MARIO BAVA PART 1 the Day Ends, the End Begins
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Dawn and lamplight, midnight, noon by the French as a caricature of a publicity- Sun follows day, night stars and moon loving surgeon who was frequently the butt of MARIO BAVA PART 1 The day ends, the end begins. satirists jokes.1 Peter Kemp LE PEINTRE NÉO-IMPRESSIONNISTE is Cohl’s 1. Jean Renoir: My Life and My Films, Collins, London, best known film, inspired by the work of the BLACK SUNDAY 1974, p.256 Incoherents, an art movement which was 2. André Bazin: Jean Renoir, WH Allen, London, 1974, forgotten by the general public by 1910, hence La Maschera Del Demonio / The p.118 Demon’s Mask / Revenge of the Vampire 3. Penelope Gillaitt: ‘Renoir: Le Meneur de Jeu’, Unholy the more recognisable, if less relevant reference Fools, Viking Press, New York, 1973, pp.318-319 to neo-impressionism in the film’s title. / The House of Fright Eugène Lourié selected filmography: Donald Crafton notes: 1960 ITALY 83 mins Madame Bovary 1934; Lower Depths 1936; La Grande The jokes arise from the interplay between the SEE MARIO BAVA FILMOGRAPHY FOR CREDITS, P.60 Illusion 1937; La Bête Humaine 1938; La Règle du Jeu ENGLISH LANGUAGE VERSION 1939; This Land is Mine 1943; The Southerner 1945; ridiculous titles and the colours in which the Diary of a Chambermaid 1946; The River 1951; various pictures originally would have been If Delphine Seyrig (still considered the Limelight 1952; Shock Corridor 1963; The Naked Kiss tinted. The title “First we have a picture definitive European lesbian vampire) can be 1964; Burnt Offering 1976; An Enemy of the People 1978 showing a cardinal eating lobster with described as, “an oozing French desert cheese” tomatoes by the Red Sea,” for instance, then Barbara Steele, the star of BLACK SUNDAY, CLONING THE FUTURE preceded a scene tinted entirely red. A few must be her dark, Stilt(on)ed forebear.1 From seconds of black leader were spliced in for the the opening scenes of Bava’s brooding vampire picture of “Negroes making shoe polish in a pic Steele’s spineful performance as Asa ONÉSIME, CLOCKMAKER tunnel at night.”2 inspires both admiration and fear. As the 1912 FRANCE 9 mins @ 18 fps Crafton’s assertion makes great sense and is in titular ‘mask of Satan’ is lowered over her face Source: NL Prod Co: Gaumont Dir: Jean keeping with the nature of the film, expanding to be nailed in place, she cries out in con- Durand an animation exercise into a wonderful satire. tempt, “You will never escape my hunger.” A Cast: Ernest Bourbon Michael Koller vampire threat that shudders across genera- 1. Donald Crafton: Emile Cohl, Caricature and Film, tions but also a thoroughly commendable FRENCH INTERTITLES WITH SIMULTANEOUS Princeton University Press, Princeton (NJ), 1990, pp.289- defiance. TRANSLATION 290 In order to receive an inheritance from his 2. — p.291 Throughout BLACK SUNDAY, Bava exploits this ambivalence. Clues to his masterful take on uncle, Onésime accelerates time to his benefit. POSSIBILITIES OF Onésime the clockmaker does not conceive of the vampire genre lie embedded in the time travel as it is in HG Wells’ The Time WAR IN THE A IR narrative. What often distinguishes one vampire story from another are the ‘rules and Machine. Instead, Onésime steals into the 1910 UK 9 mins @ 18 fps regulations’ that bound the vampires’ Central Office of Pneumatic Clocks and Source: NL Prod Co: Warwick Trading Co. Dir: tampers with the master clock so that it runs behaviour. In BLACK SUNDAY the curative Charles Urban faster. By doing so, all clocks, based on this measures for an infestation of vampires lie clock, are accelerated and by compressing The turn of the last century created much simply in the traditional crucifix (ie the power time, Onésime can collect his fortune earlier optimism for the future amongst the of the mise-en-scene) and the additional than anticipated. Obviously the film uses the developed nations. A great interest in the flourish of a stake through the eyeball (hence simple device of speeding up action, but many future and technology thrived. By 1910, the Bava’s emphasis on POV and an ostentatiously amusing and unexpected situations arise, great visionary of the last century, Jules Verne, subjective camera). including the birth, and rapid growth of a was dead and HG Wells had written The Time On the matter of mise-en-scene it can be said child. In dealing with the manipulation of Machine (1895), The Invisible Man (1897), that Bava is the director who has most time, ONÉSIME, CLOCKMAKER can be seen as a War of the Worlds (1898) and The First Men on conclusively put the fear back into atmos. The precursor of René Clair’s debut film PARIS QUI the Moon (1902). Georges Méliès had made castle in which much of the action takes place DORT (1924). his famous A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902) plus a is