In the colors of the night
Mario Bava's style between gothic horror and giallo thriller
An essay by Marcus Stiglegger
(First published in: Splatting Image No. 70 (June 2007), p. 5-11.)
What interests me is the anxiety that people feel when they are alone in her room: fear itself when normal things suddenly start to lead a life of its own entirely.
Mario Bava [1]
Looking at the current historiography of the Italian genre cinema, the term appears giallo (Italian for "yellow") as a key concept, at least in the English literature concerns. The so called specific mixing and violent sexual scenarios and designer, has characterized the Italian thriller of the 1960s and 1970s, is closely linked to two names: Mario Bava and Dario Argento. In particular, Bava's style and influence within the Italian genre film history is not to be underestimated. In a relatively short main creative period as a director Mario Bava showed a surprisingly high level of productivity in different genres: Horror, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure, Erotic comedy, westerns and gangster films. At the same time characterized his films very concise visual style of one, the one based on the literary genre of gothic fiction gothic call could Neo as: In the early black and white films, he used a contrasting-lit studio aesthetics he elaborate camera movements explored with, in the color film This superseded a pointedly artificial, just as picturesque use of colored light and playful décor. Mario Bava's career is also a history of Italian genre cinema, especially the cinema fantasy, from the war until his death in 1980 - shortly it for students Dario Argento, the special effects of Inferno / Fire Dance - Horror Infernal (1980) made had his after. The following considerations illustrate Mario Bava's career as representative for the Italian film fantasy of the 1960s and aims at a definition of the two main styles, the Bava development sustainable: the Neo-Gothic-horror-fantasy and the giallo thriller.
A life for the cinema
Mario Bava was 31 July 1914 in the Italian coastal town of San Remo was born and already faced in early childhood with the world of art and cinema. His father Eugenio Bava (1886-1966) worked originally as a painter and sculptor, had at the beginning of the 20th Century, but also a reputation as a cinematographer and special effects designer made and is today considered one of the pioneers of Italian cinema: He's cinematic career began in 1908 with the French production company Pathé Frères, which hired him as a stage for filming in Savona. At the same time he acquired there, the basics of camera work and visual special effects. Later he moved with his family to Turin in order to work for the production house La Ambrosia. Turin was in those early days of cinema to the first big film city in Italy. 1912 Eugenio Bava worked as a cameraman to Enrico Guazzoni's Quo Vadis epic, probably the first epic ever, with. For Giovanni Pastrone lavish historical epic Cabiria he produced in 1914 together with Sergundo de Chormón some spectacular special effects, such as the eruption of Vesuvius and the destruction of the Roman fleet. With Benito Mussolini seized power in 1922 the film industry became a propaganda tool. The fantastic genre was therefore in the background, and equaled the film amounts to a few years.
Mario Bava was born into a world of special effects. In later interviews, he described the world of his father as a kind of "wonderland". As Eugenio Bava, he studied painting in Rome, but had to stop because of financial reasons, and assisted his father in setting and lighting effects. The fine arts, however, will remain an important reference point for his work. In the late 1940s, he shot a series of art documentaries and soon established himself as one of the best camera and film technicians in Cinecittà. Including, he worked for the directors Roberto Rossellini (including at La nave bianca, 1942), Vittorio De Sica (Villa Borghese, 1953), Georg Wilhelm Pabst (Cose da pazzi, 1953) and Raoul Walsh (Esther e il Re / Esther and the King, 1960). In 1955, he directed - without having to find mention in the credits - a few sequences in Mario Camerinis Ulisse / The journeys of Odysseus thought at that time by no means a career as a director and had also apparently in this respect, no ambition. Became increasingly important his friendship with director Riccardo Freda, who had turned to the war, quite a number of successful historical films and costumes and in the coming years should be one of the most important Italian genre directors.
In 1956, Mario Bava and cinematographer effect designer for Fredas gothic-inspired horror film I vampiri / The Vampire of Notre Dame. Freda soon fell out with the producers disappeared after ten days from the set and left a half-finished film. Bava now received the offer - from the situation completely by surprise - even in the role of the director to slip and end the rest of the film in just two days.
I vampiri, an atmospheric blend of gothic horror elements, is now often the first authentic Italian horror movie called, was only partly true, however: in the silent era were already with Nino Oxilias Faust-variation Rapsodia Satanica (1917) or Eugenio Testa Il mostro Tues Frankenstein (1920) films directed horrororientierte. I started with vampiri but the genre in Italy to take root again. The film marks the beginning of a very fruitful era, which was up in the 1970s into account not just an insignificant share of Italian films. Mario Bava was now working more frequently as an unofficial co-director. In this capacity, he turned part of epics Peplum Francisis Pietro La Fatiche di Ercole e la Regina di Ercole and Lidia, but without having a higher fee to receive credits or mention to enjoy. 1959 were for the horror film Caltiki - Il mostro immortal / Caltiki - Puzzle of horror again a collaboration between Bava and Freda, who in turn broke off his work and the completion of the film gave Bava. Also in this case was not Bava header entry. Only after Jacques Tourneur History spectacle La battaglia di Maratona / The Battle of Marathon (1959) received the now 46-year-old Bava an opportunity as a director.
