Style and Substance
January 8, 2009 — strangeinkAfter putting together my post on Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace, I have been considering a rather long post delving into the subject of cinematic style as a means of conveying message – style as substance. It’s a subject that has fascinated me since high school – film as a visual medium, with the message or theme being conveyed not by exposition or even plot, but visually…aesthetically. All too often, we hear critics complain that a filmmaker is all sizzle and no steak, all flash and no substance. In some cases, I think this may be a valid argument. But all too often it becomes a lazy way to dismiss something out of hand based solely on aesthetics alone; if the filmmaker is too stylized, too creative, there’s a tendency to presume that the emperor is wearing no clothes.
In preparing my essay, I decided to do a little on-line research and discovered that not only was my topic well-covered, but covered in ways that explain my position far better than I could. For example, there’s this rather swell article on the work of Brian DePalma.
“Signature De Palma techniques like the split screen, the long take, slow motion and the stalking camera are usually dismissed as style for style’s sake, simply because they attract so much attention to themselves. It never occurs to the De Palma naysayers that these techniques do so for a reason: because there are messages encrypted in the form. Indeed, to “see through” the surface of De Palma’s cinematic design means missing the point completely. Its substance is in the style.”
While I don’t think the author makes his “case” as concretely as he may have in some areas, this fascinating essay really captures my thoughts on the subject. I also think we can apply this thinking to other forms of art – poetry and painting, certainly, but I’m thinking specifically about comics – Kirby, Steranko, McCay, and Paul Pope all pop into my head.
More thought is required, yes.
Cinema Strange – Blood and Black Lace (1963)
January 6, 2009 — strangeink
Blood and Black Lace (Sei donne per l’assassino -”Six Women for the Murderer”)
Of all the Italian genre directors, none holds a higher place in my esteem or a warmer place in my heart than Mario Bava. His movies charm and beguile me in ways that no one else’s can match. Bava was his own cinematographer, and no one, I mean no one, knew how to use color the way he did – always playful and engaging, even at their most brutal. When you watch Bava, it’s a perfect dance of technique and personal vision. Even Dario Argento’s Susperia (maybe my favorite of horror film all time) unmistakably owes a great deal of its visual panache to Mario Bava. Bava, on the other hand, owes nobody nothin’. He worked hard for the money, and I intend to treat him right.
Even taking into account such eye-melting forays into horror history like La Maschera del demonio (Black Sunday) and I Tre Volti Della Paura (Black Sabbath), Blood and Black Lace is one of the more noteworthy films on Bava’s filmography. Shot in 1963, right after his success with Black Sabbath, Blood and Black Lace bares the distinction of being considered the prototype for the modern “Slasher” picture. * Now, being called the first Slasher (or “body count” film) might be a dubious distinction for some, sure, but one must afford credit where credit is due and starting a trend is harder than it looks. True, Hitchcock’s Psycho merits singular distinction as the bedrock upon which this genre is founded, and it would be foolish to dismiss the influence of Psycho on the approach Bava takes to this film. But saying Psycho is a Slasher pic is just crazy talk, most likely heard comin’ out of the mouths of dudes wearing Fulci Lives shirts who have a stake in making us think their hack-n-slashers have more art cred then they do. The confusion comes in because both Hitchcock and Bava share a common goal in taking the conventional thriller and making it sing by turning murder into visual poetry. Psycho exists for one reason – the shower scene (not to write off the rest of the film – Hitch applies the same degree of ferocious craft to everything following Crane’s murder). Yet, it’s Hitchock’s approach to the shower scene that sets Psycho apart and removes it from the vocabulary of the true Slasher; Hitchcock’s centerpiece is completely dependent on making the audience care about, or at least know, Marion Crane. While Bava is also interested in taking the thriller and turning it into an exercise in technique over plot, he makes no attempt to create a sympathetic context within which to view the victims of the carnage he creates. He’s solely interested in the technical beauty of the kill and the visual artistry conveying theme and subtext. It’s that first part, the kill as technical exercise sans dependency on audience sympathy, that qualifies Blood and Black Lace as a Slasher. Bava has no interest whatsoever in the audience sympathizing with the characters in Blood and Black Lace, because they aren’t human beings worth getting to know or care about; they’re fucking mannequins that he positions as needed to affect an aesthetic or thematic objective.
Take a look at the title sequence.
Notice how we’re introduced to the actors, in character, Voguing it up for Bava’s lens. This is a pretty nifty way of setting up how we’re supposed to engage the film. It establishes the style of the film and it says, “Here are the players – they’re visual elements, pieces of the scenery.” The mannequin motif surfaces over and over in the film, which is set in the madcap, take-your-life-into-your-hands world of fashion modeling. The mannequins are either skeletons or blood red. None of them have faces. Which is cute because our killer has no face either.
