ONE AND THE SAME – The Dialogue Between Bava’s Black Sunday & Aronofsky’s Black Swan
One summer’s eve in true horror fan fashion I decided to close the curtains, block out the sun and sit down to watch Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010). As the film unfurled, I sank into a world of graphic violence, eroticism, beauty, manipulation, and madness…my happy place. But when Winona’s character, Beth Macintyre stabs herself repeatedly in the face with a broad point knife, I sat up. To be clear, it wasn’t the violence of the scene that caught my eye—although the moment is pretty attention-grabbing—it was the visual parallel to an OG of Italian horror, Black Sunday (Mario Bava, 1960).
Bava’s film offers one of the most powerful openings in horror history, sitting on a par with the likes of Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1979). But instead of those infamous teeth ripping through flesh, it’s a gruesome spiked mask goring the beautiful face of Barbara Steele. So, when I saw Beth play pin cushion with her own delicate features, this iconic scene came to mind.
From paintings that move to doppelgangers, from mirrors that deceive to the symbolic use of black and white, there’s a lot that Black Sunday and Black Swan have in common, including similar titles—a probable coincidence. But importantly, at both bloody centres lies an exploration of symbolic feminine identity and the stereotypical tropes battling within this; think princess versus witch, virgin versus whore, the white swan versus the black. Without trying to decipher these filmic traditions and avoiding their historical links to the male gaze, I want to explore how far these parallels go and what one film reveals about the other.
With such fertile soil, I could tackle this topic in a few different ways, but I want to zone in on two sections: their awesome beginning sequences and their tumultuous final acts. So, with spoiler alerts in place, let’s dive into these macabre worlds, both of which start with a flourish.
In each film’s opening we are immediately introduced to an overarching mythology involving love, lust, betrayal, and the death of a female character. In Black Sunday we’re shown the history of Princess Asa, a woman accused of satanic worship and murdered with the aforementioned spiked mask. Then in Black Swan we’re introduced to a sequence from Swan Lake (Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 1877), a tale that follows Princess Odette who after refusing the advances of Von Rothbart is punished, betrayed, and eventually—you guessed it—dies.
With the extra link of both tales containing roots in Slavic mythology, the parallels are clear and their use as a framing device to haunt and permeate the films are distinct. But by aligning these two openers, seeing their similar tropes and the oppressive shadows they place over both plots, I couldn’t help but connect the two male persecutors. Aronofsky opens his film with a scene that centres on Swan Lake’s Rothbart and his insatiable desire for Odette. So, with this emphasis in mind, if Rothbart was led by lust then what about Black Sunday? What about Asa’s punisher and brother, Kriavi Vajda?
So, I sat down, pen in hand and re-looked at Bava’s opening scene with a focus on Kriavi, and as expected he didn’t come out of it too well. As head of the Holy Inquisition and leader of his sister’s diabolical treatment, Kriavi describes Asa’s sins saying, “too many evil deeds have you done to satisfy your monstrous love for that serf of the devil Igor Javutich”. He doesn’t list her crimes, instead he seems to focus on her relationship with Igor, clearly the thing that causes him the most anger—jealous much Kriavi? He then states that he repudiates her, but she responds with “it is I who repudiate you”, hinting that Asa did in fact reject his advances. Kriavi’s order that they burn her “foul body” and “cover her face with the mask of Satan” aims to destroy her sexual power, which he sees as threatening and dangerous. Then the final act of hammering a spiked mask onto her face reveals his incestuous desire to penetrate her – read Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) and the sexually charged language used to describe Arthur’s staking of Lucy to see the clear origins of this analysis. So, in Asa’s death the same old tale of a violently erotic, penetrative act plays out, revealing her brother’s hidden desire. It’s all there, and now I can’t unsee it.
By aligning these introductions and using Aronofsky’s film as a mirror for its predecessor, I suddenly saw intriguing complexities within Black Sunday, bubbling beneath the surface. For me, this starts to unveil a powerful dialogue between the two films.
As we reach the final stages of Black Swan, the forces pursuing Nina are revealed to be a part of her, syncing with Aronofsky’s idea that “every single human on the planet is filled with all different shades of black and white and grey” (Interview by Sophie Monks Kaufman, 2023). Nina finally understands this when she discovers that she didn’t stab Lily, she tragically stabbed herself—with a symbolic mirror shard nonetheless. The dark entity she’s been fighting, evading, and running from has been a part of her all along, trying to force its way out just like the feathers protruding from her flesh.
Nina’s end therefore reveals the death of both the black and the white. Society demanded the “beautiful, fearful fragile”, but they also yearned for the one that can “seduce us, not just the prince, but the court, the audience, the entire world”, as described by the icky Thomas Leroy. But by trying to deliver these opposite sides of herself in authentic harmony, Nina was faced with an almost impossible task, the accomplishment of which destroyed her.
Black Sunday’s finishing moments initially seem much more simple; good triumphs, evil dies, Katya is saved, and Asa is burnt at the stake. All’s well that ends well, right? Wrong. When you use Aronofsky’s approach to identity and join Asa and Katya together as one single person rather than two separate entities—an easy feat considering the lack of visual difference between the two—the finale is transformed, and we’re faced with something much more sinister.
As Katya wakes barely breathing and struggling to regain consciousness, Andrej takes her head in both hands and kisses her—yeah, not great Andrej. But Bava aligns this act with the moment Asa’s body falls to the flames, placing the doctor’s advances as a catalyst for the death of Katya’s liberated self. Troy Howarth (The Haunted World of Mario Bava 2002) describes a sense of “uncertainty” and “subtle ambiguity” in this ending, but as Katya lies in the burial chamber, physically in Asa’s tomb with no voice, no control, no power, and surrounded by death. To me the message feels anything but subtle; Katya died just like Asa, and of course just like Nina.
While in Black Swan the baying audience in the final act demanded the black and white swan in perfect unison, the violent mob in Black Sunday’s final moments separated the two identities, ripping the princess from the witch. They pull Asa away from her counterpart to burn her while Andrej holds Katya in a forced embrace, helpless and under his control. There was no place for Katya’s multifarious selves in society and no room for an ambiguous female who embodies the light and dark. Katya and Asa were not allowed to co-exist, so they were torn away from each other, quelled, and destroyed.
The parallels between these elegantly brutal horrors are easy to spot, from visual motifs to plot structures to the troubling treatment of the female protagonists. But by placing them together a dialogue emerges, revealing a complex and tragic tale where Nina, Katya and their multiple identities are all extinguished.
The more I think about these two beautiful, tragic, violent, fairy-tale-like pieces, the more attuned they feel to each other. They seem unique yet powerfully connected, one reacting to and conversing with the other. Are the films one and the same, just like the light and dark within their female characters? Maybe the similarity between the titles isn’t a coincidence after all?
Have a watch, have a think, but most importantly stay spooky.