ARIO BAVA WORKED as a camera- man from 1939–1960, making the first half of his career in films actu-
PROVERBS
ally longer (and more productive) than his second, better-known career as a director. One reason that Bava’s directorial debut, La maschera del demonio/Black Sunday, is so impressive is that it feels like the work of a fully-grown artist, as indeed it was. There can be no real understanding of Bava’s development as a filmmaker with- out a knowledge of the years he spent as a director of photography; it is during this period that we witness his evolution as an artist and the emergence of a highly individual cinematographic style—a signature touch de- veloped in the shadow of war and in response to the demands of a wide variety of film genres,
at first in emulation of his heroes, and finally as self-expression. It is here—working under the auspices of such important directors as Francesco De Robertis, Mario Costa, G.W. Pabst, Steno, Mario Monicelli, Robert Z. Leonard, Pietro Francisci, Riccardo Freda and Raoul Walsh, among many others—that Bava (in his own words) “learned what a director must do, and more importantly, what he must not do.”1
Readers primarily interested in Bava’s work in the horror genre will find this portion of his story more instructive and relevant than they might expect, as some key moments from that later body of work were in fact restagings, secondary drafts, or ironic comments on scenes and effects that he had filmed earlier in his career.