Italian cinema – An Echo That's Reversing

Genova – il primo mese

Updated 24 Oct 2025

Of all the difficulties, the one that surprised me was an inability to understand the amount the cashier says when checking out at a store, restaurant, etc. Numbers are second nature to me when reading or speaking but, as with all of my listening skills, my comprehension is lacking. Hearing “dicianovequarantacinque” isn’t the same as reading €19,45 and intuitively speaking that glob of words in your head. It’s not that much a necessary skill: when was the last time someone mis-charged you at checkout? And at every place except at a caffè I use a credit card where: the cashier says something, I hover my card over the ))) little radar symbol, and finally they shove a long piece of paper at me. Voila, my four bottles of wine are on their way home (I am of course kidding, I don’t have to pay that much for four bottles of wine).

Well it may have taken me a month to get here but I can finally understand. (Me: “I can COUNT!”. Everyone, patting me on the head: “…”).

Spectacle

But a lie that can no longer be challenged becomes a form of madness.

Over the past six or so months I’ve on and off been reading Guy Debord’s The Society of Spectacle. I had encountered his ideas in an essay which used them to explain much of modern social media, key is applying his observation of how capitalism molds “people” into “consumers” in such a way as to make their primary identities not only what they purchase, but the act of purchasing. See: YouTube videos of product influencers and the post-apocalyptically odd phenomenon of pre-teens making thousands of dollars a week off of unboxing videos. “Apple is better than Windows” has supplanted the identity of ideas with the identity of product.

(as always: my understanding of him may be a bit naive)

Italian giallo and Gothic horror (3rd session)

I’ve finished the films I hadn’t already seen from the Arrow Giallo Essentials and have watched a few more from YouTube and kanopy (the streaming service from the public library system). The problem with those public sources, besides the risk of Extremely Low Quality, is they are rarely in the original Italian and so you have to suffer through the dubbed version. However, the new year brings with it an attempt to stay on budget so I won’t be buying any more Blu-rays if I can find it streaming.

Italian giallo and gothic horror (2nd session)

Since I’ve seen most of the streaming giallo films with Italian audio and English subtitles, I decided to see if I could find the Arrow Video giallo boxed sets, or at least some of them, for a decent price. Each has three films on Blu-ray but people try to sell them for wild prices like $100 and more. No. Luckily Arrow has most of them for $35 (well, all but one is sold out so I must’ve gotten really lucky). As a bonus, I picked up their Sergio Martino collection. One of the Martino films is also in the White collection (Morte sospetta di una minorenne) so that’s 17 films, 6 I’ve already seen. This will keep me busy.

Italian giallo and gothic horror

Back in July 2020 I burned through watching around ten or so giallo films over a couple of weeks, resurrecting my interest from years prior. A week ago I had a similar urge but this time to watch some 1950s/60s gothic horror–castles, curses, brooding women–and wanted to find movies in Italian with subtitles in order to get better listening and hopefully understanding. Some words and phrases will be less useful (i vizi morbosi, il mulino, lei è un strega) but there will otherwise be simpler dialog that uses probably 50% of my current vocabulary, and maybe repetition will help me pick up new words and provide examples of simple conversational phrases in context.