The faces of fear
1960 was a key year in Bava's career, and for the Italian genre film: Bava's first official directing La maschera del demonio was / The hour when Dracula comes. The title was an allusion to the British Hammer production The Curse of Frankenstein / The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), in Italy before La maschera Tues Frankenstein the filled had box office as. La maschera del demonio begins with a harrowing, almost legendary shock scene: A young woman gets a heavy hammer a nail in with demon mask occupied beaten on the face. In the "dark ages" the supposed witch Asa and her brother are brutally tortured and burned. Before her death, Asa return cursed the descendants of their tormentors and prophesied. In 1830, the two scholars Gorobec Choma and are forced through the broken axle of their coach, to seek refuge in the ruin, the rest in the remains of the dead. With a drop of blood is Asa corpse revived by mistake. She returns to take on the descendants of their tormentors merciless revenge. Your Wiedergängerin Katia is the goal of their hatred.
Visual power of this test, an essence of black romance and gothic fiction of the classic black and white images to visualize in contrast, was the time of its premiere thoroughly ridiculed or dismissed as tasteless, but has over the decades as an influential cult film established in the. Assembly and camera work give the stresses elegant. Changing perspectives - often subjective - creating a for that time unusually intense climate of uncertainty. lack of fear, in view of sexuality and violence, exploitative and works to go effektbetont which made him a nightmare l'art pour l'art-variant of the genre created Bava, which found many imitators in the direction, be it the trenchant nightmares Dario Argento or the radical Studio haunted Roger Corman in Masque of the Red Death / Satan - The Castle of the Red Death (1964). Bava never denied that he is in a gothic world of art, an "adult" fairy tale forest moves, which is dominated by its own laws. The "witch" Barbara Steele, he styled a "belle dame sans merci" in the spirit of the Romantic Gothic literature and helped her to the status of first scream queen of the queens of the horror genre - a phenomenon which the British Hammer films deliberately forced. Among other works, in the same barren artificiality liked to Bava remained until the late seventies to the genre faithful and applied his work - but not his talent - his son Lamberto during the filming of the ghost movie Shock (1975). In the nineties, Lamberto Bava's son tried to do a remake of his father's La maschera del demonio success, but failed miserably in its tendency, teen comedy inappropriate to integrate the elements.
Mario Bava's La maschera del demonio gloomy refers both to the dreamy atmosphere of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr (1932), the black and white Universal horror classics of the 1930s and their representation in the categories a bit more drastic British Hammer production. The film was Italy and internationally as Black Sunday or Mask of Satan major successes recorded in. La maschera del demonio was the trigger for a wave of gothic horror productions, the Italian genre cinema of the 60s shaped the was for Barbara Steele the beginning of her career as a diva of Italian style horror.
Bava's second work as a director in 1961 was the fantasy film Ercole al centro della terra / Hercules in the Haunted (). Here he had the first opportunity to work in a separate project with color film. So he turned the cheap cardboard backdrops in magical, myths technicolorbunte landscapes in which the muscle-assert themselves against the dark hero Hercules King Lycus (Christopher Lee), whose zombie-like minions and several shadow creatures need.
In the following years turned Bava gothic horror, thriller, western, historical spectacle, a science fiction movie, and even an erotic comedy - in total more than 20 titles. Bava proved to be all-round talent: from sophisticated lighting tricks, camera work, directing work through to the final cut of the film he controlled nearly the entire film technical work area. 1962 La ragazza che was sapeva troppo, one of several films by Alfred Hitchcock-inspired, black-detective film in which a schizophrenic young woman (Leticia Roman) in a mysterious series of murders involving looks. The title - translated "The girl who knew too much" - refers to the British masters. La ragazza che sapeva troppo, the United States in an alternative version cut as a detective comedy called The Evil Eye has been marketed to in was Mario Bava's last black-and-work, and shall also constitute the first representative of the giallo thriller, specifically Italian form of the voltage Cinemas .
1963 came with Il tre della paura volti / The three faces of fear an episode film with Boris Karloff after stories by Guy de Maupassant, Alexei Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov. From the elegantly orchestrated thriller (Il telefono) on colorful Gothic Horror (Il Wurdalak) to the cleverly staged, under your skin Psycho Horror (La goccia d'acqua) Talent leads I tre della paura volti the whole stylistic range of Mario Bava's mind and has, in turn ahead of style: including Ruggero Deodato called Il telefono as an influence for his horror film d'amore Minaccia / Dial HELP (1989). Frusta e il corpo La / The Devil and the Virgin (1963), finally, an impressive Gothic-Horrormelodram that Christopher Lee and Daliah Lavi presented as a sadomasochistic couple, explored the previously intonations psychosexual subtexts further and themed for the origin of time remarkably direct the ambivalent relationship between master and slave.
