Fellini is viewed as an auteur
Films - La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2
- comments on the superficiality of middle class existence
- films are associated with style and sophistication
- worthy of critical appraisal
Italian Cinema
Prima Visione and Seconda Visione - cinemas that attraced a middle class audience in major cinemas
Terza visione - less populated, cheaper tickets, cinema part of lifestyle
Italian Working Clsses in the 1970's
- Film conventions are different
- talking, eating and drinking are allowed throughout the film
- people can enter at any time during the film
- the cinema is a social space
Filone/genre
- Filone similar to genre but not quite
- based on the idea of layers
Types of Filone
- Giallo - based on detective novels
- spaghetti westerns
- mondo/cannibal film
- poliziottesco - police procedural
Focus of Giallo
- films were stylish and expressionistic
- challenged senses and standards of good taste
- exploitation movies
- gross out movies
- similar to american grindhouse. drive-in movies
- wonderful titles to sell the film
Dario Argento
- visually stunning 'set pieces'
- shot without sound so films could be dubbed
- references to Hitchcock
Subjective POV
- Killer-cam
- Eye line shot
- set pieces
- art and cultural references
- semiotics
- ambivalence towards modernity, religion, superstition
- the fall
Many Giallo are read using Freudian Psychology
- based on false memory
- childhood trauma
- fetish
- solution of mystery lies in art
Are exploitation films worthy of examination?
- innovation and auteurship
- technical mastery
- visual critique based on spectacle rather than literary critique based on narrative
- tells us about different audiences and ways of viewing the film
- tells us about the context in which these films were made
- challenges Hollywood's continuity cinema
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