Baba Yaga (1973 film)

Lore & Background

The film follows Valentina Rosselli, a Milanese photographer with a knack for controversial shoots. One night, she is struck by a car driven by a middle-aged blonde who calls herself Baba Yaga, who claims their meeting was pre-ordained. After driving Valentina home, Baba Yaga snatches a clip from her garter belt, saying she needs a personal object and will return it the next day. Intrigued and disturbed, Valentina has strange dreams. Baba Yaga returns the clip, fondles Valentina's camera, and invites her to her old home to take photographs. There, Valentina is given a doll dressed in bondage gear, and her life becomes full of strange occurrences. She eventually confronts Baba Yaga at her house.

Reader's Guide

Baba Yaga is notable as an adaptation of Guido Crepax's comic series Valentina, a rare attempt to translate the comic's visual style to film. Director Corrado Farina had previously made a short documentary on Crepax's work and sought to explore the fantastical elements of the comics rather than the erotic overtones. The film faced production challenges: Farina's first choices for the lead roles (Elsa Martinelli and Ornella Vanoni) were not cast, and after shooting, producers cut nearly half an hour from the film, destroying the original negative and preventing Farina from restoring his intended edit. The film underperformed at the Italian box office and was panned by most critics, though some retrospective reviews note its handsome visual style and comic-book-inspired scenes. It was released in the United States on DVD and Blu-Ray by Blue Underground.

Did You Know?

• Director Corrado Farina had previously made a short documentary about Crepax's comics titled *Freud a fumetti* (1970).
• Anne Heywood was originally cast as Baba Yaga but left before shooting began, leading to Carroll Baker taking the role.

From Comic Panels to Cinema

Corrado Farina's approach to adapting Guido Crepax's Valentina series was shaped by deep frustration with previous comic-to-film efforts. He felt that no filmmaker had truly bridged the visual language of comics with that of cinema. His admiration for Crepax's work was so profound that he had previously directed a 1970 short documentary called Freud a fumetti exploring the artist's comics. When the opportunity to adapt Valentina came, Farina consciously chose to emphasize the fantastical and surreal dimensions of the source material rather than lean into its more erotic undertones. This decision came in the shadow of Tinto Brass, who had previously commissioned Crepax to storyboard his thriller Deadly Sweet and had even considered adapting the comic La forza di gravità, only to abandon the project because he believed Crepax's visual sensibilities were impossible to translate to film. Farina, by contrast, saw the challenge as an opportunity to deepen the relationship between two artistic mediums.

A Production in Perpetual Flux

The making of Baba Yaga was marked by a series of personnel changes and casting complications that shaped the final film. Farina initially signed with producer Turi Vasile, who introduced him to Franco Committeri as the financial backer. However, Committeri departed after the release of Marco Bellocchio's Slap the Monster on Page One in 1972, forcing Farina to secure a new production company, 14 luglio Cinematografica. A French production company was also credited, primarily for tax advantages, and this international connection ultimately led to Isabelle De Funès being cast as Valentina—a choice Farina was unhappy with, as his first choice had been Elsa Martinelli. The role of Baba Yaga went through its own upheaval: Farina originally wanted singer Ornella Vanoni, then Anne Heywood was cast but left as shooting began, prompting the hasty recruitment of Carroll Baker. George Eastman was cast as Arno, a role Farina expanded significantly from a minor comic character, while the character Philip Rembrandt was cut entirely from the script.

The Director's Stolen Cut

Perhaps the most damaging event in the film's production history occurred after shooting and post-production were complete. Farina departed for a vacation, and upon his return he discovered that the producers, deeming the film too slow in pace, had edited nearly thirty minutes out of it. The cuts were made directly on the film's negative, which meant his original edit was permanently destroyed. Farina was outraged and threatened to remove his name from the credits entirely. Together with his assistant director Giuilio Berruti, he attempted to re-edit the film back toward his original vision, but because the original negative had been physically altered, the work could not be completed as originally conceived. This loss of creative control over the final product likely contributed to the film's uneven pacing and the sense, noted by later critics, that its socio-political arguments were diminished. The experience left a lasting mark on the film's legacy as a work that was never fully realized in the form its director intended.

Critical Aftermath and a Fractured Legacy

Baba Yaga's reception was largely negative at the time of its 1973 Italian release, with poor box-office results attributed by film historian Roberto Curti to inadequate distribution. The Italian Board of Censors mandated two cuts before release: a long shot of De Funès in full frontal nudity and a scene of Baker undressing before Valentina. The film was screened at the 1973 Trieste Science Fiction Festival, but critical responses were predominantly unfavorable. Geoff Brown, reviewing an 81-minute dubbed version for Monthly Film Bulletin, noted that twenty minutes of cuts and the English dub stripped away much of Farina's socio-political commentary, reducing it to "modish chit-chat." He nonetheless called it an "airily directed horror-and-sex tale in the Bava tradition." Danny Shipka later described it as "never uninteresting" but lacking the spark of the source comics, while Kim Newman called it "enormously boring." The film eventually found a home for international audiences through Blue Underground's DVD and Blu-Ray releases.