As promised, here's the second part of the Diabolik essay that started yesterday.
II. Mario Bava’s Diabolik: Bright Colours in the Dark
"Many directors say Barbarella is their cult film from the ‘60s. But I think that nothing compares to Diabolik: it is truly unique (…) it has got an extraordinary elegance," Roman Coppola (in Kill, Baby, Kill! Il cinema di Mario Bava, edited by Gabriele Acerbo and Roberto Pisoni, 2007).
The film industry soon showed interest for big screen adaptations of stories taken from dark comics and Angela and Luciana Giussani sold the rights for a Diabolik film in 1965.
According to the first rumours, the film, directed by Seth Holt, was going to star Jean Sorel as Diabolik and Elsa Martinelli as Eva Kant.
The first reports that started circulating towards the end of 1965 hinted at the fact that the film was inspired by spy movies à la James Bond, but featured more violence and intriguing adventures with the action moving from Rome to Malaga, New York and Los Angeles .
Magazines claimed that, following the latest Space Age fashion trends, Elsa Martinelli was going to wear a black asbestos jumpsuit and a stainless steel wig.
Yet when the first pictures taken on the set started circulating, they showed Sorel in a very basic black woollen body-suit and Martinelli looking like a sinister vampire-like creature, a sort of erotic version of villainess Irma Vep in Louis Feuillade’s Les Vampires, sensually clad in black veils and with a widow’s peak hairstyle.
Shooting was interrupted for lack of funds but plans for Diabolik were resumed a few years later, though producer Dino De Laurentiis found himself with a drastically reduced budget and was suggested by associate producer Bruno Todini to hire as director Mario Bava.
Frowned upon by the academia but often referred to as the “king of kitsch” or the “Italian Hitchcock”, Bava was a horror and fantasy director, known for having officially started the thriller film genre in Italy.
Bava had proved with films such as Blood and Black Lace (Sei donne per l’assassino, 1964) that he had a talent for strong visual images. John Phillip Law, who was at the time in Italy shooting Barbarella, was cast in Diabolik’s role, Michel Piccoli starred as Ginko and Adolfo Celi, who had appeared also as Sean Connery’s enemy in the Bond movie Thunderball (1965), was chosen to play gangster Valmont.
There were talks about Marilù Tolo or Catherine Deneuve (there are actually pictures showing Deneuve and Law on the set) starring as Eva Kant, but, in the end the choice fell on Marisa Mell, maybe less elegant than Deneuve, but definitely more similar to the comic book character thanks to her distinctive facial features, magnetic deep sea-green eyes and full lips.
The plot for Danger: Diabolik (Diabolik, 1968) consisted in a series of loosely connected episodes taken from Angela and Luciana Giussani’s most powerful stories and adventures, with a screenplay by Mario Bava, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates and Arduino Maiuri.
To avoid censors and critics, De Laurentiis suggested Bava to tone down the most violent scenes, focusing on James Bond-like atmospheres.
The director referenced spy movies throughout the story, but the film’s visual pacing was directly taken from the comic book.
The opening shots with the police motorcycles have the depth and perspective of comics and, in many scenes, Bava turned the screen into a sheet of paper, breaking it into panels, creating a new spatiality using a “frame within the frame” technique (Mario Bava expert Tim Lucas did a lot of researches about this aspect of the film).
By putting emphasis on the physicality of his actors, on John Phillip Law’s eyes looking directly into the camera, raising his eyebrows and winking at the viewer, Bava recreated on the screen the same complicity Diabolik had created on the paper with his readers, succeeding where Joseph Losey’s Modesty Blaise (1966) had failed.
Bava also had a strong sense of design: as a young man he had nurtured a passion for painting, often drew by himself his storyboards and loved using in his films bright colours to stimulate the watcher in an almost tactile way, challenging notions of acceptable taste and creating a technicoloured artificial world.
This is the main reason why, though the film was strongly connected with the comic book, it was also very different.
Many critics defined the film as a Pop manifesto, a Warholian movie that mixed the style and techniques of artistic movements such as Pop and Optical Art with psychedelia and futuristic atmospheres, in the same way Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack was a mix of different genres, encompassing lounge and acid jazz.
The film proceded through an accumulation of elements, from sets to colours and adventures, combining bright nuances with experimental camera moves and provocative use of sound and music.
Bava’s Diabolik had a strong Pop aesthetic from the first shots: calling to mind the bright nuances of some works of art from the ‘60s, such as Andy Warhol’s "Flowers" series, the yellow, violet and green gas appearing on the screen a few minutes into the film, introduced the viewer to a sort of distorted fantasy world characterised by strong graphic effects that originated bright sci-fi visions.
