Interview with Ernesto Gastldi

By José Luis Salvador Estébenez

When it comes to pointing out the architects of the golden age of European popular cinema, it is usually customary to embody it in the work of directors and / or actors. Something that is still unfair, when the contribution of other professionals in the environment seems equal or more decisive in the emergence of such an unrepeatable movement. We have a good example of this in the figure of Ernesto Gastaldi, who stands in his own right in one of the capital names of the style, mainly due, although not exclusively, to his scriptwriting facet. So much so that without his contribution, surely the history of European genre cinema would be significantly different from what we know today.

He participated as a screenwriter both accredited and uncredited in a hundred films belonging to these coordinates, including several key titles of the caliber of Dr. Hichcock's horrible secret (L'orribile segreto de Dr. Hichcock, 1962), La frusta e il corpo [bd: La frusta e il corpo, 1963], Day of Anger (I giorni dell'ira, 1967), My Name is Nobody (Il mio nome è Nessuno, 1973) and Milano hates: La Polizia Non Può Sparare (1974), among others. A list that highlights the extraordinary ductility of such a prolific writer, who during those years combined with a pair of unparalleled currents as different as the peplum, the spy film, the Gothic terror, the war, the police and the comedy. Although if there is a genre in which his work stands out above others, this is undoubtedly the giallo. Not only for being responsible for the librettos of several of his classics, among which we can mention The Wicked Mrs. Ward / Lo strano vizio della signora Wardh (1971), Death Walks in High Heels / La morte walks with i tacchi alti (1971), All the Colors of Darkness / Tutti i colori del buio (1972), The Sweet Body of Deborah (Il dolce corpo di Deborah, 1968) and Torso, Carnal Violence (I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale, 1973) ; In addition to announcing the transition from gothic terror to giallo in his libretto for The Red Justice (La vergine di Norimberga, 1963) by Antonio Margheriti, it was he who initiated and granted a letter of nature to the All'italian thriller with which was his first opera As a filmmaker, Libido (1965), as claimed in the following interview that has been kind and patient to respond via email.

[Ernesto (on the left) with the director of photography Benito Frattari during the filming of his film “La lunga spiaggia fredda” (1971)]

From what I've read, you studied accounting and even went to work in a bank. When did your interest in the world of cinema arise?

For family reasons I had to graduate in accounting and join the Sella Bank where I worked for three years; Then I graduated in Rome much later, in 1967, just for the pleasure of completing my studies. I am addicted to writing, I have always written since I was a child. And the only way to live from writing was for cinema.

After graduating in direction and script writing at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome, your first script to be taken to the big screen is L’amante del Vampire, a film in which you also participated as an assistant director. How did you get this opportunity to debut professionally?

After graduating from the CSC I spent two hungry years finally, Tina Gloriani, an actress from the Center, introduced me to her boyfriend. It was the director Renato Polselli, next to whom I wrote the script of L’amante del Vampire and also was made the assistant director in the company of the great and forgotten Franco Cirino.

Without leaving the gothic horror cinema, in the following years you participated in some of the most emblematic films of the style in his Italian aspect, case of Dr. Hichcock's Horrible Secret or La frusta and il corpo, where you raise two such taboo themes as necrophilia and sadomasochism, respectively, personified in the practices carried out by their main characters. Did you have any problem with censorship for it?

No. The censorship of the time was particularly stupid: it censured swear words and naked women. That is all.

The truth is that the presence of these rugged themes is a constant in much of your filmography. Where does this interest come from?

From nowhere. It was the producers who asked me for more and more intriguing stories. So much so that the Italian suspense was born with Libido, which was my debut as a film director in the company of Vittorio Salerno and also that for the actors Giancarlo Gianni and Mara Maryl, my wife, with whom I had married in 1960.

 

[Ernesto (on the left) and Vittorio Salerno, the two co-directors of "Libido", flank a very young Giancarlo Giannini on a break from filming.]

Since you quoted it, how does this opportunity arise for you to make the leap to the address with Libido?

It was born from a bet between producers Mino Loy and Luciano Martino. The first said that a good director should have great technical knowledge, while the second maintained that he had to know how to tell stories. I was in the middle of the discussion and with a wife at home, who graduated from the CSC, who wanted to be an actress, but with whom I had made a pact: she would not play any movie that I did not direct and I would not direct any film that she wasn't in So I looked for a film with a very small budget and thus Libido was born, which has now become a cult film. The budget was so ridiculous that we shot it with Arriflex and a tripod in eighteen days, without technical means and with a team reduced to a minimum. The protagonists were unknown but, nevertheless, the monetary gain compared to the investment was surprisingly enormous.

In the credit titles the direction of the film is granted to one Julian Berry Storff, a name that intermingles a usual pseudonym with that of Vittorio Salerno, the co-director of the film. Why did they use this formula?

Distributors wanted foreign names for thrillers. Julian Berry was the pseudonym with which I published science fiction novels with the publisher Mondadori and Storff was the name of Vittorio's mother.

Despite this debut as early as a filmmaker, the truth is that your career as a director is very scarce, especially when compared to your career as a screenwriter. Why did you direct so few movies?

Because after Libido I ran into the bankruptcy of distributors Lux France and Lux ​​Italia, which caused my next film, Cin cin ... cyanide, a delicious action comedy, had very little distribution and was an economic failure.

The plots of both Libido, and La frusta e il corpo or La vergine di Norimberga are grounded in the development of intrigues centered on the revelation of the identity of the author of the crimes that occur in history and somehow foreshadow the arrival del giallo, according to the formula popularized by Mario Bava and Dario Argento. Is it somehow considered a precursor of the genre?

