Friday Giallo Blogging

The ideological trope of J&B scotch...

This example from The Bloodstained Shadow. One of the things I love about giallos is their inventiveness in finding new visual means to achieve conventional generic ends. Take this shot of the killer entering the apartment building:

Normally, suspense films withhold the information of the killer's identity by a) keeping the killer offscreen; b) framing part of the killer's body but never the face; or c) illuminating so that shadow falls on the face. Here, inspired no doubt by the low-light cinematography of Gordon Willis, the camera points directly at the killer and the key illumination of the scene. I cannot claim this is the first film to do this, but in some ways that's beside the point - the generic pleasures of giallo is the systematic rule-breaking.