No, that’s not Vic Sage, although I’ll be damned if that first kill in the film didn’t make me think “Shit, the Question ain’t fuckin’ around!”
Even if it doesn’t make a lick of logistical sense, the internal thematic and visual logic behind the faceless mask is cool. This is a killer that murders beautiful women…and not for kicks, because killing shouldn’t be about the kicks. It’s about trying to keep those dames from either learning or revealing the contents of a secret diary. In the world of one-eyed films about appearance versus reality, Blood and Black Lace is king. In English Lit Grad speak, the characters’ faces are masks concealing their true nature – and while these models may have beautiful faces, they are chock full of dirty, smarmy secrets. Yeah. Smarmy. Like cocaine use and blackmail and The Sex. Ick. Everyone in the film is either a liar or meant to be considered a liar. The only character who doesn’t shoot us the shifty-eye at some point is Inspector Sylvester (name = awesome), a character who tests the limits of how facile a stereotype can be and still be called a character. Bava basically wants us to distrust everyone else – and not just because they may or may not be the killer. Bava has deep scorn for these people, for their life styles and their values. He sees their surface beauty as something to be suspicious of, not something to covet.
Need further proof? Consider this: Bava dispatches all of the fashion victims (ha, I kill me) in ways that either mutilate or focus on the face. One gets her mug pounded into a tree, another sucks on the bottom of a pillow, and so on. Writing that out makes it seem pretty hamfisted, but I assure you it’s not. While Bava is not exactly His Royal Majesty of Subtlety, he is visually elegant and a master of making things fit tonally within the context of the film; Bava isn’t one to throw in a gratuitous element just to make his point – if he puts a visual element or running motif in a film, it’s because it fucking works.
Which brings me to another reason I love Bava and why Blood and Black Lace is such a gem: While I think Black Sabbath is the superior showcase for his mastery of color as a way of externalizing the terror and paranoia of his characters (“A Drop of Water” may be one of my favorite artifacts of visual storytelling from the 60’s), Blood and Black Lace features a simply scrumptious palette of primary colors, not only during the film’s most extraordinary kill, a stalking sequence set in a coke-head’s antique shop, but in all the wonderful background details like the Purple Pieman curtains and Max Marian’s ruby red Batphone. As I pointed out before, even the mannequins are blood red. Still, these elements never overpower a shot or the narrative. Every now and then, something will pop and make you say “Damn, those are some Purple Pieman curtains!” but it never feels superfluous – the background colors accentuate the backdrop of the film, the world of high fashion, before they’re turned into signifiers of death; Bava uses red mannequins to both highlight his setting’s absurd sense of superficial aesthetic, but they also remind us of people who have been flayed, their most superficial decorations – the skin – removed. Everything enhances the mood and everything serves a purpose…OK, maybe not the red Batphone, but even that adds a nice touch in the final moments of the film.
Now, in all fairness, Blood and Black Lace isn’t a masterpiece. Blood and Black Lace has been called visually inconsistent, and that’s a fair complaint. Unlike Hitchcock, who made even the most rudimentary scenes of exposition and dialogue visually interesting, Bava is clearly painting-by-numbers with some of the more perfunctory bits in here. It’s clear that he does what he can where he can, but there are conventions that seem to bore him and he’s quick to give them a quick one-two set-up and move on. Still, I wouldn’t call this minor Bava by any means (wave to the folks at home, Baron Blood), as there’s enough invention and intelligence on display to make it consistently entertaining. In the end, Blood and Black Lace deserves to be seen not only for its legacy spot as a giallo or as a Slasher, but because it’s a beguiling, often visually scrumptious example of how a good director can take a shitty story and turn it into arresting cinema.
*Now, as a side note, I’d side with the geeks who put Bava’s own 1971 blood bath Reazione a catena as the first true Slasher, but I can certainly see where people would put Blood and Black Lace first.
STW – January 2nd, 2009
January 2, 2009 — strangeink
Well, I hope you all had a terrific New Year’s day. I certainly did.
I’ve been having a ball playing with my new Tumblr account. That thing is like crack! Seriously, if I didn’t have a family or a real job, I’d be throwin’ shit up on that thing for 12 hrs out of the day.
It’s been a fine week. Nothing to gripe about, really. Intend to spend the slow day at work (nobody will be in the office but This Guy) working up some content for this joint.
To start off the new year, I thought I’d throw some Ministry your way. Because I can, and because they do indeed bring the rock.
Oh, and this one has Bill Burroughs, which is Undefeatable.
