Overview

The Italian giallo was a sleazy, violent, and stylistically baroque form of horror film that was produced in the hundreds from the 1960s to the 1980s. Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film listens closely to these films, asking how their soundtracks and their use of the human voice can help us understand the giallo's significance at a time when Italy was undergoing profound postwar social, economic, political, and cultural change. Throughout the history of Italian cinema, soundtracks have been a site of concerted and sustained intervention by political and economic forces. In Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film, author Damien Pollard argues that, because the giallo film pushed the boundaries of film form while also touting unapologetic commercialism, the voices on its soundtracks were both aesthetically exaggerated and directly shaped by commercial imperatives, which were influenced by Italy's turbulent postwar years. Featuring case studies of several well-known giallo films, including The Girl Who Knew Too Much, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and Tenebrae, Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film is an original analysis that reveals how the cinematic voice binds film and history.

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9780253073907

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Reviews

""Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film is everything one might hope for: convincing, sophisticated, accessible, and a major contribution to the study of popular Italian cinema and film sound."" - Robert A. Rushing, author of Descended from Hercules: Biopolitics and the Muscled Male Body on Screen ""A long overdue examination of the vocal as a fundamental dimension of a popular genre, Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film demonstrates that, through their use of the voice, films can be seen to be embedded in and constitutive of specific social, cultural, economic and political contexts. Drawing on a wide range of new sources, Damien Pollard takes us closer to the one question truly worth asking about cinema: how does it speak to us? How, precisely, do films register and participate in the historical moment that produces them?"" - Valentina Vitali, author of Capital and Popular Cinema: The Dollars Are Coming! ""Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film is a highly original, intellectually stimulating, and enjoyable piece of scholarship. By inviting us to take a pause from received wisdom about this ever-popular group of films and listen to them carefully, Pollard compellingly uncovers yet more hidden depths within the already complex and multi-layered giallo."" - Austin Fisher, author of Blood in the Streets: Histories of Violence in Italian Crime Cinema ""In a series of meticulous and insightful case studies focused on key giallo classics, Pollard enables us to hear as well as see this cycle of Italian suspense-thrillers in new ways."" - Leon Hunt, author of Mario Bava: The Artisan as Italian Horror Auteur

""Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film is everything one might hope for: convincing, sophisticated, accessible, and a major contribution to the study of popular Italian cinema and film sound.""—Robert A. Rushing, author of Descended from Hercules: Biopolitics and the Muscled Male Body on Screen ""A long overdue examination of the vocal as a fundamental dimension of a popular genre, Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film demonstrates that, through their use of the voice, films can be seen to be embedded in and constitutive of specific social, cultural, economic and political contexts. Drawing on a wide range of new sources, Damien Pollard takes us closer to the one question truly worth asking about cinema: how does it speak to us? How, precisely, do films register and participate in the historical moment that produces them?""—Valentina Vitali, author of Capital and Popular Cinema: The Dollars Are Coming! ""Sound and Horror in the Giallo Film is a highly original, intellectually stimulating, and enjoyable piece of scholarship. By inviting us to take a pause from received wisdom about this ever-popular group of films and listen to them carefully, Pollard compellingly uncovers yet more hidden depths within the already complex and multi-layered giallo.""—Austin Fisher, author of Blood in the Streets: Histories of Violence in Italian Crime Cinema ""In a series of meticulous and insightful case studies focused on key giallo classics, Pollard enables us to hear as well as see this cycle of Italian suspense-thrillers in new ways.""—Leon Hunt, author of Mario Bava: The Artisan as Italian Horror Auteur

Author Information

Damien Pollard is Lecturer in Film at Northumbria University. He is editor (with Edward Bowen) of Film Exhibition: The Italian Context.

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