Nothing is quite as it seems in Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body. I was immediately surprised at the stylistic and sexual intensity of this brave little Italian horror film from the 1960s. The overt fetishizing of the body and unabashedly blatant S & M relations between the haunting main character (Kurt) and his emotionally unstable love interest (Nevenka, the deadly femme fatale of the film who is also married to his brother) may even be seen as offensive to certain audiences today. Regardless of its controversial subject matter, Bava sustains a feeling of suspense and terror throughout the film with relative ease. And though the excessive camera direction (think very quick zoom-ins) and melodramatic acting (think Bette Davis doing high school theatre) may turn some viewers off quickly, such excess in films often purposely challenges viewers to look beneath the surface of the narrative and its key players.
Playing with a stylistic repertoire similar to film noir, Bava’s use of lighting is both frightening and intriguing. The backlit landscape used in the establishing wideshots immediately creates a sense of mystery as Kurt rides horseback up to his family’s overwhelming cliff-top home entirely in silhouette. Mixing deep shadows with powerful splashes of blue, green, and amber, Bava colors the viewer’s perspective while at once accentuating and obstructing any view of his actors and settings. While visually emphasizing the surface of the story and its characters, such visual excess works to eerily undercut the same surface readings of the film. Bava also extensively uses foreground and background mise-en-scène contrasts to reflect the somewhat perverse complexity of the characters, especially Nevenka and Kurt. If not directly blocking the audience’s view of the actors, objects in the foreground cast dark shadows on them and their surroundings. The brilliant art direction works to seamlessly express the complicated neuroses of a family living in its own little version of hell.
