Sei donne per l’assassino—Blood and Black Lace


influenced by Hitchcock’s Psycho, in that its murder scenes were master- pieces of cinematic design. Hitchcock had given audiences two memorable set-pieces of murder in Psycho (the shower scene and the Arbogast murder); Bava would give them three times as many, each one as lov- ingly photographed as a magazine centerfold.


While much has been written about


the extremity of the film’s sadism and violence, no blood is actually spilled. “Mario hated violence,” insists Freddy Unger, “and he didn’t like to show blood. But the producers were always pushing him to show more, so some- times he would shoot a scene two ways, one with more blood, just to please them—but he would never use it. He preferred to be inventive—with the cutting, with the lighting.” From the very first shot, in which


the red-and-gold shingle hanging out- side the premises of Cristiana Haute Couture is dismantled by a strong gust of wind, Bava underscores the tenu- ousness of public image. The first dia- logue scene, as Frank appeals to Nicole for a drug fix outside the salon, es- tablishes the citadel of feminine beauty as a front for unattractive activities, and its covert tensions inaugurate a mood of mystery before the first murder is committed. Bava’s attention to color is evident in the first murder sequence, as Isabella takes a nighttime walk through the park at Via Sciarra wear- ing a shiny red raincoat. The presence of red not only attracts the eye and signals danger, but it tricks the viewer into “seeing” blood where none has been spilled. As Isabella walks through the park, her coat projecting the warm- est and most vital of colors, her mes- sage is negated as the assassin—a faceless cypher of black-and-white— steps into frame, his mask limned in a deathly blue. Isabella suffers a bru- tal killing, but we actually see very little


of it: the killer grabs her, slams her head several times against a tree, and then garrotes her to death; as he drags her dead body deeper into the woods, the camera lingers on the fresh scars entrenched in her face and cleavage, and as Death drags its claim out of view, the camera tilts up to reveal a chucking ornamental stone cherub. Point and counterpoint. Inside the salon, Mark returns from repairing the fallen sign, and the camera follows him to a private place, where we observe him—behind a wall of bevelled glass—taking some pills in silhouette. Not only does the shot implicate him in the drug-trafficking going on at the salon, but his second return from outside (after the mur- der of Isabella) posits him as a sus- pect, as does—in this shot—the foregrounded image of a mannequin skinned in red velvet, a chromatic reminder of Isabella. The color red is woven throughout the picture in decorative ways—it is the background color of the Cristiana Haute Couture sign, and also the color of the salon’s telephones, drapes, and


mannequins. When Isabella’s diary is found, it is bound in red leather, mak- ing it a personification, of sorts, of the lady in red. 15


Appropriately, the diary


is first discovered during a fashion show by Nicole (“Heyyyy,” she purrs, “Isabella kept a diary!”), the only girl at the salon willing to model the black dress that was scheduled to be worn by Isabella. The other girls describe Nicole as “cynical,” an opinion which is borne out by the way she opens the diary at random and recites a roman- tic passage aloud, in disrespect for the dead.


The discovery of the diary prompts a fabulous, Langian montage of every face in the place that harbors a secret. Everyone in the room clearly covets the diary—to destroy it, to know what’s in it, possibly to use what’s in it. In slightly more than a minute since its introduction, Isabella’s diary assumes an almost superhuman aura—an ob- ject of unholy fascination for every vulture in the place, until Nicole in- sists on her right to present the diary to the police herself and slips it into her purse—which happens to be black,


the color of Isabella’s “bad luck” dress. Every sweaty close-up is then re- prised, followed by a cut back to the purse itself, giving it an equal weight of personality in the montage, and amplifying its dark threat. Black becomes as telling a color for


Nicole as red was for Isabella. After putting the diary in her bag, she re- ceives a phone call, allegedly from Frank, arranging to meet her at his antiques shop. The attentive viewer’s superstitions may be raised by the tele- phone, which is red with a black re- ceiver—it is identical to, and probably the same prop as, the telephone used by Michèle Mercier in I tre volti della paura’s “Il telefono.” Bad luck seems to envelop Nicole, chumming the very air around her; it begins to take defi- nite form while she is modelling on the runway, as her handbag is stolen under the cover of a passing wardrobe rack. 16


THIS RICHLY atmospheric shot predisposes the viewer to regard Mark (Massimo Righi) as a drug addict.


15 Perhaps there is a standard type of diary sold in Rome, but Isabella’s diary looks identical to the diary kept by the Countess Frederica, which sets another series of murders into motion in Bava’s 1971 film Ecologia del delitto/Twitch of the Death Nerve.


16 Wes Craven clearly had this scene in mind when he filmed a similar set-up for Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), in which a child is abducted from a movie set as a wall of scenery is moved by stagehands between the child and the camera.


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