One image says it all

Gialli's plots explanation or resolution often hides within one key image.

In "The bird with the crystal plumage", it's a painting - bought in an antique shop - which reflects the initial trauma experienced by the murderer.
"The bloodstained shadow" also revolves around a painting which depicts the terrible truth behind a scene the main character was a witness of when he was a child, and that he could not remember in details.

It's a photograph that reveals, when blown up several times, a murder was committed in Antonioni's "Blow-up". A similar treatment applied to a newspaper photograph (by the way, how unrealistic given the usual quality of pictures in papers!) unveils the secret behind the scorpion cuff links in "The case of the scorpion's tail".
We could also mention it's the re-cropping of a photograph which shows that what initially looked like an accident - a man falling under a train in a railway station - was indeed a murder in Argento's "The cat o'nine tails"...

Paintings or photographs, Giallo marks the victory of the visual and symbolic approach over the narrative, litterary explanations which used to prevail in "classic" thrillers up until the late 60s.
In this instance, it illustrates this genre's modernity, reflecting the movement towards the image-based society we all know now.

Titles 2 (The bestiary)

Italian giallo titles really sound nice to my ears:
L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo, Una lucertola con la pelle di Donna, Il gatto a nove code, Non si sevizia un paperino, Quattro mosche di velluto grigio, Il gatto dagli occhi di giada, La coda dello Scorpione, Sette scialli di seta gialla.

(The bird with the crystal plumage, A lizard in a woman’s skin, The cat o’nine tails, Don’t torture a duckling, Four flies on grey velvet, The Cat with the Jade Eyes, The case of the scorpion tail, Crimes of the black cat).

Cats, birds, scorpions, lizards, ducks, flies...

In the Middle-Age in Europe, the fear of the Devil being able to sneak into people's bodies led to the idea of the "beast within".

Being possessed, people would lose their judgement and spirituality and would act like animals - led by hunger, envy and rage.
Hence the Devil was often represented as an animal (cat, snake, goat...) or as a hybrid of human and animal.

This shades a new light on the highly symbolic and recurrent presence of animals within the vocabulary of giallo titles, which is a bestiary in itself.

Two interesting books study the relationship between the Devil and animals: "Une histoire du diable", by R. Muchembled (in French) and "The beast within: Animals in the Middle Ages", by J.E. Salisbury.
Read also a previous post about giallo titles.

Behind the mirror

Earlier on, I talked about how Mario Bava played with darkness and shadows to instill primal fear in "La ragazza que sapeva troppo".

This was an interesting way of building on the "classic" model of the crime scene : it always happens in the dark. Darkness means fear, danger, violence, crime. In the darkness reality is blurred and obscured, faces are out of sight, threat can come from anywhere. Darkness makes you feel insecure because you can't see and that makes everything possible, even the worst.
Safety is back only when the lights are turned on again, or when the day is back.

In a crucial scene from "The bird with the crystal plumage", Dario Argento turns this classic model upside down.

Look at this picture: this modern art gallery is the crime scene.
Yet there's a frame. There are large glass doors. The room is brightly lit. The dominant colour is white. Every single detail is clear and visible. It actually feels like the only safe place in an empty and dark street at night where Sam Dalmas, the main character, is walking to go home.

The moment after he will be the eye-witness of a brutal attack involving a mysterious man dressed up in black and a beautiful young woman in white in this very gallery.
He will be able to see, but unable to do anything as he's trapped between the two glass doors which have been locked.

This fascinating inversion is at the core of the movie, and will later be referred to in many occasions throughout the scenario, as Sam Dalmas keeps on thinking there was "something wrong about it". How could there be something wrong when everything was apparently so obvious and visible?

Probably because it happened behind the mirror.

You can watch a slideshow of this scene on the excellent darkdreams.org website, dedicated to Dario Argento (in the film reviews section).
More on this film from this blog there.

Compulsary elements of a Giallo :

Black gloves & knives.


(Taken from the first images of Dario Argento's "Bird with a crystal plummage" - definitely setting the style...)

Anecdote : Dario Argento never managed to get his comedians playing the way he wanted to for this particular scene. The movement of the hands had to be both very precise and very gentle on the knives, almost caressing. He ended up doing it himself.

First attempt for a definition of a Giallo : a film which is a detailed graphic record of the murders perpetrated (often on women) by a mysterious killer wearing black leather gloves and using a blade.

Probably fairly basic, but you have to start somewhere...