Mario Bava

Mario Bava
Born	July 31, 1914 Sanremo, Liguria, Italy
Died	April 25, 1980(1980-04-25) (aged 65) Rome, Italy

Mario Bava (July 31, 1914 – April 25, 1980) was an Italian director, screenwriter, and cinematographer remembered as one of the greatest names from the "golden age" of Italian horror films.

Biography

Mario Bava was born in Sanremo, Liguria, Italy. The son of Eugenio Bava, a sculptor who became a pioneer of special effects photography and subsequently one of the great cameramen of Italian silent pictures, Mario Bava's first ambition was to become a painter. Unable to turn out paintings at a profitable rate, he went into his father's business, working as an assistant to other Italian cinematographers like Massimo Terzano, while also offering assistance to his father who headed the special effects department at Benito Mussolini's film factory, the Instituto LUCE.

Bava became a cinematographer in his own right in 1939, shooting two short films with Roberto Rossellini. He made his feature debut in the early 1940s. Bava's camerawork was an instrumental factor in developing the screen personas of such stars of the period as Gina Lollobrigida, Steve Reeves and Aldo Fabrizi.

Bava co-directed his first genre film in 1958: Le morte viene dallo spazio (The Day the Sky Exploded), the first Italian science fiction film. Because he had no earlier credited experience as a director, it was credited solely to Paolo Heusch. In 1960 he directed Black Sunday, which made a star out of Barbara Steele. His use of light and dark in black and white films is widely acclaimed along with his use of color in films such as I tre volti della paura (Black Sabbath) (1963) and La Frusta e il corpo (The Whip and the Body) (1963).

His work has proved very influential: Bava directed what is called the first Italian giallo film, La ragazza che sapeva troppo (The Girl Who Knew Too Much) (1963), and his 1965 sci-fi horror Terrore nello spazio (Planet of the Vampires) was a probable influence on Alien (1979). Although comic books had served as the basis for countless serials and children's films in Hollywood, Bava's Diabolik (1968) brought an adult perspective to the genre. 1971's Reazione a catena/ Bay of Blood (also known as Twitch of the Death Nerve) is considered to be one of the earliest slasher films, and was imitated in the first two American-made Friday the 13th movies. Many elements of his 1966 film Operazione paura (Kill, Baby... Kill!), regarded by Martin Scorsese as Bava's masterpiece, also appear in the Asian strain of terror film known as J-Horror.

Mario Bava was very disappointed with the distribution of some of his later films (which caused him to retire in 1978 at age 63). Lisa and the Devil (1972) was never picked up by a distrbutor, and had to be later re-edited (with new 1975 footage) into an Exorcist-clone retitled House of Exorcism in order to get released. Bava's Rabid Dogs (1974) was never released theatrically during his lifetime; the film only appeared on DVD in the late 1990's, re-edited a bit with some new footage, as Kidnapped. Bava retired in 1978, and died in 1980 at age 65.

Mario Bava's son, Lamberto Bava, worked for 14 years as Bava's assistant director and later went on to a movie-directing career of his own in 1980 (Demons, A Blade in the Dark, etc.).

On several of his movies, Bava was credited as John M. Old.^[1] Later, Lamberto Bava was sometimes credited as John M. Old, Jr.^[2]

Several books have been published about Mario Bava: Mario Bava by Pascal Martinet (Edilig, 1984) and Mario Bava edited by Jean-Louis Leutrat (Éditions du Céfal, 1994) in French; Mario Bava by Alberto Pezzotta (Il Castoro Cinema, 1995) in Italian; The Haunted Worlds of Mario Bava by Troy Howarth (Fab Press, 2002), and most recently, the massive critical biography Mario Bava All the Colors of the Dark^[3] by Tim Lucas (Video Watchdog, 2007; ISBN 0-9633756-1-X).

Filmography

External links

• Mario Bava at the Internet Movie Database
• Biography of Bava
• Images - Mario Bava, short biography
• Senses of Cinema - about his films
• Yellow, a short film dedicated to Mario Bava
• Mario Bava All the Colors of the Dark Blog - Tim Lucas

Sources

• Mario Bava Maestro of Macabre (2001), directed by Garry S.Grant
• Mario Bava Operazione paura (2004), directed by Gabriele Acerbo & Roberto Pisoni
• Mario Bava All the Colors of the Dark (2007) by Tim Lucas
• Kill, Baby, Kill! Il cinema di Mario Bava (2007) by Gabriele Acerbo & Roberto Pisoni
• Le ombre della paura - Il cinema italiano del terrore 1960/1980 (2002) by Paolo Fazzini & Marco Cruciani

References

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