treated as if a corporal participant in the number of other science fiction trick films. Little known director Jean Durand was drama. Its corridors are arteries from which Charles Urban’s film sits alongside this instrumental in the development of the the inhabitants are slowly sucked one by one. company. Made seven years after the first slapstick and action genres during the early The oblique symptoms of the presence of Wright brothers’ flight and twenty-seven years years of French cinema. Between 1907 and death abound – fires flare without cause, before the attack upon Guernica POSSIBILITIES 1929 he turned out many shorts and features furniture topples, draughts billow and breeze, OF WAR IN THE AIR includes dirigibles, without the benefit of rehearsals or scripts, a portrait is mysteriously altered. Throughout, dogfights and guided missiles (the last of including the Onésime comedy series. Bava maintains a graphic intensity which which were not to become a reality till the end threatens to suffocate his characters at a Michael Koller of WW2). moment’s whim. Only the protective powers LES JOYEUX MICROBES The advanced subject isn’t matched by of the cross can cause the camera’s sudden retreat. And at precisely this point Bava shows 1909 FRANCE 5 mins @ 18 fps technique which, considering that the British lead the world in filmmaking during the early us on which side of the crucifix we sit. Source: NL Prod Co: Gaumont Dir: Emile Cohl part of the Twentieth Century, is relatively In the scene setting opening moments Bava FRENCH INTERTITLES WITH SIMULTANEOUS primitive. However, there are some early uncovers his intention to place us firmly in the TRANSLATION examples of model work and the action occurs seat of both victim and vampire. The mask LE PEINTRE with great verve, compensating for the that is lowered onto the condemned vampire’s awkwardness of the futuristic designs (though face is also ‘our’ mask, lowered over the NEO-IMPRESSIONNISTE they are no more clumsy than those in Fritz camera. Later the hero, Andrej gazes softly on 1910 FRANCE 7 mins @ 18 fps Lang’s METROPOLIS, 1927). the neck of his young love (replete with Source: NL Prod Co: Gaumont Dir: Emile Cohl Charles Urban was an American inventor who glistening crucifix). She has fainted and as she comes round we are treated to her vision of FRENCH INTERTITLES WITH SIMULTANEOUS moved to England in 1898 where he managed him. A disorienting re-focus that is immedi- TRANSLATION a film distribution outlet. He soon moved into filmmaking – producing newsreels, documen- ately distracted by the murmur of voices. The These two films unite Emile Cohl’s skills as a taries and scientific films – and later pioneered contrast could not be more cruel. satirist and as a filmmaker in his two favourite the development of colour film. Two additional features of the vampire genre subjects: science and art. In LES JOYEUX are artfully played out in the film: MICROBES, microbes under a microscope form Michael Koller caricatures of the parasites which feed off a 1. The centrality of repetition as a thematic businessman. Simultaneously, Cohl pokes fun preoccupation. In BLACK SUNDAY all the at the modern science of microbiological family’s female descendants resemble each medicine – the doctor was readily recognisable other. None make it beyond the age of 21. As 81 the vampires begin to stir a father’s despair is any of Bava’s films as they were intended, in utensils. As it transpires, her pimp hadn’t been articulated – “It is this resemblance, this the original format, ever. For a full frame by making the calls but instead had just walked repeating that terrorises me”. frame comparison and analysis of several in on a plan hatched by Mary attempting to 2. The ambiguity surrounding common sense different versions of BLACK SABBATH you’re inveigle her way back into Rosy’s life. oppositions. Once the fundamental categories urged to seek out Video Watchdog, No.4. Karloff returns once more to preface ‘The of life and death are thrown into doubt other Meanwhile, there’s no doubt that any sample Wurdalak’ the third story which concerns itself fixtures are similarly loosened most obviously from the colour maestro’s illustrious horror with family-loving vampires. As he explains, that of vampire and victim. Once we move palette will provide a harrowing good time. At these particular blood sucking living dead from the seventeenth century to the nine- the very least, even a cursory glance will make creatures are known as Wurdalak and remain teenth, Bava drops the ‘voice-of-God his legacy apparent in the work of a galaxy of peculiar to Russia. They prefer to infect those narration’ only to reintroduce it when the film filmmakers ranging from fellow countrymen they love rather than arbitrarily snatching concludes (literally – the voice seems to belong Lucio Fulci (RIP), Dario Argento and his own strangers for victims.