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Black Sunday
Directed byMario Bava
Story byMario Bava[1]
Based on"Viy"
by Nikolai Gogol
Starring
Edited byMario Serandrei
Music byRoberto Nicolosi
Production
company
Galatea–Jolly Film[1]
Distributed byUnidis
Release date
  • 11 August 1960 (1960-08-11) (Italy)
CountryItaly[1]
Box office₤139 million

Black Sunday (Italian: La maschera del demonio) is a 1960 Italian horror film directed by Mario Bava. The film is based on Nikolai Gogol's short story "Viy" and stars Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Arturo Dominici and Ivo Garrani. The films is set in 1630 Moldavia, and is about a witch who is put to death by her own brother, only to return 200 years later to seek revenge on her descendants. Following the success that the Italian studio Galatea had abroad with their films Hercules and Hercules Unchained, Nello Santi of the company offered Mario Bava to make a film to sell to foreign markets. Bava decided to make a horror film due to the popularity of the British film Dracula (1958). After developing a four page treatment for the story, several other screenwriter both credited and uncredited worked on the film with different sources crediting different screenwriters. Bava felt to compete with Dracula, he required some British cast to make Black Sunday comparable with Dracula, leading to him casting Barbara Steele and John Richardson. Filming took place in studios in Rome as well as on location shooting at Castle Massimo in Arsoli.

The film was shown to Sam Arkoff and James Nicholas of American International Pictures (AIP) in 1960 who agreed to purchase the distribution rights for the film in the United States. The group changed large parts of the film removing some scenes of violence, sexuality, scenes of dialogue and replaced the score made by Roberto Nicolosi with a new one by Les Baxter. On the film release in Italy, the film had a limited financial success but made its lead Barbara Steele a star in the country. The film found greater financial success on its release in 1961 where it became the highest grossing film AIP had released in their five years of existence. The film was initially banned in the United Kingdom and was only received a wide-release in July 1968 as Revenge of the Vampire.

The film received generally negative reviews in Italy and far more positive reviews abroad in France and the United States where the film received positive reviews from New York Daily News, Time, and Variety. Retrospective reviews went on to have it being referred to by James Marriott praised the film as the "crowning achievement of Italian gothic horror" and a pioneering Italian horror film that created the standards of Italian horror film of being beautiful and horrorific with strong elements of eroticism and graphic violence that would be found in later genres such as the spaghetti western and giallo films. The film also marked Steele's career as being a "Italian horror icon", appearing in several horror film productions in the 1960s and 1970s.

Plot

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In 1630 Moldavia, Asa Vajda, a witch, and her paramour, Javutich, are sentenced to death for sorcery by Asa's brother. Asa vows revenge and puts a curse on her brother's descendants. Metal masks with sharp spikes on the inside are placed over Asa and Javutich's faces and hammered into their flesh, but a sudden storm prevents the villagers from burning them at the stake.

Two centuries later, Dr. Choma Kruvajan and his assistant, Dr. Andrej Gorobec, are traveling through Moldavia en route to a medical conference when one of the wheels of their carriage is broken. While waiting for their coachman to fix it, the two wander into a nearby ancient crypt and discover Asa's tomb. Observing her death mask through a glass panel, Kruvajan breaks the panel (and the cross above it) by accident while striking a bat. He then removes Asa's death mask, revealing a partially preserved corpse. He cuts his hand on the broken glass. Some of his blood drips onto Asa.

Returning outside, Kruvajan and Gorobec meet Katia Vajda. She tells them that she lives with her father and brother Constantine in a nearby castle that the villagers believe is haunted. Struck by her haunting beauty and sadness, Gorobec becomes smitten with Katia. The two men leave her and drive to an inn. Meanwhile Asa is brought back to life by Kruvajan's blood. She contacts Javutich telepathically. He rises from his grave and goes to Prince Vajda's castle, where Vajda holds up a crucifix to ward the reanimated corpse away. However, Vajda is so terrified by the visit that he becomes paralyzed with fear. Constantine sends a servant to fetch Dr. Kruvajan, but the servant is killed before he can reach the inn. Javutich brings Kruvajan to the castle under the pretext that his services are needed. Javutich leads Kruvajan to Asa's crypt. The witch hypnotizes Kruvajan and says she needs the rest of his blood. Asa then kisses him, turning him into her servant. By Asa's command, Kruvajan follows up on the request to tend to Vajda. He orders the crucifix removed from the room, ostensibly so it won't upset Vajda; this allows Javutich to return later and murder him.

