The Whip and the Body / La frusta e il corpo (1963)

November 5, 2024 3:28 PM

[Trailer] Disowned in the past by his father, Kurt Menliff, a cruel and sadistic nobleman, returns to the family castle to reclaim his inheritance. -- Trakt
posted by johnofjack (3 comments total)

Ah, this film. This is one of the few films I regret asking my library to buy, though it'll probably check out decently and some patrons may even like it.

I was onboard with the film at the beginning; it's all very Gothic: a stone castle on a cliff seaside, howling wind and hidden passages, velvet curtains and lace collars, hoop skirts and melodramatic proclamations, Technicolor hues and a classical soundtrack ... but that mixing! Jebus.

The film is set at the seaside and there is wind. Such wind! Between the lines of dialogue the wind, over the dialogue the wind, half-obscuring the dialogue the wind; in the silence--just kidding, there is no silence; there is only wind. On the shore, in the parlor, in the catacombs, in the bedrooms, wind. I was literally 45 minutes in before I got to a scene where I could not hear the wind. This film is the cinematic equivalent of tinnitus and it annoyed the everliving hell out of me. Couple the mixing with an ending I didn't love, and eh. I've watched it once; I doubt very much that I will ever watch it again. So annoying. I wonder if anyone approached Bava about maybe toning it down, reeling it back; I wonder if later he thought that maybe he should have.
posted by johnofjack at 3:38 PM on November 5, 2024 [4 favorites]

I’d argue that The Whip and the Body is one of Mario Bava’s best films and a key work of the Italian Gothic film era. The film’s striking lighting and richly saturated Technicolor, influenced by his mentor Riccardo Freda, create a bridge to the more stylized giallo films that would follow, particularly in early Argento works. The subject matter — exploring themes of S&M and incest — is daringly provocative for that era & context, with Bava rendering it in an otherworldly, melodramatic & decadent style. Which, of course, got him in trouble with the censors of the era in not just Italy. The relentless wind, itself a character, mirrors the psychological torment of those bound by their forbidden love. Daliah Lavi is suitably fragile, always seeming to teeter on the edge yet remaining sympathetic, Christopher Lee brings his usual blend of menace and allure. Italian genre stalwarts Tony Kendall & Luciano Pigozzi (the Italian Peter Lorre) give solid performances.

As with many of Bava's films, The Whip and the Body benefits immensely from a quality print; the Kino release, for instance, does the film justice IMO.
posted by Ashwagandha at 10:03 AM on November 6, 2024 [3 favorites]

Anyone even kind of interested in Mario Bava should check out Tim Lucas' Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark (sadly long out of print). It is exhaustive in its coverage of Bava's credited (and uncredited) work.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:49 AM on November 7, 2024 [1 favorite]