emissary from England, offering him a Knighthood, additional men and arms in exchange for a third of his plun- ders. When Don José Guzman forbids his daughter to see Morgan again and launches an attack against his fleet, Morgan plays along by staging his own death, later anonymously crashing the Governor’s victory dinner for a minuet with Inez. Meeting secretly, Inez ad- mits her love to Morgan, who refuses to let her join him yet. Instead, he de- cides to raid Panama and take the woman who loves him as his prize— entering not by sea as expected, but on land from the city’s unprotected rear. It is a violent takeover, and while es- caping her father’s plan to sneak her away to safe haven in Spain, Inez is injured in the streets during an explo- sion. Morgan recognizes her medallion among the booty collected from bodies in the streets, and demands to be led to her. To his relief, he revives Inez, and the lovers reunite in a kiss.
Bava’s covert contributions to Morgan il pirata are fairly easy to spot, because his cinematographic style is so much at odds with that of the film’s princi- pal cameraman, Tonino Delli Colli (b. 1923). Best known for photographing the Italian Westerns of Sergio Leone, Delli Colli—who first collaborated with Primo Zeglio on 1949’s Nerone e Messalina (“Nero and Messalina”)—is renowned for his arid, naturalistic vi- sual style, which generally eschews shadow in favor of stark, sun-soaked imagery and an almost incidental limi- tation of color. Consequently, aside from the obvious trick shots, Bava’s material tips its hand with its potent uses of color and shadow.
Bava’s work first appears in a glass matte, which adds a palmy Panama- nian vista to the plain background of a long-shot following Morgan’s re- prieve from execution. As Sir Thomas sails to the shore of Tortuga to meet with Morgan, we see another glass matte showing a fleet of five ships (more than the production could af- ford to build), viewed in silhouette over the shoulder of a foregrounded rock; this shot appears to have been achieved with nothing more than black paper cutouts, positioned on