With the bizarre and bloody psychological thriller Sei donne per l'assassino / Blood Silk (1964) La ragazza che tied his Bava sapeva troppo on to and shaped rid of old style of the thriller Giallo, as Dario Argento and Sergio Martino was continued by later. Like no other film of this variety, he declined already essential elements of the giallo: the mentally disturbed killer in a black raincoat, the bizarre and often sexualized murder Act, the psychoanalytic elements in the character drawing, the colorful setting in the environment of the fashion world, the expressive light setting, etc. .
After two trips to the Western genre (La strada per Fort Alamo, 1964, and Ringo del Nebraska, 1965) Bava also created in the science fiction film an influential review: Terror nello spazio / Planet of the Vampires (1965). With Pappmachéfelsen, artificial fog and the background painted miniatures he had created a landscape of this planet, which two decades later, some sequences in Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) should inspire more than. That atmosphere of insecurity and alienation is still impressive and was in John Carpenter's The Thing / The Thing From Another World (1982), Ghosts of Mars (2002) as the starting point used by. With terror nello spazio also began the collaboration between Lamberto Bava and his son, the first time in this film was working as an assistant director and the following years in many projects of his father should participate in the.
After the Viking drama I Coltelli del vendicatore (1966) and the break with American International Pictures Bava turned his back to top form design. In the atmospheric horror thriller Operazione paura / The dead eyes of Dr. Dracula (1966), the ghost of a dead girl terrorized the inhabitants of a remote Italian mountain village and drive them to suicide. This illuminated eccentric unreal horror film makes extensive use of red-hot-colored mist in the visions of ghosts and designed the mountain village as isolated, pre-modern world of fairy tales and secrets. After the director was out on the set the money, he could convince his crew to stop the film from pure idealism yet. The consistent art world Operazione paura was of great influence on Federico Fellini's film episode Toby Dammit (1967), Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and David Lynch's final episode of the TV series Twin Peaks and the feature film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1991).
In 1967, he turned with a larger budget Diabolik / Danger: Diabolik, the film version of the very popular Italian comic book series by the same masked super-criminal. With obvious friends at the absurd effect, and pop art-inspired tableaux he produced the James Bond version as calculated Sixties cult cinema. Although Bava the largest budget of his career was available, namely $ 3 million, of which he spent just $ 400,000. Two years later staged Quante volte Bava ... quella notte, an elegant erotic ironic comedy, the three variations and a story about a botched rendezvous and presents them as an ironic remake of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon (1948 can be considered). In 1970, he processed in the thriller Cinque per la luna d'agosto Bambole the novel "Ten Little Indians" by Agatha Christie, and a year later, he parodied this approach in the bloody whodunit thriller Ecologia del delitto / In the blood lust of Satan, with its dramatic and original murder scene today better known as the original cell of the teen-slasher is.
Only in 1972, he succeeded - again with the help of producer Alfredo Leone - Neo-Gothic-style back to return his to. Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga / Baron Blood (1972) tells of a museum Rector at a Nuremberg Castle (Elke Sommer), by the reincarnation of the old castle's occupants, a merciless inquisitor (Joseph Cotten), is haunted. Bava has the surrealist potential of its so fabulous as cruel dream games have been aware, and so he was based in turn on the disturbing (Alp) Dream Play by the Belgian Harry Caraway (blood on the lips, in 1970, and Malpertuis, 1971) and focused the bizarre compositions and confusions that his strongest works so far dominated. Lisa and the Devil / The Demon (1972) should be his personal masterpiece. After the commercial success of his Gothic-thriller Baron Blood he received from his producer Alfedo Leone free hand and was able to Lisa and the Devil in complete unrestrained creative twist. How was the Elke Sommer available, and as Americans came Savallas added Telly, the essential attributes this to his later role as Kojak appropriated. What Bava to the somewhat confusing and not at all interested straightforward matter, was the narrowing of aesthetic desire for death, sexual frustration, and spiritual expectation that the merger of the world of the living and the dead.
Lisa und der Teufel erzielte einige sehr wohlwollende Kritiken auf dem Filmfestival in Cannes, fand dann jedoch aufgrund seiner komplexen Dramaturgie keinen Verleih. Produzent Alfredo Leone fürchtete um seinen Verdienst und nötigte Bava, nachträglich eine Rahmenhandlung zu drehen, die inhaltlich an den großen Erfolg jener Jahre, William Friedkins Der Exorzist (1973) anschloss. In den neu gedrehten Szenen sehen wir Robert Alda als einen ambivalenten Priester, der an einer von Dämonen besessenen Elke Sommer den Ritus des Exorzismus praktiziert. Diese neue Handlung zitierte freimütig das amerikanische Vorbild (inklusive des Erbrechens) und passt selbstredend nicht zum Rest der Handlung aus Lisa und der Teufel , von dem noch etwa eine Stunde Material vorhanden ist. Diese als House of Exorcism bekannte Version, die weltweit erheblich verbreiteter ist als Bavas Original, wird gelegentlich auch dem Produzenten Leone als Regisseur zugeschrieben.
