![]() ![]() The language differences gradually exacerbate Gilderoy’s feeling of isolation and unease, and add incomprehension to the bewilderment of his task. When first meeting Cosimo, Gilderoy is promptly sanctioned for his reserve and introversion, and his cultural difference is formulated as a shortcoming: “What’s wrong with you English? You don’t believe in handshakes? No hugs, no kisses?”, he asks. The linguistic and cultural differences increase Gilderoy’s initial adjustment difficulties. First, in front of beautiful and mean Elena who either refuses to help him with his travel reimbursement requests or is very reluctant when she does help then, in relation to Cosimo (Francesco Coraggio), the producer, who constantly reproaches him various slights and oversights and finally, to Santini, the director with a womanizer’s reputation, whose name is the Italian for “little saint”. His middle age notwithstanding, he seems to have little life experience and becomes easily baffled and bashful. Just like his literary predecessors, Gilderoy comes out as the typical Englishman from the very beginning: polite, restrained, resilient and rigorous in his pragmatism. The innocuous tourist-narrator of novels such as Anne Radcliffe’s The Italian for example, was placed in an environment imbued with mystery and dark sensuality, whose cultural difference accentuated the feeling of hostility that the land engendered, forcing the boundaries of the man’s self-understanding and ability to adjust. Gilderoy is part of a long character tradition, which belongs not so much to film as to the Gothic literature of English expression: the innocent man who finds himself a foreigner in a significantly different culture, going back to the fiction of Ann Radcliffe and later, Bram Stoker. Gilderoy walking along the corridor of Berberian Sound Studio As Gilderoy is discussing his travel expenses with Elena, the lady at the reception, a nostalgic nondiegetic tune emphasizes the eeriness of the atmosphere and anticipates the film’s thematic. The place looks like a deserted psychiatric hospital, were it not for the distressing sounds. ![]() While he is rather cautiously pacing along the corridor, we can hear dramatic female screams gushing out from behind remote doors. The film opens with Gilderoy walking on the long corridors of the Berberian Sound Studio, having just landed from England, suitcases in hand. In the second part, I tackle several aspects related to how sound is manufactured in the film, from the sound machines to the foley, which I discuss in relation to the notions of pastiche, schizophonia and rhizophonia. I will examine in the first part of my essay a series of associations and contrasts involved in the culture clash that Gilderoy experiences, to throw light on the psychological and emotional dynamic of the characters this will help to better understand the narrative as well as the critique of violence and sexual exploitation that Strickland’s film articulates about the giallo movies discussed in the third part. Reticent and slightly embarrassed, Gilderoy soon finds himself trapped in the bizarre world he is supposed to make audible, as the difference between reality and fiction gradually becomes distorted and indistinct. He soon learns to his dismay that the work he was commissioned to do has nothing in common with the nature documentaries he used to work on back home in Dorking, as it involves a much less innocuous type of sounds and cinematography: it is a horror movie of a genre very popular in Italy during that time, in the seventies, called giallo. Strickland’s film, recently adapted for a theatrical representation in London, is about foley artist Gilderoy (Toby Jones), a middle-aged reserved and timid Englishman, who goes to Italy to make the sound effects for a film at a post-production company called Berberian Sound Studio. I will also take a look at the critique of the genre, triggered by the distance from the original that the pastiche takes. Starting from Strickland’s stated intention, I will explore the ways in which the film qualifies as an affectionate pastiche. Peter Strickland intended Berberian Sound Studio (2012) as a film tribute to the way analogue sound was created in the 1970s giallo movies while eschewing a too retro or faithful rendition of the original. ![]()
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