reconstruction? (Koven, 2006 p109)

Here I think Koven clearly adds more evidence to support the connection between Killer and Mussolini; he points out that the films’ audience themselves would be of an age close to the characters themselves and would reflect on their and their parents own experiences of life under Mussolini’s reign; this I feel wouldn’t be such a far stretch for the Italian audience to make a connection between the films killer and Mussolini himself. Further to this Koven adds;

This death can take a number of forms, but one of the most popular is throwing the killer off of a cliff or other high place. This method of death seems to be a metaphoric "fall," whether echoing Satan's fall from Heaven, or our fall from Eden. The fall is almost always spectacular, filmed in slow motion and in such a way as to maximize the visual power of the image. In particular, in Lucio Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling, Don Alberto's fall is not only in slow motion, but Fulci includes insert shots of the physical trauma the killer's face receives by smashing into the cliff's rocks on his way down. (Koven, 2006 p107)

Here I feel Koven is making the connection between the gialli killers death on screen to the fall and demise of Mussolini’s Fascist reign; he points out that the falls themselves are filmed in a certain way that draws out the screen time of how watching the killer fall to his death, even taking the time to include close ups of the physical injuries incurred on their descent.

These falls are given tremendous amounts of on-screen time, so they must have some meaning beyond just narrative closure. Perhaps reading a lapsarian metaphor into them is excessive, but the films seem to welcome such analysis.(Koven, 2006 p108)

Here Koven points out the prospect of the metaphor of the killers fall to death and that of the fall of Mussolini; surely with the amount of screen time given to this falls it cannot be just a case of giving the film it’s narrative closure; yes there will be the argument that these falls and deaths are drawn out to allow more explicit violent scenes for the films audience to enjoy, but I feel there is more than enough evidence that we can strongly argue that these falls to death can be directly linked to the metaphor of the fall of man; with the man being Mussolini in the case of the giallo killer.

Koven notes that “The real past trauma is a historical one: the defeat and emasculation of Italy in the war and under fascism. And this trauma has been haunting Italians ever since.” (Koven, 2006 p109)

Koven here is pointing out that the trauma of Mussolini and the war has continued to haunt Italians and I’d argue that the giallo killers and their murders on screen are a visual representation of this traumatic fear.

The Swift move from B&W to Colour

If we ignore Ossessione (1942) and take Mario Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1962) as being the first giallo film, then it becomes apparent that not only is Bava’s Girl the birth of the traditional giallo but it is also the only giallo that is shot in Black & White. The interesting question is; why for so early in the life of a genre did the giallo move from Black and White film to Colour? Was it just a case of timing; with the widespread introduction of colour in cinema? Or was there something more to the genre itself that leant more towards the use of colour on screen than the monochrome of Black and White?

Comparing color to sound, Kalmus described color as the next logical step in film's historical trajectory, "tending towards complete realism." While helping to mould film's vision "according to the basic principles of art." her approach aimed to produce what she termed an "enhanced realism" (Dalle Vacche and Price, 2006 p31-32)

This idea of enhanced realism would really emphasize the horror of the giallo greater than it would being shot in black and white; the idea of seeing a murder being committed in colour seemingly being more realistic adds  greater impact to the murders that are being shown in gialli.

Namely, Bazin very deftly offers a theory of color in film that ultimately allies cinema

with painting, such that color becomes the constituent feature of art, whereas black

and white simply documents reality. (Delle Vacche and Price, 2006 p51)

So the idea of black and white visually implying the documentation of reality when applied to the genre of horror, can certainly remove some threat on screen from the murderer; the audience might find themselves detached from what is happening on screen. Though the timing of the common place use of colour in film and the birth of the giallo did pretty much coincide with each other, I would argue the giallo genre itself wouldn’t have been as popular as it was (even if only on a vernacular level) if they were shot in black and white.