Baba Yaga

Valentina (Isabelle De Funès) is a young fashion photographer living in Milan. A member of the progressive left movement, she invites nubile young models to her art-deco apartment so they can bare their breasts for her camera. Her work seems to amount to a few minutes per day, leaving her plenty of time to fraternize with artists, political activists and philosophers, read Marx, stay out at parties till all hours, and sleep till mid-day. One night, in order to escape the advances of her on-off boyfriend Arno (George Eastman), she decides to walk home from a party alone. During her trip through the dark, empty streets ("It turns me on"), she crosses paths with Baba Yaga (Carroll Baker), a mysterious woman who tells her that their meeting was pre-determined by fate, steals a garter clip from Valentina, and promises that they will meet again. At first, Valentina is more confused than anything else, but she soon becomes alarmed by Baba Yaga's predatory advances, the increasingly disturbing nightmares she experiences, and the fact that Baba Yaga seems to have put a hex on her camera, causing it to harm the people she photographs with it. As the film progresses, the stakes are upped and things get weirder and weirder, until we reach a bizarre ending that raises more questions than it answers.

Baba Yaga is a fairly loose adaptation of a series of adult graphic novels written and illustrated by Italian comic artist Guido Crepax. Entitled Valentina, they focused on the darkly erotic and often sadomasochistic dreams of the titular character, a young woman whose mental experiences blended with reality to the extent that what was real and what wasn't became indistinguishable. The vast majority of cinematic adaptations of comic books were at the time (and arguably still are) disappointing, a fact dutifully acknowledged by Corrado Farina, a documentary filmmaker and a huge fan of Crepax's Valentina saga. His second of only two feature films, Baba Yaga is an anachronistic, intriguing and often frustrating affair: an ambitious project that manages to succeed despite its shortcomings.

The character of Baba Yaga originates from Russian fairytales: a cannibalistic witch who lives in a hut in the woods and controls the cycle of nature. The Baba Yaga present in this film is obviously not the same as the fairytale character, although there are definitely similarities between the two different characters. Far from being a decrepit old crone who lives in the woods, the Baba Yaga in this film is a middle-aged aristocratic lesbian who barrels through the streets of Milan in a flashy black limousine - an almost Cruella De Vil-like figure. It is unclear whether the lesbian and kitschy S&M motifs were attached to Baba Yaga by Farina or were present in Crepax's original graphic novel - I know that both featured heavily in the Valentina stories but I understand that Baba Yaga was not part of that saga, instead lifted over from another series by Crepax - but they are definitely intriguing, even if they reek of paternalistic morality (more on this later).

The film really needs to be dated historically and politically in order for it to make the most sense. Italy in the early 1970s was still undergoing something of a social revolution, usually attributed to the 1960s. The intellectual left-wing movement was quickly gaining ground on the dominant right-wing, resulting in a liberation both of thoughts and of sexuality. This goes some way towards explaining why a number of the female characters are content to appear topless or in extremely revealing attire even in group situations, something that a few other reviewers seemed to view only as an exercise in sleaze. Several scenes in the film provide social commentary on current affairs and matters that would have been pertinent to Crepax, Farina and their contemporaries (censorship and art vs. commerce, for example), resulting in a film that is definitely a product of its time and would not have been the same if it had been made outwith this era.

The film benefits greatly from the casting of Isabelle De Funès as Valentina. The French actor has a very unconventional look that gives her a genuine uniqueness, with huge, wide eyes and a charmingly dated hair style. She is definitely believable as a member of the Italian progressive left movement of the early 1970s, and she shows a great deal of genuine acting talent, hitting all the right notes. It also helps that her dubbing works well, with a voice that actually suits her and usually sounds like a genuine on-set recording. Not so successful is Carroll Baker, who is miscast as Baba Yaga, and gives an incredibly wooden performance. It's unclear whether or not her stilted portrayal was intentional, but she certainly doesn't evoke the air of dread that I felt should have been present. To be fair, neither Isabelle De Funès nor Carroll Baker were Corrado Farina's first choices (he admits as much in the interview on this DVD), but at least in the case of De Funès it all worked out. With Baker, all I see is a wasted opportunity. The film also features Italian horror regular George Eastman as Valentina's boyfriend Arno, and a line-up of very attractive models who are only too eager to bare their breasts. With the exception of Baker, everyone seems to be adequately cast for their respective roles.