Asa's plan is to revive herself by draining Katia of her life, since Katia is physically Asa reincarnated. Puzzled to hear that Kruvajan abandoned his patient shortly before he died, Gorobec questions a little girl who saw Javutich take Kruvajan to the castle. She identifies Kruvajan's escort with a painting of Javutich. A priest and Gorobec go to Javutich's grave and find Kruvajan's body inside the coffin. Realizing he is now one of the undead, they kill him by ramming a small piece of wood through one of his eye sockets.

Javutich throws Constantine into a death pit and takes Katia to Asa. Asa drains Katia of her youth. When the witch goes to take her blood, she is thwarted by the crucifix around Katia's neck. Gorobec enters the crypt to save Katia but is attacked by Javutich, who pushes him to the edge of the death pit. Constantine uses the last of his strength to pull Javutich into the pit and push Gorobec to safety. Gorobec finds Asa and Katia. Asa pretends to be Katia and tells Gorobec that Katia is the witch. He accordingly goes to kill Katia but notices the crucifix she is wearing has no effect on her. He turns to Asa and opens her robe, revealing a fleshless skeletal frame. The priest then arrives with numerous torch-carrying villagers, and they burn Asa to death. Katia awakens from her stupor, her life and beauty restored, and is reunited with Gorobec.

Cast

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Cast sourced from the book Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1957-1969.[2]

Production

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Development

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From the late 1950s to the 1960s, Galatea was among the most active companies in producing genre cinema, having initiated the sword-and-sandal craze with their productions Hercules and Hercules Unchained (1959) which were both successful in the American box office.[3] The company also attempted other genres, such as science fiction with Caltiki – The Immortal Monster with less financial success.[3] Following the success of the two Hercules films, American distributors were willing to pay in advance for genre films from Italy, even if they were not popular in Italy.[4] Along with working on Hercules, cinematographer Mario Bava had previously partially directed other films without credit such as Caltiki – The Immortal Monster and The Giant of Marathon.[3] This led to Bava being offered to make a film by Galatea film, Nello Santi.[3] Bava felt that since Dracula was so popular at the time, that he should make a horror film.[5] Santi had wanted the film to be shot in colour, while Bava insisted it be shot in black and white.[6] The shooting budget of Black Sunday is unknown, with Massimo De Rita remembering it being around between $50,000 and $60,000 while production manager Armando Govoni recalled the final budget being around $100,000.[7][8]

Pre-production

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Bava felt that Black Sunday needed a British cast to convince the audience that they would be watching something as strong as Dracula.[9] Among the cast was Barbara Steele.[10] By the late 1950s, Steele had shown up in several as Bachelor of Hearts and Upstairs and Downstairs before the Rank Organisation sold her contract to 20th Century Fox.[10] Steele did not work much in the United States and after a writers strikes in March 1960 left her free to pursue her own interests, which left her to travel to Italy where she received the role in the film.[11][12] Steele's recollections of making the film have been described as unreliable by critic and editor Martyn Conterio, such as that the film was shot in Winter and everyone on set had worn black and white costumes, both of which are untrue.[11] Two variations led to how Steele was cast in the film with one being that Bava encountered a head shot of Steele on his desk submitted from the William Morris Agency, while Steele recalled that she was tracked down by Bava after being captivated by photos of her from a Life magazine photo-shoot.[12] Bava later commented that Steele "had the perfect face for my films."[13] Also among the cast was British actor John Richardson who was also previously on contract with Rank Organisation and had come to Italy searching for film work.[14][13] Among the Italian cast members was Andrea Checchi who had previously worked in various Italian productions including Michelangelo Antonioni's The Lady Without Camelias.[14] Checci would appear in two other films in 1960: Vittorio De Sica's Two Women and Fritz Lang's The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse.[13] Arturo Dominici played the role of Javutich. Dominici's daughter Germana also had a role in the film as the unnamed daughter of the innkeeper.[7]

