Film Geeks SD launches Italian and
Gearhead Cinema series at Digital Gym
Wednesday, January 8, 2020
By Beth Accomando
Rory Calhourn stars as Dario and Lea Massari as Diala in
Sergio Leone's feature film debut "The Colossus of Rhodes," a peplum
or sword and sandal film.
In addition to being the KPBS arts reporter, I also
volunteer as a film programmer through Film Geeks SD and co-host a pair of
annual film series at Digital Gym Cinema. This Sunday marks the launch of a
monthly series on Italian Genre Cinema and Monday night is the start of Gearhead
Cinema.
As much as I love my job, I love film programming even more.
There is nothing that gives me greater joy than programming films to share with
audiences and to provide a context and an opportunity for film geeks to, well,
geek out over film.
This is the sixth year Film Geeks SD has been programming at
Digital Gym. My main partner in crime for this is Miguel Rodriguez of Horrible
Imaginings Film Festival. We volunteer as programmers and through our Film
Geeks Facebook page, we poll followers about the themes for our yearlong
series. This year, people voted for Italian Genre Cinema and Gearhead Cinema.
Our goal is to present films in either a context of film history or from a more
social perspective.
American actor Lee Van Cleef made a name for himself in the
1960s starring in Italian spaghetti westerns like Giulio Petroni's "Death
Rides a Horse" in 1967.
For the Italian Genre Cinema series, Film Geeks will be be
partnering with San Diego Italian Film Festival (SDIFF) to take audiences
through the evolution of Italian popular cinema starting in the 1950s with the
peplum or sword and sandal films, then moving on to the 1960s with spaghetti
westerns and then finishing in the 70s and 80s with giallo and poliziotteschi.
SDIFF artistic director Antonio Iannotta will be providing context for the
films and each film will be preceded by trailers of other films that helped to
define the genre. We are also planning to showcase the Italian comedy by
Vittorio De Sica "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" starring Sophia
Loren and Marcello Mastroianni at SDIFF in the fall.
The film series launches Sunday, Jan. 12 at 1:00 pm with
"The Colossus of Rhodes," which is a peplum or sword and sandal film.
The Italian film industry was looking to cash in on the popularity of American
Biblical epics like Cecil B De Mille’s "The Ten Commandments." It
wanted something that looked like a Hollywood film, which appealed to Italian
audiences, and something that they could also export back to America to cash
in on an additional market. These were called peplum films (a Latin word for a
Robe of State). Italy
had been producing these sword and sandal films from the silent days but the
Second World War devastated the Italian film industry, which rebounded with
highly respected Neo-Realist films as well as more popular genres like low
budget comedies and a return to sword and sandal films. And while inspired by Hollywood Biblical epics, peplum films took a more fun
tact. Instead of trying to serve up profound drama steeped in history, most
peplum films aimed lower and went for lavish sensuality mixed with fantasy.
"The Colossus of Rhodes" is the
first feature film of Sergio Leone who would go on to define the spaghetti
western in the following decade.
Reg
Park is Hercules in Mario
Bava's "Hercules in the Haunted World."
Godzilla and Italian Peplum Cinema
Now, I teased you in the headline with the fact that
Godzilla played a role in all this and he did. The rejuvenated genre took off
after producer Joseph E Levine had successfully imported "Gojira" to America by
inserting an American actor (Raymond Burr), dubbing the film into English, and
rechristening it as "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" in 1956. So,
inspired by that financial success he decided to buy and repackaged an Italian
low budget film as "The Labors of Hercules" in 1958 and the peplum
film was off and running.
The series will also highlight another director better known
for his later genre work, Mario Bava. Bava would direct classics of Italian
horror such as "Black Sunday," but earlier in his career he made the
crazy "Hercules in the Haunted World."
But the genre began to die out in the mid-1960s thanks to
decreasing budgets, stale scripts, and just plain wacky storylines. The death
knell came when Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci decided to move on to a new
genre. Swords and sandals were traded in for six-shooters and ponchos, and by
1965 the peplum had pretty much died and were replaced with the new
exploitation boom of the spaghetti western.
Director Sergio Leone loves the landscape of the human face.
For "Duck, You Sucker" in 1971 he tapped American stars James Coburn
(pictured here) and Rod Steiger.