In der Originalversion Lisa und der Teufel folgen wir der attraktiven jungen Touristin Lisa Reiner (Sommer) auf ihrer Reise nach Italien. Nachdem sie ein Fresko des Teufels in einem kleinen Dorf erblickt hat, verirrt sie sich und wird von dem reichen Ehepaar Lehar (Sylvia Koscina und Eduardo Fajardo) und deren Chauffeur (Gabriele Tinti) aufgelesen. Wie es ‚der Teufel will', bricht das Auto alsbald zusammen und nötigt die Vierergruppe, die Nacht in einer nahen Villa zu verbringen. Deren Bewohner sind eine blinde Contessa (Alida Valli), ihr merkwürdiger Sohn Max (Alessio Orano) und der mysteriöse Butler Leandro (Telly Savallas), der Lisa bereits im Ort begegnet war. In der Nacht wird Lisa klar, dass sie Elena, einer Frau, die von Max und seinem verstorbenen Vater gleichermaßen verehrt wurde, zum verwechseln gleicht. Zugleich werden die Gäste durch eine Reihe blutiger Morde dezimiert. Am Ende sieht sich Lisa dem Teufel persönlich gegenüber, gewahrt sich als Spielfigur in einem bizarren Schicksalsspiel, dessen Fäden bei Leandro zusammenlaufen…
Wie die Werke aus Bavas Gothic-Phase ist auch Lisa und der Teufel mit eleganten Kamerafahrten und erlesenen Farbkompositionen inszeniert. Untermalt wird das Geschehen von Carlo Savinas Variantionen der klassischen Komposition für Orchester und Gitarre „Concierto per Aranjuez“ (1939) von Joaquin Rodrigo. Sowohl auf der visuelle wie auch auf der auditiven Ebvene erreicht dieser Film mehr als Bavas Vorgänger die Qualität eines delirierenden Traumspiels. Die Dramaturgie scheint eine eigene, hermetische Logik zu verfolgen, der der Zuschauer allenfalls staunend folgen kann, ohne je wirklich nahe zu kommen. Hier nimmt Bava die besten Momente seiner Kollegen Argento und Fulci vorweg, indem er die Konventionen der Erzählkinos schlicht verweigert (das nähert diesen Film Kümmels Malpertuis). Mit einem gewissen Zynismus könnte man behaupten, House of Exorcism gehe hier noch weiter, denn die dilettantische Mixtur zweier inkohärenter Handlungsstränge kommt nie einer inneren Logik nahe, doch genau hier liegt das Problem dieser Bastardversion: Sie suggeriert, der Film sei etwas, das er niemals sein wollte – ein exploitativer Genrefilm. Tatsächlich ist Lisa und der Teufel Bavas introspektive Quintessenz.
Auch dem seit Jahren ersten realistischen Thriller-Stoff, den Bava plante, war kein Glück beschieden. Das zynische Kindesentführungsdrama Cani arrabbiati / Rabid Dogs (1974) konnte nicht komplett beendet werden, denn kurz vor der Postproduktion musste der Produzent Roberto Loyola Konkurs anmelden und der Film wurde von seinen Gläubigern konfisziert. Cani arrabbiati gelangte zu Lebzeiten Bavas nie zu einer Kinoaufführung. Bei Schock – Transfert Suspence Hypnos (1977) versuchte sich der gesundheitlich bereits geschwächte Regisseur an einer modernen, psychosexuell orientierten Geistergeschichte über die Reinkarnation eines Toten in Gestalt seines Sohnes und die daraus folgende mentale Desorientierung der Mutter. Bereits hier drehte Bavas Sohn Lamberto zahlreiche Szenen des Films. [2] 1978 teilten sich Vater und Sohn noch einmal die Regie bei dem Gothic-Märchen La Venere d'Ille , einem Kurzspielfilm für das Fernsehen. Nur Bavas kreativem Schüler Dario Argento gelang es, den schwerkranken Maestro noch einmal aus dem Ruhestand zu holen, um die Spezialeffekte für den bizarren Gothic-Horror-Reigen Inferno zu entwerfen. Auch ein eindrucksvolle Unterwassersequenz soll Bava hier noch ausgeleuchtet und inszeniert haben. Man merkt dem Film deutlich den Einfluss vor allem der frühen Gialli und Neo-Gothic-Filme an. Am 25. April 1980 starb Mario Bava im Alter von 65 Jahren an einer Herzattacke. Auch wenn inzwischen moderne Regisseure wie Dario Argento, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Bill Condon, Joe Dante, Tim Burton und John Carpenter seine Filme als Inspiration nennen, ist Mario Bava der breiten Masse nach wie vor unbekannt und wird von zahlreichen Kritikern immer noch als Trivialregisseur missachtet. Will man jedoch etwas über die Struktur und den Stil des italienischen Genrekinos der 1960er-Jahre erfahren, lohnt sich ein wiederholter und genauerer Blick auf seine stilprägenden Werke jener Zeit.
