Baba Yaga: The Final Cut

Introduction

Baba Yaga is based on the fumetti Valentina, by Guido Crepax. Fumetti are Italian picture stories or photorealistic comic books and have included such characters as Barbarella and Diabolik. Italian filmmaker Corrado Farina had made a documentary about Valentina and made this film in 1973, where she encounters Baba Yaga.

Fashion photographer Valentina returns home one evening and finds a dog sitting in the middle of the road; seeing a big car coming her way, she grabs the mutt and pulls it out the way. The car promptly stops next to her, the dog disappears and the old woman inside introduces herself as Baba Yaga, but not before she's taken one of Valentina's suspender clips. Things start to get very weird in her life, with her dreaming of being thrown semi-naked down a hole by Nazis and the old woman makes impromptu appearances in her apartment/studio, one time cursing her camera.

Valentina begins to suspect that Baba Yaga is a witch and enlists the help of old flame Aldo to investigate, but the appearance of a S&M doll and the increasing influence of Baba Yaga makes things difficult, finding her cursed camera kills people and her dreams become so real they blur the line between reality and imagination.

Video

Corrado Farina finished making this film and went on holiday and, on his return, found that the producers had severely re-cut it, taking out S&M and political themes and the censors had also had the scissors out, removing scenes of nudity. Shameless have been working on this disc for 2 years, preparing the director's cut with Farina, restoring the film to how he wanted it to be.

This is a very stylish film, with Farina paying great attention to the visuals and referencing the source material throughout. One love scene is shot as a series of photographs, evoking the style of the comic book (and no doubt keeping the censors happy) and two characters are even seen reading and discussing a Valentina comic book.

The picture quality shows how badly the material was treated though it has undergone some reconstruction work and looks surprisingly good, though the quality varies from the very good existing footage to the reasonable stock from Farina's own collection, to the very scratchy material that was removed by the censors. The latter is only full-frontal nudity and isn't on screen for long - it's not even integral to the plot, but that's what Farina wanted in the film and, by today's standards, is very tame indeed.

Audio

For the first time on a Shameless release, the disc comes with both Italian and English soundtracks, which are very welcome, though there are discrepancies between the Italian track and the English audio and subtitles, some extremely weird and slightly amusing. One prime example takes place at a party where the English track says:
"I want to photograph you nude in a field of wheat."
"Okay, we'll talk about it. Thanks for the chicken."

But the subtitles of the Italian dialogue say:
"I want to take a picture of you: naked in a corn field."
"Okay. Let's talk about it in the summer."

The re-inserted footage is in Italian and subtitled as there's no English dub available for this - I watched the film with both audio options and preferred the Italian for the sake of consistency.

Extra Features

Being a Shameless Fan Edition, you get the text commentary by The Wilson Bros., which is amusing and informative - making fun of the film whilst providing plenty of information. It occasionally moves too quickly and it would have been better to have them providing an audio commentary, but this is a fine addition.

Also included are a gallery and two documentaries about Guido Crepax and the Italian comic book scene, which are watchable. Oddly, Fummetophobia has a burnt-in 'S' in the bottom corner, branding it as property of Shameless.

The best feature is the interview with Corrado Farina in which he talks at length about making the film and this new edit.

As always, the disc has the theatrical and Other Shameless Treats trailers.

Conclusion

Aside from several releases, Shameless have concentrated on Gialli and this is a bit of a departure, fitting in more with Venus in Furs than Watch Me When I Kill. They've given much time and attention to this release and it has paid dividends, making this a far better disc than the R1 Blue Underground version. The edit is complete and the two audio tracks are a bit of a bonus for Italian film fans.

The film isn't the best that Shameless have put out, with casting the most notable problem. From what I've seen of the comic book, Valentina is much more voluptuous than Isabelle De Funès, cast because of the French backers, but she does a fine job and the bob haircut is faithful to the source material. Similarly miscast is Caroll Baker, who is far too young to play the mythical witch and, though the makeup is good, an older actress like Farina's choice Anne Heywood would have been perfect.

Quibbles aside, this is an enjoyable piece of Euro-sleaze with an interesting commentary on politics in Italy at the time. It may not completely work, but I liked it and look forward to seeing what Shameless in future - next up is Luigi Bazzoni's little-known giallo, Footprints.