DIABOLIK (Danger: Diabolik) (103')
by Mario Bava
cast: John Phillip Law, Marisa Mell, Michel Piccoli, Adolfo Celi, Terry-Thomas, Claudio Gora
Italy/France, 1968
Restored in 4K in 2024 by Paramount Pictures
in collaboration with Kino Lorber
Print courtesy of Paramount
by arrangement with Park Circus
Introduced by Sara D'Ascenzo
Dino De Laurentiis entrusted Bava with the most ambitious project and the highest budget of his career, Diabolik […]. First released on newsstands on 1 November 1962, the comic strip created by the sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani from Milan features a master thief who on the hand is a descendant of Rocambole and Fantomas, and on the other is a product of the economic boom and the era of 007. […] Catherine Deneuve was cast in the role of Eva Kant, but she did not get along with Bava and was replaced by Marisa Mell. […] That Diabolik took this visual (pop) style to heart is obvious in the scenography by Flavio Mongherini, between a Futurist nightmare and a nouveau-riche fantasy – and in the costumes by Luciana Marinacci and Giulio Coltellacci, who boldly eroticise Marisa Mell. But Bava goes even further perhaps with a subtler and more profound operation, shooting a truly Warholian film; not just because it reproduces the iconography of consumer stereotypes, but because it does so unquestioningly, accepting vacuousness and bad taste, and relinquishing not only irony and parody, but any sociological commentary or feigned rebellion. […] Diabolik does not rely on “low-level” starting material to denounce or unmask consumer society, as does Alphaville by Jean-Luc Godard. It doesn’t pretend to be more intelligent than it is, like Modesty Blaise. Nor does it wish to seem more entertaining or bolder than it is, like Kriminal or Satanik. It’s a kitsch film that destabilises the very concept of a commercial product, much like Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans destabilise the concept of art through the fastidiousness and flatness with which they were portrayed. […] Diabolik is a perversely anti-spectacular film that pretends to seduce with images of modernity, transgression, luxury, eroticism and extravagance […]. Bava, a sophisticated painter and creator of impossible worlds, does just what Diabolik does: he throws out, destroys, wastes. (Alberto Pezzotta)