Neo-Gothic-Horror
Eine Definition des Gothic-Horror-Stils muss zunächst ausgehen von der Literaturwissenschaft. In seiner umfassenden Untersuchung „Liebe, Tod und Teufel“ (1930) nennt Mario Praz die wesentlichen Elemente der Literatur der schwarzen Romantik. Die Atmosphäre der Werke von Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary W. Shelley, Bram Stoker, aber auch von ETA Hoffmann wird beherrscht von einem zentralen Geheimnis, von unerklärlichen, irrationalen Vorgängen. Oft steht eine uralte, mythische Prophezeiung im Hintergrund, mit der das Figurenarsenal oder der Schauplatz schicksalhaft verknüpft sind. Visionen und Träumen kommt gerade in diesem Kontext eine tragende Bedeutung zu. Als Handlungsort dient dabei nicht selten ein sehr altes Gebäude, oder aber explizitere Orte des Todes: abgelegene Gebiete, Schluchten, Ruinen oder Friedhöfe. Menschliche Konflikte erreichen in diesem geisterhaft-beseelten Umfeld mitunter hysterische Dimensionen: Panik, Angst, Trauer, Wut, Begierde, sexuelle Perversion, Leidenschaften aller Art tragen das ihre zur Gothic-Atmosphäre bei. Im Mittelpunkt des Geschehens stehen daher oft weibliche Protagonisten, die unverhofft in beklemmende Zusammenhänge geraten und am Ende um ihr Leben kämpfen müssen. Eine geschlechtsspezifische Zuschreibung ‚weiblicher Schwäche' wird jedoch unterwandert: Die Gothic-Heroin – am extremsten wohl Juliette bei Marquis de Sade – entwickelt ihre eigenen Mechanismen der Aktion und Gegenaktion – gerade, wenn sie sich dem destruktiven Begehren eines bösartigen Mannes ausgesetzt sieht, indem sie die Situation schlicht umkehrt und selbst zur Bedrohung wird. Auch andere Modelle romantischer Verflechtung ordnen sich der morbiden Motivik unter: unerfüllte Liebe, einseitige Leidenschaft, endgültiger Abschied, der gemeinsame Liebestod und natürlich das disharmonische Liebesdreieck.
In Mario Bavas artifiziellen Horrorfilmen der 1960er-Jahre finden wir diese Elemente wieder: deutlich zuzuordnende Stereotypen, die eine Atmosphäre des Unheimlichen beschwören sollen – Gewitter, Sturm, undefinierbare Geräusche, Klirren, Knarren, flackerndes Kerzenlicht, grelle Farben, sexualisierte Grausamkeit, die zum Teil auf den Erfolg der britischen Hammer-Filme zurückzuführen ist, und teilweise zeitgleich in mediterranen Erwachsenen-Comics auftauchten, in denen horrible Folterszenarien zelebriert wurden.
Im Zentrum von Bavas Inszenierung steht ein radikales Bemühen um Stil und Atmosphäre, das an eine Passage von Béla Balázs erinnert: „Die Atmosphäre ist wohl die Seele jeder Kunst. Sie ist Luft und Duft, die wie eine Ausdünstung der Formen alle Gebilde umgibt und ein eigenes Medium einer eigenen Welt schafft. [...] Wenn diese Atmosphäre einmal da ist, kann die Unzulänglichkeit der einzelnen Gebilde nicht mehr Wesentliches verderben.“ [3] Als ursprünglicher Maler muss Bava dieser Gedanke vertraut gewesen sein, und er gestaltete auch seine nachfolgenden Filme weniger nach logisch-dramaturgischen Prinzipien, denn nach der Maßgabe atmosphärischer Bedürfnisse.
Bei Bava kennzeichnen Licht und Schatten nicht nur eine äußere Stimmung, sondern auch eine seelische Verfasstheit der Charaktere. In La maschera del demonio etwa tauchen die expressiven Schatten stets auf, wenn Bedrohung sich ankündigt – es gibt hier Orte des Lichts und Orte des Schattens, aber auch einen fließenden Übergang. Bava inszeniert symbolische Räume, denen Licht und Schattenakzente enorme Tiefe verleihen, die aber zugleich auch vielschichtig lesbar werden als innere Landschaften der Angst – als buchstäbliche Angst-Räume. Nicht zuletzt aus diesem Grunde wird seine Ästhetik immer wieder als eine visionäre Alptraumästhetik interpretiert. Zugleich beschwört die Lichtsetzung auch eine Bedrohung herauf: In La maschera del demonio dringt das Licht der anbrechenden Tages in das Schlafgemach der Protagonistin Katja, unmittelbar bevor sie vom Tode ihres Vaters erfährt. Leichter Dunst oder gar Nebel dient Bava als Medium, die Spur des Lichts noch plastischer erscheinen zu lassen.
