Yojimbo wrote:I wonder was it (at least, in part) modelled on Walter Huston from 'The Devil and Daniel Webster': and I didn't really care for his Devil, either.
Perhaps I'm too old fashioned, when it comes to diabolical portrayals
But these
are old fashioned devils. Satan as an impish trickster has been the mainstay of folk-tale and legend for centuries.
Yojimbo wrote:Yes, but what about it made it so special for you?
Well, it would take too long to list all the things I like about it, and even then I don't know that we'd ever get close to what makes it special for me. I'll give it a try, tho': Lisa and the Devil is the exact kind of fantasy I like, a combination of familiar elements (gothic tropes like the old haunted house, Poe-like sexual obsession, reincarnation, the folk-tale sense of eternal repetition ect.) and unfamiliar ones (the confusions between wax figures and real figures and between living and dead incarnations of the same person, the elegaic tone of loss and regret, the various symbolic ways the characters try to recapture love, the perverse and grand-guignol rituals they indulge in). It's a totally hermetic fantasy, a cloistered and maze-like world of stagnation, repetition, and perpetually unfulfilled yearning. Bava never capitulates to causal logic when he can follow the impulses of his fancy instead. The movie makes no logical sense, but it makes perfect imaginative sense. Every element feels in its exact right place, even when it cannot be explained. The visual themes unify the movie. It is a genuinely romantic and genuinely morbid horror film, and Bava achieves a pinpoint balance between these two elements through nothing but his artistry.
Yojimbo wrote:Yes, but its the style of romance: it reminded me too much of those soft-focus Euro-trash movies, which promised far more than they delivered.
It's a lush Italian genre movie from the seventies, what were you expecting? The difference is that Bava mobilizes his style on behalf of something grand and moving and, yes, slightly trashy, and not on behalf of cheap and easily forgotten thrills.