Bava's choice of story was Nikolai Gogol's "Viy", a story he used to read to his children before bedtime and was first published in 1835 in the collection Mirgorod.[3] Bava's first outline of the film is dated from September 1959 and titled "Il Vij" was about four pages long and closer to Gogol's original story.[3][15] The films credits only list Ennio De Concini and Mario Serandrei as the credited screenwriters, official papers from Rome's state archives credit Bava, Serandre, De Concini as well as Marcello Coscia and Dino De Palma.[15] Other papers also credits Fede Arnaud, Domenico Bernabei, Walter Bedogni, Lucia Torelli and Maria Nota.[15]

Filming

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A castle surrounded by forest
Black Sunday was shot partially at Massimo Castle in Arsoli

Shooting of Black Sunday commenced at Scalera Film (identified as Titanus Appia Studios) with exteriors and some interiors shot at Castle Massimo in Arsoli on March 28, 1960.[7][1] An extra week was added to the shooting schedule to allow Bava, who was also the films cinematographer, to apply a dolly for Tracking shots in the film.[16] During filming, the cast delivered their dialog in English, with the exception of Andrea Checchi, Arturo Dominici and the actor's daughter.[17] On set Steele proved to be a difficult actor for the crew, often arriving late to shootings.[18] Govoni later described her as a "strange, neurotic person" and Bava proclaimed that "Steele was half-crazy, afraid of Italians."[18] Steele reflected on her time on the set stating "Lord alone knows I was difficult enough. I didn't like my fangs - I had them changed three times. I loathed my wig - I changed that four times. I couldn't understand Italian. I didn't want to play a Chopin waltz. I certainly didn't want them to tear open my dress and expose my breasts, so they got a double that I didn't like it all, so I ended up doing it anyways-drunk, barely over 18, embarrassed and not very easy to be around.[18]

Although Bava is credited as the films cinematographer, Govoni stated that camera operator Ubaldo Terzano was the actual director of photography, and insisted that he had lit the sets "so perfectly that Bava seldom had to correct him."[19] Other effects in the film were developed by Bava's father, Eugenio Bava.[20] This included a foam latex mask of Steele's face made by Eugenio based on Steele's photo and without having to make a life-cast.[20] Eugenio also designed the "Mask of Satan" used in the film.[20] Two were made, one being a real mask and another being a rubber substitute to be used when worn by the actors.[20] Mario Bava recalled that after the films ending he had received several offers for the mask.[20] Filming concluded on May 7, 1960.[7]

Post-production

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Sam Arkoff and James Nicholas of American International Pictures (AIP) had been buying the distribution rights to Italian films since 1959.[21] In 1960, the two were invited to Italy by their Roman talent agent Fulvio Lucisano to view Black Sunday in 1960.[22][21] Arkoff spoke about this screening in 1997, stating that they had an interpreter and Lucisano guide them through the plot, with Arkoff finding the film to be a "picture of a first class horror and suspense director"[22] For the films release in the United States, AIP re-edited scenes, re-dubbed the soundtrack, and changed the characters names.[23] An English-language version of the film that had English dialogue written and directed by George Higgins III recorded with the EDLA (English Language Dubbers Association) in Rome was deemed "technically unacceptable" by Arkoff.[22][24] AIP hired Lou Rusoff to create a new English version at Titra Sound Corporation in New York City.[24] Govoni stated that the crew was given a crude translation of the text and mostly stuck to it, with AIP softening some dialogue's more sexual tones and changing phrases such as "You too can find the joy and happiness in Hades" to "You too can find the joy and happiness in hating".[24] British critic Tom Milne spoke about this dub in 1968 that the English version of the film was "devastated by dubbing that sound as though it belongs, not just to a different film, but to a different world from the near-hysterical images on screen. [24][25] AIP also removed the more violent scenes in the film such as the scene where Asa is branded with an S, the spurting blood from the spiked mask.}[25] Arkoff reasoned that "All of AIP's films were very clean, so anything that was suggestive of playing around - fornicating a corpse, you know what I'm saying? - we wouldn't stand for it."[25] Scenes of dialogue enforcing the romantic relationship between Katia and Andrej were also cut.[25]

