10.13130/2036-461X/16422
"Sulle tracce del crimine. Viaggio nel giallo e nero Rai / Hot on the Heels of Crime. A Journey into the World of Detectives on Rai"
(Roma, Museo di Roma in Trastevere October 7, 2020 – March 31, 2021)
Exhibition and Catalogue Roma: RaiLibri, 2020
application/pdf
2036-461X
16422
36/37
en
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
"Sulle tracce del crimine. Viaggio nel giallo e nero Rai / Hot on the Heels of Crime. A Journey into the World of Detectives on Rai"
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
21
Reviews / Comptes rendus
2021-11-17
2021-09-21
2021-11-17
2022-12-30
195-197
Cinéma & Cie
Paola Valentini
2021/11/17
10.13130/2036-461X/16422
195
Università degli Studi di Firenze
2036-461X
36/37
en
197
"Sulle tracce del crimine. Viaggio nel giallo e nero Rai / Hot on the Heels of Crime. A Journey into the World of Detectives on Rai"
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16422/14753
21
                                                                                       Sulle tracce del crimine. Viaggio nel
                                                                                       giallo e nero Rai
                                                                                       Hot on the Heels of Crime. A Journey into the
                                                                                       World of Detectives on Rai
                                                                                       (Roma, Museo di Roma in Trastevere, October 7, 2020 – March 31, 2021)
                                                                                       Exhibition and Catalogue Roma: RaiLibri, 2020
                                                                                       DOI 10.13130/2036-461X/16422




                                                                                         The Italian Giallo and the noir: these are           Rai’s extraordinary television production,
                                                                                       not merely two (of the best known) types,              proposing various chapters of this history: the
                                                                                       two possibilities among the various forms of           halls of the exhibition accommodate different
                                                                                       that macro-genre that today is often labelled          sections devoted to figures, trends and forms
                                                                                       crime, which features gothic atmospheres or            of crime. This includes ‘Gothic’, ‘Laura Storm
                                                                                       detection, legal cases or conspiracy theories,         and Other Female Detectives’, ‘Detectives
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License




                                                                                       seductive criminals or sprawling mafia                 Stories Meet Noir’ and ‘The Dark Heart of
                                                                                       intrigues. The terms also denote a forcefield          Italy’. Meanwhile — following the narrative
                                                                                       that stretches between the two extremes of             of the genre itself — this tour of ‘detection’
                                                                                       escapist and subversive power; to quote two            leads the visitor to different, possible cross-
                                                                                       famous reflections, they intercept, on the one         roads, thanks to the strong multi-sensorial
                                                                                       hand, that naive amusement, that ‘fresh and            dimension of the exhibition: our attention
                                                                                       straightforward impressionism’ that Antonio            is suddenly called to a noise or to the cover
                                                                                       Gramsci envied in his friend’s reading of GK           of a book, to the sound of music or to press
                                                                                       Chesterton’s novels, but also, on the other,           clippings. Thus, we find ourselves bewitched
                                                                                       that ‘curious and nonconformist’ style, as             by a monitor, eye-to-eye with Alida Valli and
                                                                                       radically modernist as the avant-garde, of             enchanted by her plea to have her son returned
                                                                                       1940s film noir, which fascinated Marcel               to her, trying to tell reality from fiction (I figli di
                                                                                       Duhamel and the French surrealists.1                   Medea, Anton Giulio Majano, 1959). Or we can
                                                                                         The itinerary of the exhibition Hot on the           take a detour, attracted to the aural evidence
                                                                                       Heels of Crime offers a similar experience.            of shots and screeching tires, whispers and
                                                                                       It leads through the multiple formulas of              creaks, screams and verbal orders emanating
                                                                                       crimes and investigations that television              from the installations, acknowledging the
                                                                                       has been able to create, activating the same           sound of TV crime and its dialogue with
                                                                                       emotional and intellectual dialectic: the              cinema, as well as with radio broadcasts,
                                                                                       pleasure of recognizing and rediscovering              comics and animation. We can also find pages
                                                                                       what is familiar, together with the amazement          of literature written by Carlo Emilio Gadda but
                                                                                       at seeing well-known icons in an unexpected            also try to detect Ingravallo in Flavio Bucci’s
                                                                                       way. The exhibition unveils and investigates           countenance (Quer pasticciaccio brutto de


