Mario Bava

(Sanremo, 1914 - Roma, 1980)The Italian director Mario Bava was born in 1914. His father, Eugenio Bava, was a cinematographer in the early days of the Italian film industry. Bava was trained as a painter, and when he eventually followed his father into film photography his artistic background led him to a strong belief in the importance of visual composition in filmmaking. Other than a series of shorts in the forties which he directed, Bava was a cinematographer until 1960. He developed a reputation as a special effects genius, and was able to use optical trickery to great success. Among the directors for whom Bava photographed films were Paolo Heusch Riccardo Freda Jacques Tourneur and Raoul Walsh. While working with Freda on I Vampiri in 1956, the director left the project after an argument with the producers and the film mostly unfinished. Bava stepped in and directed the majority of the movie, finishing it on schedule. This film, also known as The Devil's Commandment, inspired a wave of gothic Italian horror films. After a similar incident occurred on Freda's Caltiki in 1959, and Bava's having been credited with "saving" Tourneur's Giant of Marathon (1959), Galatea urged Bava to direct any film he wanted with their financing. The film that emerged, The Mask of Satan aka Black Sunday, is one his most well known as well as one of his best. This widely influential movie also started the horror career of Barbara Steele. While The Mask of Satan is a black and white film, it was in the color milieu that the director excelled. The projects which followed began to develop stunning photography, making great use of lighting, set design, and camera positioning to compliment mise-en-scenes bathed in deep primaries. Through works such as Hercules in the Haunted World (1961), The Whip and the Body (1963), and Planet of the Vampires (1965) Bava's films took on the look of works of art. In the films The Evil Eye (1963) and Blood and Black Lace (1964) he created the style and substance of the giallo, a genre which would be perfected in the later films of Dario Argento. Bava worked in many popular genres, including viking films, peplum, spaghetti westerns, action, and even softcore, but it is his horror films and gialli which stand out and for which he is best remembered. Recommended are Black Sunday, The Whip and the Body, Blood and Black Lace, Kill Baby Kill, Twitch of the Death Nerve, and Lisa and the Devil. Bava's son Lamberto served as his assistant on most of his films since 1965, and since 1980 has been a director himself. Lamberto Bava's films include Macabre, Demons, and Body Puzzle. Mario Bava died in 1980.