FILM DIRECTOR

Mario Bava

1914 - 1980

Photo of Mario Bava

Icon of person Mario Bava

Mario Bava (31 July 1914 – 27 April 1980) was an Italian filmmaker who worked variously as a director, cinematographer, special effects artist and screenwriter. His low-budget genre films, known for their distinctive visual flair and stylish technical ingenuity, feature recurring themes and imagery concerning the conflict between illusion and reality, as well as the destructive capacity of human nature. Widely regarded as a pioneer of Italian genre cinema and one of the most influential auteurs of the horror film genre, he is popularly referred to as the "Master of Italian Horror" and the "Master of the Macabre".After providing special effects work and other assistance on such productions as I Vampiri (1957), Hercules (1958) and Caltiki – The Immortal Monster (1959), Bava made his official feature directorial debut with the gothic horror film Black Sunday, released in 1960. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Mario Bava has received more than 673,355 page views. His biography is available in 31 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 28 in 2019). Mario Bava is the 228th most popular film director (down from 216th in 2019), the 1,409th most popular biography from Italy (down from 1,287th in 2019) and the 25th most popular Italian Film Director.

Mario Bava is most famous for his work on gothic horror films such as Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, and The Mask of Satan.

Memorability Metrics

  • 670k

    Page Views (PV)

  • 59.89

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 31

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 5.12

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 2.86

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Page views of Mario Bavas by language

Over the past year Mario Bava has had the most page views in the with 86,701 views, followed by Italian (56,908), and German (16,646). In terms of yearly growth of page views the top 3 wikpedia editions are Cornish (134.43%), Malagasy (104.60%), and Serbian (81.94%)

Among FILM DIRECTORS

Among film directors, Mario Bava ranks 228 out of 2,041. Before him are Nanni Moretti, Tony Richardson, Chris Marker, Mario Monicelli, Chantal Akerman, and Nicholas Ray. After him are Marco Ferreri, Arthur Penn, Věra Chytilová, Gus Van Sant, Edwin S. Porter, and Gabriel Axel.

Most Popular Film Directors in Wikipedia

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1914, Mario Bava ranks 60. Before him are Renato Dulbecco, Shapour Bakhtiar, Akira Nozawa, James Van Allen, Francisco da Costa Gomes, and Creighton Abrams. After him are Lilli Palmer, Rafael Kubelík, Kurt Franz, Jackie Coogan, Jan Karski, and Carlo Maria Giulini. Among people deceased in 1980, Mario Bava ranks 57. Before him are V. V. Giri, Robert Whittaker, Mohammad Hatta, Philipp, Landgrave of Hesse, Patrick Depailler, and Walter Dornberger. After him are Kazimierz Kuratowski, Stanisława Walasiewicz, Tôn Đức Thắng, Ian Curtis, Heinz Linge, and Ludwig Guttmann.

Others Born in 1914

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Others Deceased in 1980

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In Italy

Among people born in Italy, Mario Bava ranks 1,409 out of 5,161. Before him are Andrew, Duke of Calabria (1327), Cornelia (-97), Norberto Bobbio (1909), Giovanni Sforza (1466), Arsenius the Great (354), and Giovanni Bononcini (1670). After him are Lucrezia de' Medici, Duchess of Ferrara (1545), Amadeus II, Count of Savoy (1050), Giuliano Amato (1938), Marco Ferreri (1928), Antipope Honorius II (1010), and Giuseppina Strepponi (1815).

Others born in Italy

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Among FILM DIRECTORS In Italy

Among film directors born in Italy, Mario Bava ranks 25. Before him are Marco Bellocchio (1939), Lina Wertmüller (1928), Joe D'Amato (1936), Liliana Cavani (1933), Nanni Moretti (1953), and Mario Monicelli (1915). After him are Marco Ferreri (1928), Ruggero Deodato (1939), Lucio Fulci (1927), Damiano Damiani (1922), Ermanno Olmi (1931), and Valerio Zurlini (1926).

Italian born Film Directors

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Filmography

Black Sunday
Director
A vengeful witch and her fiendish servant return from the grave and begin a bloody campaign to possess the body of the witch's beautiful look-alike descendant. Only the girl's brother and a handsome doctor stand in her way.
Aug 11o 19607.485 / 10
Black Sabbath
Director
Three short tales of supernatural horror. In “The Telephone,” a woman is plagued by threatening phone calls. In "The Wurdalak,” a family is preyed upon by vampiric monsters. In “The Drop of Water,” a deceased medium wreaks havoc on the living.
Aug 17o 19637.2 / 10
Inferno
Director
A young man returns from Rome to his sister's satanic New York apartment house.
Feb 7o 19806.646 / 10