Selten finden wir in Bavas Filmen Sequenzen, die in einer alltäglichen Lichtstimmung und Räumlichkeit spielen. Als Katja im Park spazieren geht, nachdem sie vom Tod ihres Vaters erfahren hat, nähert er sich diesem ‚Normalstil' zwar an, schafft aber mittels eines irritierenden, stets im Wandel begriffenen Lichteffekts Aufmerksamkeit, den das sprudelnde Wasser eines Brunnens auf Katjas Gesicht erzeugt. Dieser Effekt wirkt sich sowohl visuell irritierend auf die Wahrnehmung des Betrachters aus, wie er zugleich symbolisch die seelische Verfasstheit Katjas verdeutlicht.
Andererseits nutzt Bava das Licht in La maschera del demonio auch als frappierenden Spezialeffekt, etwa wenn er den Geliebten der Hexe Asa aus dem schwarzen Bereich eines Gemäldes auftauchen läst. Hier wurde das Bild des Darstellers eingespiegelt und durch einen hell werdenden Dimmereffekt der Eindruck erweckt, der Mann komme aus dem Nichts.
Die bedrohliche Weiblichkeit, die Mario Praz als „belle dame sans merci“ bezeichnet, inkarniert in La maschera del demonio in Gestalt der Hexe Asa, die von der späteren Genre-Ikone Barbara Steele verkörpert wird. Peter Nicholls beschreibt die Erscheinung von Barbara Steele, die hier in einer Doppelrolle auftritt, als „huge-eyed, high cheek-boned, luminously exotic face [...]. Her remoteness and her curiously bizarre beauty – the eyes are too large – were to make her an icon of horror pictures the very symbol of Woman as vengeful, alien and ‚other'.“ [4] In späteren Filmen wird Bava dieser Schauspielerin eher weibliche ,Angstfiguren' entgegenstellen, denn Frauen treten bei ihm in dieser Phase meist als Opfer auf (Elke Sommer, Daliah Lavi, Claudine Auger, Daria Nicolodi). Nur selten greift er auf weibliche Täterinnen zurück ( La ragazza che sapeva troppo ).
Ein anderer wichtiger Aspekt von Bavas spezifischem Gothic-Stil findet man mit der Verwendung von Farbmaterial. Mit der Wurdelak -Episode von Il tre volti della paura griff der Filmemacher nicht nur auf den klassischen Universal-Studio-Gothic-Star Boris Karloff zurück, sondern entwickelte einen an den Primärfarben orientierten Lichtstil, der das kontrastreiche Chiaroscuro der frühen Horrorfilme ersetzte. So hatte er nunmehr die Möglichkeit, das Blut wirklich leuchtend rot strömen zu lassen, ein Motiv, das auch in den Giallo-Thrillern ausgiebig auftaucht. Georg Seeßlen betont die Doppelfunktion, die der Blutfarbe Rot in diesem Kontext zukommt: „Sie ist das Zeichen für den Blutmythos [...] Rot ist andererseits auch die Farbe der Macht, den Herrschern vorbehaltenes Zeichen der Unantastbarkeit.“ [5] Andererseits tauchen immer wieder blau und grün ausgeleuchtete Passagen in Il tre volti della paura auf, die zugleich eine Simulation der stilisierten Nacht darstellen, wie auch einen eigenen Zeichenraum bilden, den man als Bavas stilisierte Alptraumwelt bezeichnen muss. Tim Lucas spricht in diesem Kontext von den „Farben der Nacht“. In den britischen Hammer-Produktionen der 1950er-Jahre, die dem italienischen Horrorkino zunächst als Vorbild dienten, sind solche Tendenzen bereits nachzuweisen, doch Georg Seeßlen betont mit Blick auf Mario Bava: „Eine bewusste Imitation waren die italienischen Filme indes nur anfänglich; insbesondere die Verwendung der Farbe für die Zeichnung einer düsteren Atmosphäre beherrschten die italienischen Regisseure oft besser als die der Hammer-Productions.“ [6] Die Gothic-Phase von Mario Bava, die von La maschera del demonio bis Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga , streng genommen sogar bis zu La Venere d'Ille (1979), verdeutlicht noch einmal die ursprüngliche Ambition des Regisseurs als Maler, eine Qualität, die er mit dem im Farbfilm kultivierten Stil entfaltete und bis in seine Gegenwartsstoffe hinein nutzte.