Stylistically, the film is absolutely fascinating. Farina made a conscious effort to imitate the style of Crepax's comic book panels, resulting in a film where the camera is mostly static, with the movement being achieved in the editing. Farina frequently cuts from close-up to long shot, and from one point in time to another, creating a mood that definitely recalls the pacing and layout of graphic novels. The fast, rhythmic cutting is excellent, put to particularly good use in the various scenes showing Valentina taking photographs, especially the first occasion, in which she photographs the curvaceous Toni (Daniela Balzaretti) in various exotic forms of dress (and undress). The film has a rather drab colour palette, alternating between the washed-out look of the daylight scenes and the interior of Valentina's apartment, and a darker, murkier style for the night sequences and Baba Yaga's mansion. Far from making the film look dull, the colours and lighting contribute a great deal to the mood and add to the dream-like feel Farina was aiming for. There are also a number of vignettes, made up of black and white still frames, that are clearly intended to reference the panels of the graphic novels. I'm not entirely convinced that they are successful, however. The look is interesting, but the sudden switch from full motion colour to black and white still frames is a bit clumsy. The overall feel is, of course, very much that of the experimental 60s and 70s, and often bears more than a passing resemblance to French New Wave cinema. More often than not, I found myself thinking of Jean-Luc Godard's Une Femme est une Femme, and indeed Godard is even mentioned by one of the characters in the film. (Crepax also appears as a character in the film, discussing the merits of "selling out" to a major publisher.) Of course, the whole thing is backed up by an excellent soundtrack by Piero Umiliani, with an upbeat, jazzy title theme and some simplistic but effective incidental piano music, even if it does seem at times to be derivative of Bruno Nicolai's work.

Equally interesting, but less pleasing overall, are the somewhat patriarchal overtones shine through all the film's liberal depictions of sex and politics. Despite the radical backdrop against which the film is set, it strikes me that Farina is just a big old conservative. In particular, there is the clichéd connection between lesbianism and witchcraft/devil-worship, and it is, at the end of the day, the man who has to save the girl. There is also, of course, the slight matter of a handful of dream sequences in which Valentina finds herself face to face first with Nazis and then with Prussian soldiers. Connecting Nazism to S&M and indeed homosexuality is nothing new, and although perhaps less common when the film was made, it does come across as a cheap shot. Even more dubious is an exchange in which the supposedly progressive Valentina tells Baba Yaga that "no man has ever [told me who to make love with], let alone a woman". How much of this is carried over from the original graphic novels is unclear, but overall the film seems to lack the open-mindedness that its characters are meant to represent. Furthermore, when the film focuses on social issues it does become undeniably frustrating, presenting the intellectial left as an elite group of culture snobs who seem to do little to no work but can still afford to party every night. It wouldn't be fair to say that the film comdemns this as such - it simply presents these rather dubious caricatures as if they were fact.

There is of course the age-old question of "What does it all mean?" that is invariably asked with regard to films like this. Ultimately, I'm not sure there's a definitive answer to this. I would suggest that the most likely answer is in fact referred to by Baba Yaga herself, when she tells Valentina "You think you hold the moon in the palm of your hand, but you don't even know the secrets of your own earth". I think that Baba Yaga and Valentina's dreams are representative of the fact that there is so much going on in the world that doesn't make sense because we are not capable of understanding it, and to attempt to force an explanation on to the events would be impossible and unneccessary. Another theory is that Valentina is a repressed lesbian and that Baba Yaga represents a part of her that she has tried to ignore. Certainly, the way Isabelle De Funès' scenes with Carroll Baker are acted suggests a mutual attraction, and she seems a little too eager to rebuke any suggestion of this by others. At the end of the day, though, it doesn't seem particularly important. Far more likely is the fact that the film is not intended to be explained, and this doesn't make it any less enjoyable.

Despite its flaws, Baba Yaga is a fascinating and engaging film. Reviews of it are extremely varied with some proclaiming it to be an outright genre classic and others passing it off as cheap garbage. As is so often the case, the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes, but there is definitely a lot more good than bad in this film, and at the very least, viewers should be intrigued by its oddities and style.

Picture

Baba Yaga is presented anamorphically in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Much like Two Evil Eyes, the only other Blue Underground release I have seen so far, the transfer is admirable in that it has a rich, grainy look while showing absolutely no compression artefacts. Blue Underground seems to be one of the few studios that actually gives its films a high enough bit rate (in this case an average of 8.74 Mbps) for the encoding to never be a problem. Likewise, the colours, while quite dark and murky, seem to be faithfully transferred. Again, however, as with Two Evil Eyes, some agressive filtering has been applied, softening the image somewhat, which, in conjunction with some moderate edge enhancement, detracts a little from the film-like look. The darker scenes also suffer slightly in terms of definition. Overall, I approve of what Blue Underground are doing with their releases, and I definitely appreciate the amount of care they put into preserving and releasing films that would otherwise be left to rot in vaults, but I wish they would lay off the digital "enhancement" techniques, an area in which their colleagues at Anchor Bay and Criterion are far more adept.

One other minor point which bugged me is that a few of the opening title cards have been frozen, resulting in the film grain suddenly pausing, only to resume when the next card appears. It's not a serious problem, but it distracted me slightly.

