Reaction Paper

Francisco Sierra
Understanding Media Studies
10/21/09


Deep Red and Cinematic Realism as it Pertains to The Evil Eye


What scares you? Many adults would say what scares them isn’t fantastical events or creatures such as phantasms, monsters or vampires. Instead, most people would say it is the everyday tragedies that may occur, or the things you witness on the news. Someone being murdered, a car accident, mentally unstable people, etc, these are all stories we are bombarded with on a daily basis. It’s only natural that a viewer would develop a fear or aversion to any of these events after continuously hearing about them. In the 1960s, horror films began to reflect our most common, realistic and accessible fears by changing from a creature based thematic to a psychological realistic one. The films Psycho and Peeping Tom are considered two of the first realistic horror movies that created villains that a normal person could encounter in their everyday life.(1) In Colette Balmain’s 2002 paper titled Mario Bava’s The Evil Eye: realism and the Italian horror film, she argues that the Italian Giallo genre and The Evil Eye include some elements of realism similar to Psycho and Peeping Tom, yet at its core the Giallo films provide a different take on realism. In the following essay I will argue that Giallo film Deep Red by Dario Argento supports Balmain’s hypothesis.
The purpose of Balmain’s essay was to illustrate how the Giallo horror genre created differing notions of cinematic realism different from that the American and English horror films of the 1960s and beyond. One of the first examples she gives is that the motives for the crimes in Psycho and Peeping Tom were crimes of “passion, not profit.”(2) She then pointed out that the Giallo film inversed this notion by creating crimes that were of “profit rather than passion.” As she explained this was evident in The Evil Eye where the motivations of the antagonist were revealed to be monetary. This idea of the Giallo film is supported some 15 years later in Deep Red. It is alluded to in the film that the antagonist committed murders before the film began; yet all the murders that take place in the film are purely for the profit of her protection from the authorities. As the film progresses and more murders occur there is a domino effect that the characters that investigate these murders are themselves killed. Argento begins this domino effect ingeniously by having the first investigator gain insight through psychic abilities. Thusly the initial murder was for the profit of the psychic not blowing the antagonist’s cover.
One of the most in-depth arguments by Balmain, of these differing notions of cinematic realism in the Giallo genre is the deconstruction of psychoanalysis. Her major point is that in the films Peeping Tom and Psycho psychoanalysis plays a large part in humanizing the antagonist. In other words an explanation is given for why these cinematic monsters would perform such horrific acts, thus a natural realization through an association with similar stories from the news occurs where these despicable characters could be real. Yet as Balmain argues, this is not the case in Bava’s Evil Eye. In the film there is no psychoanalytical explanation for why the murderer commits the acts of violence. They just do it. The realism lies in the fact that a victim of this crime will never have the chance to ponder why they are being murdered. This notion is also reflected in the film Deep Red. In the dramatic conclusion we learn that the villain murdered her husband in front of her child when her husband attempted to bring her to a mental institute. This is the spark that began her murderous ways, yet it is never established why this antagonist needed to attend the mental institute and what caused her to be able to perform such acts of violence. This obviously wouldn’t be the case if this murdering in the conclusion of the film caused the child who witnessed it to go on a murdering spree.
The third aspect of realist cinema that Bava and Argento utilize in their films is the realism provided by the camera through a “realist aesthetic. ” Bava utilized his camerawork in the “The Evil Eye” to exemplify Raymond William's definition of realism and art. Balmain uses William's definition of this to illustrate her point. “Realism is not a static appearance but as a movement of psychological or social or physical forces; realism is then a conscious commitment to understanding and describing these.” (3) In Psycho and Peeping Tom a static non-moving camera was used to exemplify realism. Yet, Bava represented William’s notion of realism both ideologically and literally by countering the static camerawork. His camera work is highly stylized through a use of continuous camera movement and a focus on fragmented disconnected shots that thus exemplifying this movement of psychological and social forces described by Williams. Dario Argento essentially took what Bava started and created an entire body of work that was based upon highly stylized camera work. So much so, that his plots typically were lacking in comparison to these aesthetics. Deep Red is one of the first examples where he began to truly experiment with these aesthetics, and it can be suggested that he did this in homage to Bava’s notions of realism.(4)
In conclusion, horror film is typically not considered a realistic genre of film. In fact typically when horror realism is mentioned, the films Psycho and Peeping Tom are immediately discussed as revolutionizing that sub genre. Yet, as Balmain effectively argues in her paper Mario Bava’s The Evil eye: realism and the Italian horror film the Giallo genre proves to not only include notions of realism provided by the American counterparts, but to create and redefine different aspects of realism that can be exemplified in the horror film. The limitations to her essay are the fact that she only utilizes these theories to discuss one film, yet through the analysis of realism in Dario Argento’s Deep Red and comparison to The Evil Eye it is obvious that her theories are accurate to the entire Giallo genre.


Footnotes


(1)Schneider, Steven Jay. “Introduction, Pt 1: Dimensions of the Real.” Post Script. 21.3 (Summer 2002): p3. Literature Resource Center. Gale. New York University. 19 Sept 2009

(2)Balmain, Colette. “Mario Bava’s the Evil Eye: realism and the Italian horror film.” Post Script. 21.3 (Summer 2002): p20. Literature Resource Center. Gale. New York University. 19 Sept 2009

(3)Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana Paperbacks, 1983 (1976)

(4)Gallant, Ed Chris. “The Art of Darkness: The Cinema of Dario Argento.” FAB Press. Surrey, England. 2000