Through a Killer’s Eyes: First-Person Perspective and Audience Implication in Peeping Tom and Profondo Rosso
The slasher film regularly obfuscates the identity of the central assailant and disrupts the audiences' sympathetic association with the figures on-screen through its use of the first person point-of-view shot. The device can be traced back to Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960), often cited as the foundational slasher film, and its use of the camera’s lens as both the entry point for the viewer’s subjective association with the killer’s perspective and the weapon through which the killer enacts violence. It is equally prevalent in the Italian giallo, often cited as a forebear to the modern slasher subgenre. Dario Argento’s Profondo rosso/Deep Red (1975) epitomizes this prevalence, as the film’s sequences of violence often rapidly shift between the first person point-of-view shots of the killer during both the preparation for the attack and the assault itself. Through close analysis of both texts, I contend that the use of perspective shots in slasher films and the slasher-adjacent giallo confronts the passive nature of cinema spectatorship and implicates the audience bystander by forcing them to identify with the perspective of the assailant.
- Ted Silva (Boston University, US)
The slasher film regularly obfuscates the identity of the central assailant and disrupts the audiences' sympathetic association with the figures on-screen through its use of the first person point-of-view shot. The device can be traced back to Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (1960), often cited as the foundational slasher film, and its use of the camera’s lens as both the entry point for the viewer’s subjective association with the killer’s perspective and the weapon through which the killer enacts violence. It is equally prevalent in the Italian giallo, often cited as a forebear to the modern slasher subgenre. Dario Argento’s Profondo rosso/Deep Red (1975) epitomizes this prevalence, as the film’s sequences of violence often rapidly shift between the first person point-of-view shots of the killer during both the preparation for the attack and the assault itself. Through close analysis of both texts, I contend that the use of perspective shots in slasher films and the slasher-adjacent giallo confronts the passive nature of cinema spectatorship and implicates the audience bystander by forcing them to identify with the perspective of the assailant.
The Hybrid Gaze of the Slasher: POV Shots and the Influence of Italian Horror
This paper presents the Italian giallo film as a proto-slasher, exploring the complex entanglements between Italian formulations of horror and violence and their American counterparts, proposing the concept of a “hybrid gaze” before exploring the terror it engenders. Within these films, which often carry a strong emphasis on visibility (or lack thereof), the gaze has remained a distinctive feature of primary focus. This obsession with the gaze and visibility is amplified by the use of point-of-view perspective cinematography, most poignantly showing that of the killer and their intended victims. Less explored, however, is how some Italian gialli have moved beyond a human gaze altogether. Establishing an ecology of Italian horror by looking at three films--Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood (1971), Sergio Martino’s Torso (1973), and Dario Argento’s Phenomena (1984)--featuring insects’ first-‘person’ perspective shots, this paper carefully traces the formation of a gaze in slasher films that not only rubs against gendered processes of identification and their associated sadistic and masochistic pleasures (Mulvey 1975; Williams 1984; Clover 1992; Creed 1993), but also disrupts the understanding of this gaze as human. This focus enables a consideration of the ways in which this evolution of the gaze is reflective of the context within which it emerged. This period in Italian genre cinema, marked by a tumultuous political time in Italy and the rise of eco-horror cinema more broadly, is offered as a possible explanation for this innovative new mode of viewing and showing horror, one that triggers deep-seated anxieties and also questions our humanity.
- Émilie von Garan (University of Toronto, CA)
This paper presents the Italian giallo film as a proto-slasher, exploring the complex entanglements between Italian formulations of horror and violence and their American counterparts, proposing the concept of a “hybrid gaze” before exploring the terror it engenders. Within these films, which often carry a strong emphasis on visibility (or lack thereof), the gaze has remained a distinctive feature of primary focus. This obsession with the gaze and visibility is amplified by the use of point-of-view perspective cinematography, most poignantly showing that of the killer and their intended victims. Less explored, however, is how some Italian gialli have moved beyond a human gaze altogether. Establishing an ecology of Italian horror by looking at three films--Mario Bava’s A Bay of Blood (1971), Sergio Martino’s Torso (1973), and Dario Argento’s Phenomena (1984)--featuring insects’ first-‘person’ perspective shots, this paper carefully traces the formation of a gaze in slasher films that not only rubs against gendered processes of identification and their associated sadistic and masochistic pleasures (Mulvey 1975; Williams 1984; Clover 1992; Creed 1993), but also disrupts the understanding of this gaze as human. This focus enables a consideration of the ways in which this evolution of the gaze is reflective of the context within which it emerged. This period in Italian genre cinema, marked by a tumultuous political time in Italy and the rise of eco-horror cinema more broadly, is offered as a possible explanation for this innovative new mode of viewing and showing horror, one that triggers deep-seated anxieties and also questions our humanity.
A Girl, A Knife, A Genre
In Studying Horror Cinema, Brian Turnock uses Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (1971) as his slasher case study. In his recommended viewing list for the slasher chapter, he lists Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980), and Black Christmas (1974), but also Bava's Blood and Black Lace (1964) and Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975). The logic of film selection, then, seems to collapse the slasher film with gialli, or at least insists that we read them side by side. This paper explores the limits of genre, interrogating the relationship (posited in at least one textbook) between the slasher and the giallo. Complicating my argument are my own case studies, which push a little against strict genre boundaries: Bernard Rose's Candyman (1992), Fulvio Wetzl's Rorret (1989) and Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's Amer (2009).
- Joan Hawkins (Indiana University, US)
In Studying Horror Cinema, Brian Turnock uses Mario Bava's Bay of Blood (1971) as his slasher case study. In his recommended viewing list for the slasher chapter, he lists Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980), and Black Christmas (1974), but also Bava's Blood and Black Lace (1964) and Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975). The logic of film selection, then, seems to collapse the slasher film with gialli, or at least insists that we read them side by side. This paper explores the limits of genre, interrogating the relationship (posited in at least one textbook) between the slasher and the giallo. Complicating my argument are my own case studies, which push a little against strict genre boundaries: Bernard Rose's Candyman (1992), Fulvio Wetzl's Rorret (1989) and Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani's Amer (2009).