HOUGH ITALY had officially entered World War II in 1940, it was not until 1943 that Ital- ian lives first felt the elemental impact of World
War II on their home turf. “When the blackouts started,” Bava said, “it was made a law that all automobile fend- ers must be painted white, but 90% of the people pasted strips of paper on them instead. Everybody was con- vinced that the war would be over in fifteen days, maybe less. Instead, we were struck by famine, so everyone hurried to Rome like horses to oats.”1
Between the fall of Mussolini in July 1943 and the Allies’ liberation of Rome from German occupation on June 25, 1944, Cinecittà was bombed, looted, and all but destroyed. Useless for film production, the ruins of Mussolini’s Cinema City were adopted as a makeshift shelter for hundreds of Italians and other refugees left homeless by the war. Having finally launched his ca- reer as a cameraman, and with two features to his credit, Mario Bava’s career stopped cold as the Eternal City assumed the look and smell of a tomb. He photo- graphed no features in 1944 and 1945, but little was being produced in Italy in the wake of the Occupation. In 1942, the Italian cinema’s most robust year to date, 127 films had been made and released—followed by 72 in 1943, 17 in 1944, and only 4 in 1945. Most of the active film community fled Rome in the latter months of the war, only to return after the peace treaty had been signed with the Allies.