In Bava’s film there was a strong emphasis on yellow, a shade traditionally matched with black to indicate danger, but also a hint in this case at the “giallo” genre.
This chromatic element charged with a disquieting and disturbing value turned towards the end into a golden shade, giving the entire film a sort of unreal and artificial atmosphere.
Bava also seemed to reference Roy Lichtenstein’s works in a Pop Art-meets-comic identikit during which the faces of Jane Fonda and model Twiggy were magically conjured up.
While the Giussani sisters’ anti-hero deceived people through his masks, Bava deceived his audience through the illusions of dreamlike futuristic sets conjured up by his visionary mind. Indeed, most of the sets didn’t exist, but had been recreated by the director using cardboard, aluminium and plastic miniatures and matte paintings that allowed him to maintain the perfect illusion of seeing the characters walking through vast sets.
Only a section of the tunnel leading to Diabolik’s cave was recreated in the studio, while the archetypal ‘60s architectures were a trompe l’oeil visionary illusion conjured up by Bava.
Parts of the sets were also borrowed from Barbarella, though the ultra-modern furniture and interior design details of Diabolik’s cave, with its see-through shower cabins, beehive-shaped lamps and smooth elements and glossy surfaces in white and silvery steel characterised by sinuous, sensual and futuristic geometrical forms, called to mind Joe Colombo’s furniture (View this photo).
Diabolik and Eva Kant’s rotating bed seemed to be based for example on the living solutions experimented by Colombo such as his “Total Furnishing Unit“.
Costumes were another vital aspect of the film: Diabolik and Eva’s minimalist wardrobes perfectly merged with the maximum geometry of the environment they moved in, turning into metaphors for fit and athletic bodies.
Costumes for Diabolik are usually credited to Luciana Marinucci, but also Giulio Coltellacci – the creator of the André Courrèges-inspired creations for Elio Petri’s The Tenth Victim (La decima vittima, 1965) – worked on them.
A sort of colour-coded dichotomy was set in the original screenplay between black and white, the former symbolising Diabolik, the latter Eva Kant. In the end the division was mainly applied to the cars of the main characters, with emphasis on Diabolik’s black Jaguar E-Type, conceived as an extension of Diabolik, almost as his exoskeleton.
Eva Kant’s costumes, in a quintessential ’60s style and in shades comprising peach, bright red, beige, white and black, with a final futuristic mourning outfit that included a fur-edged hood with a rigid veil, reflected instead a mood of optimism and freedom.
They were designed to allow her to move and run comfortably, while showing her legs and radiate an irresistible sexuality.
The wardrobe chosen for Marisa Mell was indeed a crossover of ’60s trends, with shorts and dresses with cutaway armholes, curved scallops and rounded patch pockets matched with black or fishnet tights and mid-calf flat boots à la André Courrèges that allowed her to move freely.
The natural curve of the breast was accentuated, midriff was bared, bare backs were on display, trousers were cut to dip low in the waist at the back, revealing an erotic curve of firm flesh.
Hardness, toughness and femininity were mixed together and there were also a few references to Paco Rabanne in Eva’s metal grommet jacket and bikini and in Valmont’s girlfriend top made of triangles of red plastic linked together.
The extravagant jewels Eva wore in the film or Diabolik stole have a costumy quality about them since they were created by Nino Lembo, a theatre actor who, after retiring, began producing dramatic pieces of jewellery for the film and television industries.
Lembo’s jewels in Bava’s film were directly inspired by the rich necklaces Diabolik stole in the comic book.
Diabolik and Eva’s costumes contrast with the classic and traditional style characterised by long, lean and sculpted lines favoured by the police and by Inspector Ginko.
Designed by Bruno Piattelli, one of the most famous Rome-based tailors in the ’60s, Ginko’s tailored suits displayed a conservative silhouette, pristine tailoring and sharp lines, in a nutshell a polished, authoritative aesthetics and a traditional yet rigid elegance representing the antithesis to Diabolik’s dynamic rubber suit created by Carlo Rambaldi.
Pervaded by a strong sensuality and sexuality and by a special chemistry between Diabolik and Eva, Bava’s film was dismissed as a technicolour farce, brimming with erotic fantasy, amoral role-play, and mind-expanding Pop Art colours and designs.
In the years to come Diabolik turned into a cult film for a few connoisseurs, but also into a very fashionable inspiration for many designers.
Stay tuned for the third and last part of the essay scheduled for tomorrow.
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LOL. I think having a dinosaur costume is better.
Posted by: dinosaur costume | June 15, 2012 at 03:11 PM
Being a musician seems like a very romantic idea indeed. But what are the true advantages and disadvantages of living day to day as a practicing musician?
Posted by: Steam Shower | August 24, 2012 at 01:50 PM