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Rating: I read some time ago that, from the perspective of the bourgeoisie who established themselves as the holders of political power starting from the French Revolution of 1789, man is essentially seen as a producer and bearer of wealth, and his activity, social and legal, is flattened in a purely economic dimension, reducing him - I literally jumped from my chair here - to a "mannequin", to an abstract, ahistorical, non-existent entity.
The surprise with which I read the pages in question, coming from the report of a renowned legal historian, was due to the fact that, somewhere, I had already seen men treated as mannequins, reduced to puppets fighting for power and economic success: the setting was not academic, but cinematic, and moreover typical of a so-called b-movie cinema, like that of Mario Bava.
The opening credits of "Blood and Black Lace" ('64), in fact, show us, in the piquant hues of technicolor, all the main actors of the film posing as mannequins - and amongst mannequins - anticipating the film's plot, which unfolds predominantly within a fashion house’s atelier and around activities related to the fashion house, shaken by the deeds of a mysterious assassin who increasingly kills six women for no apparent reason.
In the film, all characters are treated by the Ligurian-born director as mannequins, sent to their slaughter under the blows of a fanciful killer, without apparent reason, except to discover, in the end, that the story appears entirely rational. The driving force of the murder, as often happens in Bava's works, is indeed the usual, eternal, human greed, the anxiety for power and money that twists the bourgeois protagonists of his stories, pushing them to abandon the tranquility of their lives to oppress others and kill.
Not that I want to claim that Bava's cinema is thesis-driven cinema, nor that his works had metacinematic ambitions or, worse, pedagogical ones, but it is undeniable that, behind the director's stories, there is at least a worldview that mixes pessimism and realism, never leaving room for hope, nor understanding for the individual.
This highlights, even starting from this film, the profound differences compared to Argento, wrongly considered Bava's epigone: while in the former there is a fundamental optimism, where mysteries, crimes, and pain are eventually revealed by the investigator, returning reality to a recta ratio, in Bava such discourse is completely absent, being evident how the investigators never discover anything, let alone if amateurs, how the murders do not constitute the violation of the real order, but the very affirmation of reality and its unveiling in absolute violence.
Also for this reason, do not trust those who make undue comparisons between the two directors, even assimilating the national Dario's debut film to "Blood and Black Lace", he certainly assimilated Bava's aesthetic lesson, without sharing or reproducing the content of his films in his works.
Like Argento, in reality, Bava exhibits full control over staging and an excellent ability to balance lights and colors, offering to the viewer, as well executed in this film, an expressionist, vivid depiction, where the same anti-naturalistic colors become the narrative voice of the story, defining the atmospheres and moods (also seen in "The Perfume of the Lady in Black" by Francesco Barilli). Perhaps less successful is the direction of the actors, where the success of the film depends on their intrinsic quality rather than the director’s ability to use them at his service.
The aforementioned reasons make "Blood and Black Lace" highly recommendable, not only for fans of the Italian giallo - here captured in its founding act - but also for all those who do not wish to have a stereotypical idea of our cinema, not believing that it resolves merely in the usual, well-known, masterpieces.
Chapeau.
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