They also changed Roberto Nicolosi's score to a new one by Les Baxter, as Arkoff and Nicholas felt Nicolosi's score was "too Italian" and that American audiences wouldn't like it.[26] Baxter flew to New York City on January 9, 1961 to record the new soundtrack for the film at Titra.[27] Film historian and critic Tim Lucas described the differences in the score as "Baxter's score is everything Nicolosi's score is not: boisterous, unsubtle, boldly orchestrated, incessantly busy - musically underlining every footfall, every droplet of dripping blood [...], every smoking undulation of dry ice."[28][29]

Release

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Black Sunday was distributed theatrically in Italy as La maschera del demonio by Unidis on August 11, 1960.[1] The film grossed a total of 139 million Italian lira on its domestic release in Italy.[1] Film historian and critic Roberto Curti described the financial success of Black Sunday in Italy as "rather limited", but made actress Barbara Steele a star in the country.[16] The popularity expanded into other Italian films, such as I motorizzati, where Ugo Tognazzi plays an impressionable horror fan who is terrified of Black Sunday.[16]

Prior to its release in the United States, the distributor AIP considered re-naming the film Witchcraft, The Curse and Vengeance before settling on Black Sunday.[30] AIP premiered the film at the Allen Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio on February 3, 1961.[31] In its initial release, Black Sunday was a double feature with films from a smaller independent company such as the British comedy Carry On Nurse.[31] Black Sunday grossed a total of $14,750 on its first week at the Allen Theatre, which topped AIP's previous record holders by 35%.[32] The film also performed well in San Francisco and Salt Lake CIty making the film become AIP's highest-grossing film in its five year history.[32] The film generated domestic rentals of $706,000.[32] The film was initially banned in the United Kingdom, receiving a single screening at the National Film Theatre in 1961 and did not receive a wide release until June 1968 as Revenge of the Vampire, in a truncated form by Border Film.[1][32][33] The film was only released uncut in the United Kingdom in 1992.[33]

Home video

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Black Sunday released it's first official home video release of the AIP version of the film on LaserDisc in 1991.[32] The Italian owners of the film released it in Japan by Toshiba Video and in the United Kingdom by Redemption Video on VHS.[32] It was first released on VHS and DVD for the first time in the United States through Image Entertainment in 1999.[32] Arrow Video released the film on Blu-ray for the first time in 2013.[34] It was released later on Blu-ray in the United States by Kino.[1]

Reception

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Initial reception

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From contemporary reviews, Curti stated that Italian film critics "ravaged" with some critics noting the films cinematography.[16] In France, Fereydoun Hoveida of Cahiers du Cinéma praised the film for it's camera's extreme mobility and the way Bava's visual style created a fantastic and even poetic dimension and declaring Bava to be an immediate film auteur and that Bava had "the soul of a painter"[16][35][36] Jean-Paul Torok of Positif also praised the film and placed Steele on the cover of their July 1961 issue of the magazine.[36] On its release in the United Kingdom, Tom Milne of the Monthly Film Bulletin declared that Black Sunday was "One of Bava's best films, with a fluid visual style and a narrative grip that only weakens towards the end. Some chilling moments of both beauty and terror, he has never surpassed."[26]

In the United States reviews reflected on the plot elements as well as the cinematography in the film. Dorothy Masters wrote in New York Daily News that found the film gruesome, but proclaimed that "whether this is reprehensible is a personal reaction, but there can be no argument on the general effectiveness of special effects and photography."[37] A review in Time declared the fim "a piece of fine Italian handiwork that atones for its ludicrous lapses with brilliant intuitions of the spectral." [38] Variety proclaimed that "There is sufficient cinematography ingenuity and production flair [...] to keep an audience pleasantly unnerved."[38] Eugene Archer of the New York Timesdismissed the film, declaring it "nonsense", filmed with "no restraint".[39] In his 1967 book The Illustrated History of Horror and Science-Fiction Films, Carlos Clarens declared Black Sunday was the "best of [Mario Bava's] work" while his later work "rejected chiaroscuro in favor of lush Technicolor and developed the directorial of Black Sunday into mannered tricks such as gratuitous abrupt cuts and an unrestrained use of the zoom lens"[40]