Giallo
"Giallo" means in Italian simply "yellow". The now familiar term giallo genre is derived from a yellow book series at the publishing house Mondadori in Milan, founded in 1929 and first Italian translations of English detective stories presented - mystery stories in the footsteps of Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe. Previously, Italy were detective stories in rather than sub-genre of adventure story, but especially in the 1930s and 1940s increased the popularity of the imported genre, which is now the American hard-boiled school of fiction (Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Charles Williams, James L . Cain imported). Giallo as a genre designation is thus comparable with the French Série noire, the film noir lent its name to the. Soon Italian authors followed by the Anglicized pseudonyms trace of their precursors and transported the English detective story finally to Italy. The hitherto most sophisticated of its kind created Umberto Eco in 1984 with his "Il nome della rosa", but still are well-known Italian translations of international bestsellers such as Thomas Harris and Patricia Cornwall known as giallo.
giallo, the term first appeared in relation to the medium of film to as Luchino Visconti with Ossessione / love possessed (from 1943) after the hardboiled thriller by James L. Cain turned to ("The Postman Always Rings Twice"), but it deserves Bava, with La ragazza che troppo sapeva 1963 the actual prototype of the cinematic giallo thriller directed to have Mario's Thriller. Even the opening sequence is a model for many subsequent Gialli Dario Argento's Tenebre to / Tenebrae (1982) are regarded as. The protagonist Nora (Letícia novel reads) here in an airplane a classic Giallo thriller as it Rome arrives in. [7] Gary Needham points out in his article "Playing with genre", that are several key elements of the giallo come together the same: the self-reflection of the genre in order to clearly exhibited literary sources, the arrival of a stranger in Italy, the motive of the trip to Italy and the economically important tourism - and of course Rome as the main venue of the Giallo. In Argento's later film Tenebre (1982), it is about an American crime writer, the start of New York after traveling to Rome.
Another important theme that emerges for the first time, the slightly mentally unstable or even schizoid heroine, who remembered an essential element of their experience and this has not exactly reconstructed laboriously: Nora has actually seen a murder in Rome, or hallucinated it ? A mysterious doctor (John Saxon) seems to want to help her, but turns out to be just as dodgy as around the entire Done it. Nothing is what it seems - this motto of the classic thriller Psycho will come into play especially in the Giallo. Argento's Profondo rosso In / Deep Red (1975) it is a musician (David Hemmings), who the killer was looking in a mirror sees one without, then identify again. In Argento's Tenebre writer is the schizoid eventually even to the perpetrator, with long clear not know whose nightmares, we witness in this mysterious images. In this respect, the dramatic ploy to Bava proves to be trend-face at their private investigation into a series of murders Nora and the doctor on a mentally disturbed killer. It turns out that Nora remembered not the attacked woman, but attacking the perpetrator. Again we find in Dario Argento such a twist: in his debut film, L'Uccello dalle piume Tues cristallo / The Secret of the Crystal Plumage (1969), the American journalist in his memory back to an attempted murder in an art gallery return time, he watched helplessly had to watch in order to identify the missing element. As he is aware of this confusion, he finds himself back in the hands of crazed perpetrator, who had appeared before him as a victim.
The famous black rain coat as a sign of the perpetrator or the perpetrator came in the Gialli - as Needham - first in the fashion of the early sixties and was admirably suited as a unisex garment to conceal the sex and identity of the perpetrator. Only in the course of the decade there had been signs for the giallo killer eabliert as yet and therefore appeared in the later films, Dario Argento's Tenebre on to - even in the gothic horror films Suspiria (1976) and Inferno will find echoes of it.
Based on Mario Bava's La ragazza che troppo sapeva of the U.S. as The Evil Eye with additional comedic scenes in the movies was changed, you can list basic motifs develop a Giallo:
a) the protagonist is initially innocent in a crime involved, and here's his eyewitness important, but will be put in question and reviewed;
b) a secret needs to be clarified is often a vague memory or a mysterious dream as a key;
c) the murderer is found not necessarily in the narrow group of people, often it is female. The killings follow a certain pattern and scheme that is a distraction from the real motive of the murderer;
d) the stylized killings happen to dramatic climaxes and often in dark or bizarre places (such as an art gallery or emphasized in a modern setting), not infrequently appear clearly sexualized violence and run with phallic thrusting and cutting weapons;
e) the offender / perpetrator of the mask with a coat, a hat and black gloves;
f) the protagonist is often alien and as a tourist comes to Italy and this fact allowed the directors, actors engage-cash international (David Hemmings, John Saxon, Karl Malden, and later Harvey Keitel in Due occhi diabolici / Two Evil Eyes, 1990 by Dario Argento);
g) the motivation of the perpetrator is often a traumatic experience of the past comes in, sometimes, these visionary flashbacks occasions for avant-garde-styled dream sequences - such as the white outshone beach dreams Tenebre, which late the associate are characters first and the characterization of Giallos follows a sometimes native or simplified psychoanalytic tendency.