Spaghetti Westerns
The spaghetti western, a term used to refer to western genre
films churned out cheaply by the Italian film industry and often dubbed into
English, was born in the 1960s as the Italian film industry was looking for
something new to strike a cord with filmgoers.
Leone had an idea. He had seen Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo”
and decided to reimagine “Yojimbo” as a western with a young American lead.
That role went to Clint Eastwood who was enjoying success on TV’s “Rawhide.”
But his contract did not allow him to make features in the U.S. so he went to Italy and became an overnight
sensation as the Man with No Name in Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars.” We will
screen the sequel, "For a Few Dollars More", in April.
Leone's westerns served up a new kind of western hero or
rather anti-hero. He was a more ambiguous and morally flexible character that
could reflect the political and social unrest in Italy and elsewhere in the world.
Legendary graphic designer Iginio Lardani and innovative composer Ennio
Morricone contributed elements that defined the style of these films.
The genre definitely imitates American westerns but filters
it through Italian style and a more modern lens. Spaghetti westerns bring in
elements of Catholicism (priests, angels, churches, protagonists being
crucified); politics reflecting turbulent times and unsettling ambiguity; over
the top violence; and younger, attractive stars who suggested that heroes
didn’t necessarily have to be “good guys”, just hip and cool.
Giallo and poliziotteschi
As spaghetti westerns suffered from the same burnout as
peplum, giallo and poliziotteschi films began to provide new popular
entertainment to attract both Italian and international audiences. The word
“giallo” translates literally as “yellow”. But it became synonymous with a
particular style of literary thriller that got its name from the cheap yellow
covers of the novels published in Italy in the ’50s and ’60s. The
films would be the harbingers of the American slasher film. The series will
showcase "Lizard in a Woman's Skin" and "The Strange Vice of
Mrs. Wardh." Did I mention that Italian genre films have the best titles?
Well they do.
Appreciating giallo is important in understanding the
evolution of genre cinema, and its roots reflect filmmakers dealing with social
changes and upheavals through their art. It’s easy to dismiss giallo as mere
exploitation or as lurid and misogynistic if you only look at it in passing or
on the surface. But giallo represents a challenge and a provocation to
repressive social norms and to cinematic expectations. It deliberately and
slyly pushed people’s buttons with its explicit violence, fetishistic
sexuality, pulsing scores, and over the top style. It turned exploitation in
art and seduced us with the beauty of horror. The poliziotteschi or police
thrillers were a natural progression from the giallo films and the two
screening in this series are "The Big Racket" and
"Contraband" and they close out the series in November and December.
Gearhead Cinema showcases a diverse range of films in which
the cars are the stars. So there are cult films like "Vanishing
Point" and "Road Warrior," classy racing films like "Grand
Prix," art house films like Walter Hill’s "The Driver," and then
delicious cheeseball films like "Hot Rods To Hell" that kicks off the
series on Monday, Jan. 13 at 7:30 pm.
"Hot Rods to Hell" was made in 1967 with Dana
Andrews as the square dad harassed by some young thugs. It feels like a film
out of sync with the times and would seem more at home in the 1950s with all
those sensational juvenile delinquent movies. But it is a fun piece of B movie
cheesiness with Hollywood stars Andrews and
Jeanne Crain acting their hearts out. This is a very different flick from the
more serious car films like "Grand Prix" and "Le Mans" (which stars off screen gearhead
Steve McQueen). But we wanted to showcase the broad range of car movies that
have been made. We will be having a stunt driver, Steve Lepper, come and
introduce select films and provide insights into how a film like "Grand
Prix" was made and why gearheads like himself are so in love with it.
Italian Genre Cinema kicks off this Sunday and continues one
Sunday a month through the year while Gearhead Cinema is one Monday night a
month.
If you want to go into more depth on giallo then check out
my archive podcast with two experts on the topic.
Italian Genre Cinema
One Sunday a month at 1:00 pm
Jan 12 - "Colossus Of Rhodes"
Feb 2- "Hercules In The Haunted World"
Mar 8- "After The Fox"
Apr 5- "For A
Few Dollars More"
May 3- "Duck You
Sucker"
Jun 7- "Death
Rides Horse"
July 5- "Companeros"
Aug 2- "Operation Kid Brother"
Sept 13- "Lizard In A Woman’s Skin"
Oct 4- "Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh"
Nov 8- "The Big Racket"
Dec 6- "Contraband"
