I've begun my own little horror film * that's included in an installation of my short films in the basement of 17 Nolan Park, Governors Island where West Harlem Art Fund has a group exhibit called "Loosely Coupled".
The basement setting plus two fascinating summers of 70s American, and British and Italian Horror, inspired "Il Giallo Della Paine" the 3rd film in a trio I'm calling "Upstairs in the Basement".
Here are some shots of the installation and some of the characters in the video:
Some of the players...
Giallo chic, an attempt at Hammer Glamour & Frank!
*"Il Giallo della Paine!" (2011) 8 min. A “scary” montage of vanished spaces playfully using the visual tropes and aural cues of 1970s, American and British horror and of the Italian thriller films known as "Giallo" (Yello).
A very beautiful and rather gory horror film that's far more elegant than this poster. All kinds of amazing details in the design of the film including the Givenchy gowns, nutty pretty score by Maurice (Ryan's Daughter) Jarre and Alida Valli's sweater coat and patent leather mack. In the garage of the horrible chateau are both a Deux Chevaux and a modern Citroen. The evil house has sterile white interiors (with no wallpaper!)and a double set of staircases leading to th upper rooms where Christiane spends her days. Dr.Genessier rivals Dr. Victor Frankenstein for professional snobbery and morally relative ethics!
Wasn't it in France where they performed a successful face transplant?
This film was spooky! It's another movie from class that left me feeling uneasy. I identified with Nell (Eleanor), the Julie Harris character for all kinds of the wrong reasons but what struck me was how much I was reminded of her performance as Frankie in The Member of the Wedding (1952 d. Fred Zinnemann) almost ten years earlier.
What if Frankie, left behind after her brother’s marriage and from the honeymoon, got stuck in time? Would she grown up to be Nell Lance? Isn't that what hauntings are sometimes? Existence outside of time? Charlene Bunnell writes in The Planks of Reason: ”The Gothic philosophy is thus a progressive one…it recognizes the passage of time and, consequentially the necessity of change. A static society…retards or even denies time and is, therefore, as unnatural to the Gothists as ghost and haunted houses are to realists. So while society and its institutions are not necessarily evil or hypocritical, a rigid adherence to unchanging doctrines, traditions, and ideas is, for it creates an isolated and closed world.” (Pg 83-84 The Gothic)
Messy marriages and oppressive and/or disappointing families seem to be motif running through several of the movies we’ve seen (see The Mirror section of Dead of Night). The beginning scenes of the movie cover the legend of the Hill House (as opposed to but also inspiring The Legend of Hell House). The introductory montage resonated with Peeping Tom's films within the film with a scene of a child confronting her dead mother (a confrontation we hear about but don’t see with Nell). But the film really seems to begin with the first scenes of Eleanor with her married sister’s family begging to use the car. Harris’ strained pleading/insisting echoes the heart-wrenching but shrill manner that she used as 12-year-old Frankie (she was 27 when playing the part). Eleanor is both infantilized and a spinster, asking permission from her brother-in-law (as tho’ he were her father) as her niece mocks her in her “only room” (the living room she rents from her sister) while nursery music plays on the soundtrack. It turns out it’s a player off-screen. The married family is paternalistic and smug. So little Nell who nothing ever happens to--since she spent her life caring for her ill mother--who hopes to have the first “chance of a vacation in all her life” (in a haunted house?) and who needs a home and her own…life, gets drawn into Hill House.
Come down here right now, young lady!
And not(?) coincidentally into the marriage of the somewhat handsome, quite paternalist and definitely opportunistic, Dr. Markway. Markway conceals his marriage and leads Nell on (Theo calls them Tristan and Isolde)—hoping to advance his research. It’s both funny and frightening when Markway’s wife shows up and promptly disappears that his biggest concern is that this occurrence will bring the police and interrupt his investigation! Meanwhile, Nell feels that Mrs. Markway is trying to replace her in the house (and with Markway). She’s the 3rd wheel in the marriage again, just like Frankie. Her hopes are childishly pinned to Markway/Hill House (who seems to be more conflated with the house than in the book but I haven’t finished yet!) So, The Haunting is, in part, a kind of domestic fairytale with Prince Charming, a princess (and Handmaiden—Theo?) all stuck together in a castle.