More clearly than many of his successors - including Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci, Lamberto Bava, Sergio Martino and Umberto Lenzi - Mario Bava works in his Gialli with a bright Farbinszenierung, both as regards the production of articles which seem to lead a life of its own, as also in the lighting that creates highly artificial action spaces. Apart from La ragazza che troppo sapeva, the high-contrast black and white shot was in, Giallo is the one that is explicitly Farbfilmphänomen. It is no coincidence Bava chose for his next Giallo thriller Sei donne per l'assassino / Blood Silk (1964), a fashion design school as the setting. [8] The American Cameron Mitchell directs this fashion house, in which the Modele gradually bizarre murder attacks (with ax, nail glove and red-hot poker) fall victim to. The murder scenes even get to Bava's eccentric lighting in dramatic setpieces, the l'art pour l'art of creative killing celebrate. What, then later to the massive criticism of the films of Dario Argento, led [9] was already present in Bava's prototypical predecessors. The amazing longevity of the thriller Giallo, whose formula still in Dario Argento films Non ho sonno / Sleepless (2001) and Il cartaio / The Card Player (2005) or even in the Japanese Manga-Anime (Perfect Blue, 1997, by Satoshi Kon appears), and in the sixties given motive only subtly modernized, Needham led Gary to the Giallo less a genre, but rather a "discourse" [10] to see "something constructed out of the various associations, networks, tensions and articulations of Italian cinema's textual and industrial specificity in the post-war period. "For the Giallo-thriller is then as now: murder, investigation, strangeness, traumatized sexuality and tourism as key to the Italian culture, as to many others. Therein lies the continuing relevance of this phenomenon.
What has succeeded Mario Bava in its short but concise genre film career, can be seen as the creation of highly stylized, brachial psychologized nightmare landscapes describe, which, in its stylistic originality today of utmost influence to filmmakers who want to help test the boundaries of color film: Dario Argento, David Lynch, Paul Schrader, Abel Ferrara, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Oliver Stone. In the context of commercial Italian genre cinema opened Bava the cinema, the possibility of an unending audiovisual experimental field. Tutti colori nel buio / All the Colors of the Night (1972) is a giallo thriller from Sergio Martino, and this title could paradigmatic Mario Bava's work are available on: he made films in all the colors of the night.
Literature:
Balazs, Bela: The visible human or the culture of the film, Frankfurt am Main 2001
Blumenstock, Peter: Operazione paura, in: Caligari [magazine], No.1, 1991 Vreden
Britt Acher, Hans Richard: Aesthetics of Horrors, Frankfurt am Main 1994
Dewaele, Alwin: Mario Bava's Bleak View Word: The Nihilism of Semaforo Rosso, in: Flesh and Blood 7 / 1996, p. 70-10
Everson, William K. Classics of the horror film, Munich 1982, S.199ff.
Gallant, Chris (ed.): Art of Darkness. The Cinema of Dario Argento, Godalming 2000
Giesen, Rolf: The fantastic film, Ebersberg 1983 S.98ff.
Jenks, Carol: The Other Face of Death. Barbara Steele And La Maschera Del Demonio, in: Black, Andy: Necronomicon. Book One. London 1996, p.88-101
Kandorfer, Pierre: Dumont's textbook of film design, Cologne 1984
Lucas, Tim: http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue05/infocus/bavabio.htm, access: 18 August 2006.
Nicholls, Peter: The World of Fantastic Films, New York 1984
Palmerini, Luca M. and Gaetano Mistretta: Spaghetti Nightmares, Key West 1996
Paul, Louis: Inferno Italia. The Italian horror film, Munich 1998
Praz, Mario: love, death and the devil. The Black Romantic [1930], Munich 1994
Schneider, Steven J. (ed.) Fear Without Frontiers. Horror Cinema Across the Globe, Godalming 2003
Seeßlen, Georg: Horror - history and mythology of horror films, Marburg 2006
Seeßlen, Georg: cinema of the fantastic - the history and mythology of horror films, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1979
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[1] quote from the documentary film Mario Bava - Maestro of the Macabre (2004)
[2] With Ghost Boy (2005) Lamberto Bava directed eventually to a South Africa misplaced remake of the film with Laura Harring.
[3] Balazs 2001, p. 30
[4] Nicholls 1984, p. 51-52
[5] Seeßlen 1979, p. 39
[6] Seeßlen 2006, p. 260
[7] Gary Needham: Playing with genre: defining the Italian giallo, in: Schneider, 2003, p. 136
[8] In the subsequent un hacha parala lun de miel / Red Wedding Nigh t (1969) appears as a designer of bridal wear to a protagonist.
[9] Today is Argento's Tenebre in Germany for the glorification of violence seized. Mario Bava's Ecologia same goes for del delitto, as the blood lust of Satan was banned in this country.
[10] Needham in Schneider 2003, p. 138
