That’s the only way to defend your- self.’ Well, I didn’t really have any prob- lems with that, but of course, the movie is about a little boy and kids are always going to take the attention away from the adults. You know—the law of the land. [David] was a little kid. He was really quite smart, actu- ally. But I was much more interested in Daria Nicolodi than in him, you know?”
Nicolodi recalls the filming as a tre- mendous challenge, supremely diffi- cult, but ultimately joyous. When she first arrived on the set, she was feel- ing vulnerable and unattractive as a result of her breakdown. “You had to be there to feel this,” she says, “but at the beginning, I felt that [Mario] didn’t like me very much the first two days. [I thought] he was used to another type of actress, maybe more beautiful and with more of a classical approach to acting, you know? And then, on the second day, I told myself, ‘I am not here to be loved . . . I have to give him all that I can’—and I had a scene in which I screamed, fell down, and was running . . . , and I did it so strongly that he understood, and that’s how we came to understand and appreciate each other.” The actress’ insecurities were such that she telephoned Dario Argento, prevailing upon her estranged lover to visit her on the set. “I visited the set of Schock many days,” Dario Argento confirms. “It was one of the first films Daria made without me, and she asked me to be there to give her support.” At some point during the filming, Nicolodi took Bava into her confidence and told him the story of her falling out with Argento and her resulting breakdown, and admitted to her anorexia. This brought them closer together as friends and collaborators, and Bava helped her to use her experience as valuable reference in playing Dora Baldini, which was to become the most impressive performance of her career.
It is now well-known that Schock was partially directed by Lamberto Bava, and one naturally wonders how this
IN HER hallucinations, Dora is stalked by her husband’s ghost, determined to end her life with this cutting blade.
