La ragazza che sapeva troppo—Evil Eye


heard, was principally an idea man and may have been the first to suggest that the time was right, in the wake of Psycho, for an Italian imitation or send- up of Hitchcock. Corbucci was likely responsible for the concept of witness- ing a murder revealed to have taken place a decade earlier, as his script for Danza Macabra is about a man who accepts a bet to spend the night inside an empty house on the anniversary of a grisly event, and witnesses the events as they are replayed before his eyes. Given the diabolical imagination dis- played in Il terzo occhio, as well as its interest in morbid psychology, Guerrini would be the likeliest instigator of the details of the film’s murders, and the motivations of the killer. As for Bava and Prosperi, they were surely respon- sible for developing the character of Nora, given Bava’s interest in gialli fic- tion and Prosperi’s later interest in spy spoofs; thus, many of their specific con- tributions may survive only in the American version known as Evil Eye (to be discussed later). Given Bava’s track record of rewriting and improvising new directions on the set, there was very likely a certain amount of revision and reshaping also going on throughout the production.


The film began shooting under the working title of L’incubo (“The Night- mare”), which was changed to avoid a conflict with another black-and-white thriller announced by Hammer Films. Even with the financial input of an ad- ditional American company, it was a fairly low-budget undertaking, with a good deal of the filming taking place at Trinità dei Monti, the famous public square in the Lazio district of Rome. Here, the twin church towers of Trinità dei Monti look down on the Piazza di Spagna—an oblong oval area on the street below, to which they are joined by a pair of complementary, curving stairwells, famously known as “the Spanish steps.” The stairs also lead up to a French academy for artists, a mag- nificently restored villa and garden that forms the entrance to the Villa Borghese park (the location of the eponymous fea- ture that Bava photographed in 1953), and today, Rome’s biggest McDonald’s. Trinità dei Monti, like much of Rome, is


2 In Italian, the name Straccianeve has connota- tions of a tramp who wears rags.


psychological thrillers that poured forth in the wake of Psycho. (AIP’s 1964 pressbook for Evil Eye makes an overt pitch to sell the picture along these lines, describing it as a “terror mystery in the tradition of Psycho and other entertain- ment masterpieces,” while Bava him- self—then at age 48—is misleadingly sketched as “Italy’s young master of shock and terror who has been ac- claimed as the equal of Hitchcock.”) During this time frame, black-and- white was considered the proper key for psychological suspense and kitchen sink violence; indeed, there had never before been an Italian thriller lensed in color. La dolce vita, also a black-and-white film, was another point of reference.


a conglomeration of buildings from many different centuries; it was once the centerpiece of an artists colony, due to its proximity to the academy, but at the time Bava made this film, it was becoming a tremendous tourist attrac- tion, in the wake of films like La dolce vita, which romanticized the Roman scene. (Fellini himself lived only a short distance from the Spanish Steps, in Via Margutta.) Today, Trinità dei Monti remains one of the most popular attractions and meeting places in Rome, though it is now impossible to live there unless you are a millionaire. It continues to play an important decorative role in contem- porary motion pictures, including Bernardo Bertolucci’s Besieged (1998) and Anthony Minghella’s excellent thriller The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999, which is set during the period in which Bava’s film was made). Thanks to its prominent placement in La ragazza che


THIS EARLY publicity portrait of Leticia Roman finds the actress striking an Ann-Margret-type pose.


sapeva troppo, Trinità dei Monti has also become a monument of sorts to the golden age of Italian horror, and is the first stop many Bava fans make when they first sojourn to Rome. Except for a few other landmarks seen during a light-hearted montage, the film’s only other major location is the Foro Italico, a Fascist stadium built in 1932 at the base of Monte Mario, encircled with statuary depicting ath- letes of all kinds in the manner of ancient Roman gods. All of the interi- ors were shot at the original Titanus Studios in Farnesina. In retrospect, it may seem strange


that La ragazza che sapeva troppo was not shot in color. However, in 1962 when the film was in production, black-and- white was standard issue for the myriad


The monochromatic look of the film is very much in the classic film noir mode of the 1940s, luxurious and distinctive, and some of its scenes (Nora’s visit to Landini’s office, for example) would not have worked so well in color. That said, La ragazza che sapeva troppo is actu- ally less imitative of Psycho than of Hitchcock’s color thrillers of the 1950s; it owes more to Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, and of course, The Man Who Knew Too Much. Color would have brought more sparkle to its travelogue aspects, and made its hor- ror sequences more lurid. Given the ad- justment to color he would make with his next giallo (“The Telephone” in I tre volti della paura/Black Sabbath), one imagines that Bava also recognized this basic error in judgment.


Cast


La ragazza che sapeva troppo as- sembles what was probably Mario Bava’s most thoroughly talented cast up to this time. The principal players are attractive, likeable and capable, the supporting characters are color- ful and interesting, and peppered throughout the movie are cameo ap- pearances by actors whom Bava used on other occasions.


Cast as Nora Davis was 22-year- old Leticia Roman, who was born Letizia Novarese in Rome on August 12, 1941. She was the daughter of former stage actress Giuliana Gianni and screenwriter–costume designer Nino Vittorio Novarese (Cleopatra, The Greatest Story Ever Told), who had dressed some of the films Mario Bava


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