Revenir : la peur envisagée par Mario Bava (Les Trois visages de la peur / I Tre volti della paura, 1963)

Nicolas Cvetko

Abstract

Ghosts populate Mario Bava’s films and are at the heart of Black Sabbath (1963). The three episodes of this anthology film depict their terrifying appearance. The Telephone offers a harrowing “huis-clos” amid manipulation and revenge. The Wurdulak, a Gothic fantasy tale, questions the fear of the other through the essential ambiguity of the vampire. Finally, in The Drop of Water, a cruel tale if any, the ghost appears as an image of the Unheimlich and a metaphor for wholly-assumed special effects and illusions. This manifesto-type triptych film is thus characterized by a quest of both efficiency and distance to arouse fear on the screen, on the faces that inspire it as well as on those who express it.


Key words: Mario Bava, fear, ghosts, faces, film aesthetics

Citation rules

Cvetko, N. Revenir : la peur envisagée par Mario Bava (<i>Les Trois visages de la peur</i> / <i>I Tre volti della paura</i>, 1963). Romanica Silesiana, 11(1). Retrieved from https://journals.us.edu.pl/index.php/RS/article/view/6001

Vol. 11 No. 1 (2016)
Published:


ISSN: 1898-2433
eISSN: 2353-9887

Publisher
Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego | University of Silesia Press

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