Blood and Black Lace
A virtuoso of fetishism, color, and cinematic thrills, Mario Bava was in the 50s and 60s a pioneer of popular genre cinema, offering seminal titles to apocalyptic science fiction, gothic horror, and—perhaps most notably—giallo, the Italian thriller genre he is credited with inventing. The filmmaker’s work blends suspense, eroticism, and humor, guided by a formalism that is both dazzling and venomous.
A masked assassin kills models at a fashion house in Rome. This landmark film of the giallo genre establishes all its codes once and for all.
Mario Bava
Mario Bava was an Italian filmmaker who worked as a director, cinematographer, special effects artist and screenwriter. Referred to as the "Master of Italian Horror" and the "Master of the Macabre", he is widely regarded as a pioneer of Italian genre cinema and one of the most influential auteurs of horror films. His low-budget genre films, known for their distinctive visual flair and stylish technical ingenuity, feature recurring themes and imagery concerning the conflict between illusion and reality, as well as the destructive capacity of human nature. After providing special effects work and other assistance on such productions as I Vampiri (1957), Hercules (1958) and Caltiki – The Immortal Monster (1959), Bava made his official directorial debut with the gothic horror film Black Sunday, released in 1960. He went on to direct such films as The Girl Who Knew Too Much, Black Sabbath, The Whip and the Body (all released in 1963), Blood and Black Lace (1964), Planet of the Vampires (1965), Kill, Baby, Kill (1966), Danger: Diabolik (1968), A Bay of Blood (1971), Baron Blood (1972), Lisa and the Devil (1974) and Rabid Dogs (1974). According to the British Film Institute (BFI), "Bava took a vital role in the creation of the modern horror film."
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Mario Bava, en tous genres
Bava’s films have always pushed the boundaries of genre, either by innovating or by reinventing its codes. While he's considered the inventor of giallo, his work spans a wide range of popular and unclassifiable genres. A few standout titles are featured in this retrospective, presented in partnership with the Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal.
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