                                                                                       Cinéma & Cie vol. 21 no. 36/37 2021 · ISSN 2036-461X                                                 195
via Merulana, P. Schivazzappa 1983), or            on-set photographs — selected by Stefano
investigate Dürrenmatt in Paolo Stoppa’s role      Nespolesi — capture a relevant snapshot
as chief of police Bärlach (Il sospetto, Daniele   of past technologies and, above all, at TV
D’Anza, 1972). A map on the wall allows us to      production, something that is constantly
identify several secret and unusual corners of     central — as Emiliano Morreale and Luca
Rome, made famous by Il segno del comando          Barra recall in their essays in the catalogue
(Daniele D’Anza, 1971), or we can be carried       — to a full understanding of television crime
away by ‘The Rhythm of a Thriller’ room and        fiction. At the same time, the exhibition and
its famous crime drama theme tunes (from           catalogue also provide many lessons in visual
those of Le temps file ses jours by Luigi Tenco    culture: the pictures of the New Millennium
and Le nuove inchieste del commissario             crime hero force us to reflect on this icon and
Maigret, 1964, to the sound of trumpets by         its actions, just as how ‘the revolver which
Nicola Piovani for Linda e il brigadiere, 1997).   becomes in his hands an almost intellectual
Finally, we can be tempted to decipher the         weapon, the argument that dumbfounds’,
contents of the glass cases — excerpts of          as André Bazin wrote of Humphrey Bogart.4
minutes, judgements, renowned front pages          Thus, the exhibition offers further insights
of newspapers, and so forth, together with         into how ‘the immanence of death, its
scripts and props — to try to understand more      imminence as well’ is epitomized by police
about ‘Shadows and Mysteries in Italy’ in this     chief Cattani (Michele Placido) or inspector
final room creating connections between            Coliandro (Giampaolo Morelli), by the ‘hunter’
reality, its narration and fiction.                judge (Francesco Montanari) or the cop Rocco
  A collaboration with the Fondazione Arnoldo      Schiavone (Marco Giallini).
e Alberto Mondadori and the Institut National         Hot on the Heels of Crime provides many
de l’Audiovisuel (INA), the ‘synaesthetic and      attractions for the visitor as well as for readers
multi-sensorial’ Rai exhibition — to borrow        and passionate scholars: the journey through
Peppino Ortoleva’s definition of the 2000s         detective stories is intertwined with an
thriller in the exhibition catalogue2 — offers     important piece of national/television history;
rich intermediality, as TV dialogues with          it presents its wounds and the different ways
radio, the print and recording industries,         of fixing or shunning them. As writers and
loisir and visual cultures, along with fashion     showrunners such as Carlo Lucarelli (Blu
and geography, in Italy and abroad. What           notte, Inspector Coliandro) and Giancarlo De
emerges is the absolutely central role played      Cataldo (Crimini, Romanzo criminale) recall
by television in reworking and confirming the      in the catalogue, crime fiction certainly does
plural expressions of crime fiction, in the rich   not provide a superficial mirroring of the
array of inspired and multimedia detectives,       times. Rather, as stated above, the giallo gives
including Sheridan (Ubaldo Lay) and Nero           shape to the complexity of the contemporary
Wolfe (Tino Buazzelli), De Luca (Alessandro        world, and it tends, even metaphorically,
Preziosi) and Don Matteo (Terence Hill).           to ‘go on the road’,5 and — as in exhibited
  Not only do the iconographic and audiovisual     film stills — to reread and rewrite national
resources presented here offer a precious          geography. As Todorov pointed out, detective
moment ‘of synthesis, collection, an overall       fiction always invokes a question about time:
glance’3 at crime narratives and at the            the past (the resolution of a past crime is
priceless heritage of the Teche Rai archives,      typical of the whodunit), the present (the
the exhibition also provides evidence of their     thriller where everything is potentially about
wealth of implications. The large number of        to happen) and finally the future (the curiosity


196                                                                           Sulle Tracce del Crimine
about the events which will take place after
the discovery of the truth, as is typical of
suspense).6 Here, the journey into crime
interacts with Italian socio-cultural history
and its narration, stimulating questions and
traversing different time frames. It does all of
this without ever betraying the desire and the
memory that make every piece of evidence,
every element of suspense, every sound and
every television frame and film still in the
exhibition ‘the stuff that dreams are made
of’, as Humphrey Bogart defined The Maltese
Falcon (John Huston, 1946).
                                  Paola Valentini
               [Università degli Studi di Firenze]




   Notes
   1
     See Marcel Duhamel’s preface to Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton, Panorama du
   film noir américain 1941-1953 (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1955), first publ. A Panorama
   of American Film Noir. 1941-1953 (San Francisco: City Lights Book, 2002), pp. XXIII-XXV. See
   also James Namemore’s introduction to the English edition ‘A Season in Hell or the Snows of
   Yesteryear?’, pp. VII-XXII.
   2
     Peppino Ortoleva, ‘La morte, il mistero, la poltrona: i segreti del giallo televisivo’, in Sulle
   tracce del crimine. Viaggio nel giallo e nero Rai. Il catalogo, ed. by Maria Pia Ammirati and
   Peppino Ortoleva (Roma: Rai Libri, 2020), pp. 17-34 (p. 21).
   3
     Maria Pia Ammirati. Rai Teche Director, ‘La storia del giallo Rai come archeologia della
   serialità moderna’, in Sulle tracce del crimine, pp. 12-14 (p. 13).
   4
     André Bazin, ‘The Death of Humphrey Bogart [1957]’, in Cahiers du cinéma. The 1950s. Neo-
   Realism, Hollywood, New Wave, ed. by Jim Hillier (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1986).
   5
     Maurizio De Giovanni, ‘Nella pelle dell’assassino’, in Sulle tracce del crimine, pp. 51-60 (p. 53).
   6
     Tsvetan Todorov, The Typology of Detective Fiction [1966], in Modern Criticism and Theory: A
   Reader, ed. by David Lodge (London and New York: Longman, 1999), pp. 137-144.



Cinéma & Cie vol. 21 no. 36/37 2021 · ISSN 2036-461X                                               197