Much more. As I said before, Salerno and I invented the Italian giallo. Libido was a masterpiece of the genre and still years later I receive the praise of international experts in giallo who do not guess who to blame until the end. But what counts is that the film, which cost twenty-six million, was a boom worldwide and raised four hundred million. From that moment, Martino and Loy climbed up like a rocket and made me write a lot of gialli.

On the other hand, I must say that Argento's thrillers, which would come years later, are not really gialli, since they are based on the surprise effects of terror, they do not follow the logic that a giallo must have. In this regard I recommend consulting my book Come scrivere un giallo. Manual per scrivere libri gialli.

[Hilton and Edwige Fenech in a promotional photograph of "The Wicked Mrs. Ward"]

Within your contribution to this genre, the five films you wrote for Sergio Martino seem very interesting: The Wicked Mrs. Ward, The Tail of the Scorpion / La coda dello scorpione (1971), All the Colors of Darkness, Forbidden Vices (Il tuo vizio è a stanza chiusa and only io ne ho la chiave, 1972) and Torso, Carnal Violence, five gialli that, despite their formal differences, maintain a strong homogeneity among themselves. Without going any further, in the face of the supposed misogyny that has been attributed to the gender, this quintet of titles can even be seen as feminist allegations. Was that your intention?

Absolutely not. This is the first time that makes me think about it: for me women are perfect protagonists of suspense stories, or as victims, or as engines of history, because they are much more unpredictable than men.

Since, with the exception of Torso, these films share a similar group of performers, formed by Edwige Fenech, George Hilton, Anita Strindberg, Alberto de Mendoza, Luigi Pistilli and Ivan Rassimov, did you write the scripts already thinking about the actor who was going to play each character?

I have almost never done that in my career, and in these movies never. There are in other cases that yes, as in My Name is Nobody that was written for Terence Hill, or Pupa, Charlie and his gorilla (La Pupa del Gangster, 1975), which was for Sofia Loren, and some others.

By the way, Il tuo vizio è a stanza chiusa and only io ne ho la chiave seems to me one of the most beautiful titles I have ever heard. It's yours?

The script did, but that title was a thing of Luciano Martino, Sergio's brother and film producer.

These works come at a time when your career is most prolific, reaching up to eight scripts filmed in a year. How did you manage to carry out such a large amount of work?

As I said at the beginning, I am addicted to writing, so writing for me is also fun: inventing characters is a hoot because, if they are well done, at some point they rule. Who invents them is their "god" and yet ... (do not remember anything?).

[A fun image of Ernesto and his wife, Mara Maryl]

Apart from gialli and horror movies, you also write wésterns, peplums, polizia, war movies and comedies. Did you have a special predilection for some genre or one in which you felt more comfortable working?

No. Each one has different characteristics: the western is a fable, with simple and primitive feelings, the giallo is more complex, and the comedies are more difficult because they need funny dialogues.

Within your participation in the so-called spaghetti-western, your association with Sergio Leone stands out. Is it true that in the credits of the script for My Name is Nobody, although the name of Leone appears, in fact he did not write anything?

Sergio didn't write and didn't even read the cript: he had them read it and then he told it. My Name is Nobody, the only thing he owns is the title, because at first he wanted to do the Odyssey in the West, although he later surrendered.

Following your collaboration with Leone, you also participated in the writing of Once Upon a Time in America (Once Upon a Time in America, 1984), although not credited. What was your participation and what remains of it in the final version of the film?

I followed the plot of the book more closely and my treatment avoided some clamorous mistakes that the movie has, such as the mandatory anonymous phone call for De Niro when Max wants to make him believe he was dead and replaces his body with another. To do so, he would have had to have an agreement at least with the police minister ... Apart from an anonymous phone call for a beer shipment ... And in Leone's absolute masterpiece the logic does not exist, but it is a wonderful movie.

On the other hand, no one in the United States can become a senator without a past. A criminal can do it, but one without parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, uncles and great aunts, no. In my treatment, Max was not a senator, etc.

Between the end of the 70s and the first half of the 80s, the Italian popular cinema gradually focuses its production on the realization of rounds of the main Hollywood hits. A stream in which you participate with films such as Cayman (Il fiume del grande caimano, 1979) or 2019 - After the Fall of New York (2019 - Dopo la caduta di New York, 1983) that used Shark as a model (Jaws, 1975) by Steven Spielberg and 1997: Rescue in New York (Escape from New York, 1981) by John Carpenter. Why was this change in orientation?

Simple: the success of some films encouraged worldwide demand for other similar films and our producers, which had light structures, we were the first to copy.

And how was the making of this type of films? Did the producer set from the beginning the films that his script should look like?

Yes, the producer called me and said: "Write me a story similar to ...", but immediately. As Piedmontese I made a career for my precision in the delivery of texts ...

Coinciding with the adoption of this policy, in the mid-eighties Italian popular cinema went into crisis until practically disappearing at the end of the decade. You, who lived it in the first person, what factors do you think influenced this situation?

There were several factors: the Berlusconi mafia, its alliance with Craxi, the crazy release of television produced by Peppo Sacchi that brought down the RAI monopoly, with the consequent invasion of films on the small screen and, finally, the exhaustion of the genders".

Looking back, which of all your scripts do you feel most proud of?

Libido's.

And of all the directors with whom he has worked throughout his career, which do you think has been the one that best reflected his scripts?

Sergio Martino and Tonino Valerii.

And, as a farewell, what assessment do you make of your career?

The race does not count. The only question that makes sense at the end of life is: did you enjoy your life? And doing a job you love is half the satisfaction, the other is love.