In his last film to be shot in black-and-white, Italian master Mario Bava, always the visionary, wisely uses the opportunity to present a comic mock-up of the Master of Suspense with The Girl Who Knew Too Much. Not content to merely parody the American master’s canon, the filmmaker fashions an entirely new subgenre of film during the proceedings, a medium which would later be known as “giallo.” What results is a perplexingly intimate and comic, yet nonetheless thought-provoking, game of cat-and-mouse involving greed and loneliness.

Nora (Letícia Román) arrives in Rome from America in order to visit her ailing aunt, Ethel Windell Batocci (Chana Coubert). However, shortly after her entrance into her relative’s home, the elderly woman dies, leaving her niece abandoned in the foreign land. To make matters worse, Nora then discovers that she might well be the next victim in a string of grisly murders by the “Alphabet Killer.”

What is perhaps most intriguing about Bava’s groundbreaking effort–what many cite as being the first instance of giallo–is the manner in which he plays with his viewer. Amid seemingly perpetual instances of abrupt movements from both the characters, environment, and camera, leering eyes, caustic interjections from the cast, and lingering shots long after a scene has established itself, the filmmaker creates and sustains a sense of suspense as he issues object after object, many of which we suspect to be red herrings, but are obligated to humor as mystery-solving possibilities. It is during such time that the director poses the possibility that our central character may well be insane as we ourselves begin to second-guess the empirical validity of what came before as Bava mercilessly preys upon observer expectation and bias all before ingeniously issuing us, not one, but two unreliable narrators by the climax of the feature.

Fascinatingly, though giallo cinema would come to be associated with a grim and foreboding atmosphere and tone, The Girl Who Knew Too Much is overtly flippant and playful. Not only does it juxtapose the ominous overtones of frail mortality with an interlude midway through the film involving a romantic subplot, such is exacerbated and accentuated by a light jazz score. Bava continues to glibly play with his audience as we come to realize that the sheer number of clues being provided are too numerous to be plausible and that, as such, Bava is having fun at our expense. Approximately three-quarters of the way through the feature, as the camera lingers upon yet another object a second to long, thus insinuating that it too may be the key, we begin to laugh at the good-natured poke-in-the-ribs which the director is having, making The Girl Who Knew Too Much, not only a suspenseful, groundbreaking delight, but a comic romp of intentionally misdirected errors.

It is with this, as first indicated by the work’s title, that we sit back and enjoy, not only what is being jocularly presented, but that such is being enacted at yet another party’s expense: Alfred Hitchcock’s. Beginning with the beautiful black-and-white cinematography which harkens back to George Barnes’s photography in the Master of Suspense’s Rebecca, we are even host to a wry cameo by the director before film’s end as the feature proceeds to be both a convincing thriller atop a very early (if not the first) post-modern take upon the noir suspense tale. Of course, and as can be expected with such a masterful filmmaker, our epiphany of what we have just fallen for occurs just before the jaw-dropping finale unveils itself, thus leaving the audience in awe of the filmmaker’s cinematic prowess.

In an unexpected work of neo-noir which combines comedy with unnerving suspense, Mario Bava’s work succeeds in doing what would initially seem to be the impossible: It playfully mocks the Master of Suspense while remaining focused and offering a psychological thriller which refuses to permit its audience to rest comfortably in its seat. In many respects, the career of fellow Italian virtuoso, Dario Argento, is largely (if not wholly) dependent upon this often-overlooked work for its influence on the latter’s approach and ideology is arguably almost tyrannically domineering. Though the darker elements of the film would later be honed into the now trademark genre known as giallo, The Girl Who Knew Too Much is a must see for anyone interested in psychology, crime, Italian cinema, early instances of post-modernism, giallo, Bava, or Argento.

-Egregious Gurnow