Sound

The only audio track included is the original English mono mix, presented in Dolby Digital 2.0. An Italian dub is not present, which is disappointing, but the English dub is actually pretty good, and given that it syncs with the actors' lip movements, I suspect it would have been my preferred listening option anyway. Still, I wish we had been given the choice.

The sound quality is fairly average and definitely characteristic of its age. It lacks with crispness of more recent films but it always perfectly intelligible. The music, although mixed a little too low, sounds fabulous, and I only spotted one occasion during which the sound dipped slightly - a drop-out during the transition between two scenes.

There are no subtitles. Get your act together, Blue Underground.

Packaging

The DVD is packaged in a single amaray case with a nicely-designed cover. A double-sided sheet of card inside has chapter stops on one side and a reproduction of one of the original Italian theatrical posters on the other.

Menu

The menu has a nicely psychedelic design and is backed up by music from the film. Menu transitions are relatively brief and to the point, and there are no problems with navigation.

Above: theatrical cut.
Below: censored material.

Extras

Although only a single-disc release, unlike some of Blue Underground's more lavish 2-disc affairs, a good number of high quality extras are included for Baba Yaga. All are presented in anamorphic 16x9 widescreen, except the Guido Crepax documentary, which is in windowboxed anamorphic 1.33:1. Most of the extras are in Italian with optional English subtitles.

Corrado Farina interview - Entitled "Farina and Valentina", this excellent documentary is comprised of a remarkably candid Farina discussing all aspects of the film, from his roots as a documentary filmmaker, to the comics of Guido Crepax, to the casting of the film, the production and the scandal involving its censorship. Farina freely admits the film's problems, especially the casting of Carroll Baker, although he is careful to dish out ample praise for all on sundry. He is also clearly very passionate about the film, and more than a little disappointed that it was not a box office success. There is a wealth of information packed into this 22-minute interview, although it is filled with spoilers, so avoid it until you've seen the film itself.

Guido Crepax documentary - Entitled "Freud in Color", this documentary on Crepax, written and directed by Farina, gives a brief overview of the history of comics in Italy and their impact on society, before moving on to specifically discuss the work of Crepax, his influences and the specifics of his style.

Theatrical trailer - Much like most European trailers from the era in question, this advertisement runs extremely long: a shade under three and a half minutes, to be precise. Predictably, it focuses mainly on the nudity and sexual situations, more or less eschewing the sorcery end of things. Still, this makes for an interesting, if spoiler-ridden, trailer.

Deleted and censored scenes - Approximately 10 minutes of material is included here, most of it comprised of slightly extended versions of existing scenes. One additional scene, however, involves a graveyard reenactment of white settlers attacking Native Americans. A very politically-motivated scene, but not a particularly subtle one (the sight of an American flag being burned is interesting, but feels like it was included to make a point rather than to further the narrative), the film actually works better without it. Not so with the two deleted full frontal shots of Isabelle De Funès and Carroll Baker, however, since on both occasions there is a noticeable jump cut. This is worst in the Baker scene, in which she begins to remove her clothes but the film suddenly cuts to a close-up of her face when she is fully naked. Similarly, De Funès' scene clumsily cuts from a rear shot of her naked, holding a sweater, to a front shot of her wearing it.

The history of this film's censorship is an interesting one. In the interview, Farina lays into the studio with more than a little annoyance as he discusses the fact that they re-edited the film behind his back while he was away on holiday. His response was to storm out of the production and issue a press statement condemning the film. The studio relented and handed him the butchered negative for him to clean up. The end result, therefore, was a censored film that he could only patch up rather than restoring it to his original vision. The result is that the deleted material here is sourced from a rather poor quality dupe print, washed out, blurry and damaged to the point that piecing the film back together would have made it too obtrusive. It's quite appalling that the studio actually hacked up the negative itself, meaning that this material can never be re-integrated into the film itself.

Poster and still gallery - A nice collection of posters, video covers and behind the scenes black and white photographs is included.

Comic book to film comparison - I don't normally discuss DVD-ROM material in my reviews, generally because it is unavailable to users without PC DVD drives, and also because it generally doesn't amount to much. On this occasion, however, I feel that it is worth discussing, because the comic book to film comparison is quite interesting. While only a couple of actual comparison shots are included, showing frames from the graphic novel alongside their counterparts from the film, it is interesting to see panels from the comic mixed with photography from the film. A lower quality version is also included on the DVD proper.

Conclusion

Baba Yaga is one of Blue Underground's less prestigious releases and is therefore presented on a single disc only, without any of the fancy remixes they afford to their bigger titles. However, this is absolutely fine by me, and at the end of the day this release is probably as good as it could have been, barring some improvements in image quality that I doubt Blue Underground would have made unless they significantly changed their encoding process.