Giallo is a cinematic genre that emerged in 1960s Italy, but to understand its origins, we need to travel back in time. The late 1920s and early 1930s America, the era of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound, was also a great time for mystery writers like Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace, and Raymond Chandler. Their works, grim and full of crime, reflected the tumultuous state of American society which was deeply affected by the Depression. In the early 1940s, their works were adapted into film noir pieces. However, their influence on cinema is not limited to Hollywood only.   Giallo Mondadori: Murder Mystery Comes to Italy The Striking Red Visuals in Blood and Black Lace, 1964. Source: TheMovieDb   In 1929 in Italy, a publishing house decided to translate these works and publish them in paperbacks that had a signature yellow cover. The series was named Il Giallo Mondadori—Giallo being the Italian word for yellow and Mondadori the name of the publishing house. These paperbacks proved to be a major success, prompting …