MACISTE IN HELL: This US lobby card depicts a surprisingly exploitative panorama of women suffering punishments at the hands of demons. Eugenio Bava likely contributed to the film’s hallucinatory imagery.
was around his father, and based on his own experience, he surely also knew how to take a camera apart and reassemble it. Cinematography was his second nature. Working for Massimo Terzano could in no way be mistaken for “start- ing at the bottom,” as Terzano was commonly regarded as one of the top
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cameramen working in Italian cinema. His fellow cameraman Carlo Nebiolo called Terzano “the most meticulous creator of images in the Italian cin- ema” and “the cinematographer for di- rectors who favored stylistic cin- ema.” 13
Both descriptions offer substantial testimony as to the char- acter of what the young Mario Bava learned by working at his side. Born April 23, 1892, in Turin, Massimo Terzano photographed his first film in 1915 and rose to promi- nence with a series of films whose vi- sual style show an obvious influence on Mario Bava’s own later work.
Terzano had staked his claim on a se- ries of opulently baroque opera films, and rose to prominence with a trio of epic fantasies starring Cabiria’s own Maciste (Bartolomeo Pagano), includ- ing Maciste imperatore (“Emperor Maciste,” 1924), Maciste all’inferno/ Maciste in Hell (1925) and Maciste nella gabbia dei leoni (“Maciste in the Lions’ Cage,” 1926). Maciste in Hell— which achieved an American release in 1931 with a synchronized music and sound effects track, and glimpses of female nudity intact—featured ex- tensive special effects credited to Segundo de Chomón, which suggests
the uncredited involvement of Eugenio Bava. 14
Terzano actually co-photo- graphed this classic—and much of his subsequent work for the next ten years—with Ubaldo Arata, for whom the cameraman named his first-born son. (Ubaldo Terzano would grow up to become a gifted cameraman in his own right, photographing all of Mario Bava’s best-looking films.) Terzano and Arata were stylistic opposites; in later years, Arata would become the cinematographer most often associ- ated with neorealism, particularly for his work on Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione. The silent Italian cinema’s