Retrospective

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From retrospective reviews, Timothy Sullivan wrote in The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (1986) that the film was "A supremely atmospheric horror film" and was Bava's "first and best directorial job, and the first of the 1960s cycle of Italian Gothic cinema [...] [The film] remains [Bava's] greatest achievement, without a doubt one of the best horror films ever made."[41] Richard Gilliam of AllMovie gave the film a four and a half star rating out of five, opining that with it, Bava created "a visual feast of the strange and forbidden that unleashes an adolescent-like interest in the unreal world" and that it was "easily among the most influential films of the Italian Gothic horror era."[42] James Marriott praised the film as the "crowning achievement of Italian gothic horror" where "narrative and characterization (perfunctory at best here) take second place to the magnificent atmospheric visuals" and that "unlike many of the Italian gothic chillers that followed, some sequences here [...] are genuinely creepy."[43] James Blackford of Sight & Sound reviewed the film in 2013, concluding that "Italian horror cinema is known for its intense atmosphere, extravagant visual style and gory scenes, and Black Sunday is the film that first pioneered this approach." as well as noting the "beautifully composed chiaroscuro cinematography, expressionistic set design and art direction and the grotesquely appealing makeup lend the film a distinct atmosphere; this is cinema at its most grandiose and rich, brimful of high-flown imagery."[44] The film continued to have a popular fan base among horror fans, with the film placing in a 1996 poll of the Top 25 Favourite Horror Films of All Time conducted by the British fan magazine Shivers and appearing in a reader's choice poll conducted by Fangoria for their ten greatest horror films made before 1970, where the film tied for #7 with Dracula (1958).[45]

Legacy

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A close up of a woman with blonde hair
Barbara Steele in 1965. Steele's role in ''Black Sunday'' led to her being cast in several horror film through the 1960s and 1970s.

Lamberto Bava recalls that after Black Sunday, producers began petitioning his father for more genre films.[46] Producer Lawrence Woolner approached Bava in the late 1960s to do a remake of Black Sunday in colour.[47] This remake never materialised.[47] "Viy" would later be adapted to screen again again in 1967 with Konstantin Yershow and Georgi Kropachoyov's Viy and later in 1990 as Sveto mesto by Djordje Kadijevic.[33] Mario Bava's son Lamberto Bava directed a made-for-television version of the film in 1989 titled La maschera del demonio that was not a remake of Black Sunday, but film which reworked Gogol's story into a contemporary setting.[33] Following the release of Black Sunday, Barbara Steele would become what Kim Newman described as an "Italian horror icon" showing up in several horror films such as Roger Corman's The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Riccardo Freda's The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) and The Ghost (1963) [46] [48] Bava had Steele's agents to portray Nevenka in his film The Whip and the Body but was rejected.[46] When asked about this in 2002, Steele said the invite never reached her but she would have been very happy to do it.[46] Steele would later show up in more comedies and European art films, later reflecting that "It was very difficult for me, doing all those horror films at that particular period of my life, The difficult thing is that most directors demand excess in acting. They want a very expressive reaction at all times, which is fine for one take but, put together as a whole, looks a little overboard all the time [...] it's hard for a woman to do that."[46][49] Steele later stated that Black Sunday "was probably the best of that genre of film I've made, but I don't feel it was the best for me as an actress. Frame by frame, it looks so beautiful ... but anybody could have been playing that girl."[49]

Tim Burton used imagery from the film in Sleepy Hollow (1999) where Lisa Marie emerged from an iron maiden with her face punctured like Princess Asa in Black Sunday.[50] Burton had signaled out Bava as a major influence stating that "One of the movies that remain with me probably stronger than anything is Black Sunday.[50].[45] Burton also introduced the film as part of the AMC's "Monsterfest" celebration in October 1998.[45]

Black Sunday marked an increase in onscreen violence in film.[51] Scenes in previous horror films like the British The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) focused relied on make-up to depict the horror of the monster and Dracula (1958) had its gorier scenes cut from the end by the British Board of Film Classification.[51] Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, which was released a week earlier to Black Sunday also only depicted its violence through suggestion with its murder scene in a shower depicted through suggestion via quick edits.[51] Black Sunday depicted violence without suggestion it offscreen.[51] This amount of violence would later be seen in other Italian genre films, such as the spaghetti western, the giallo including Bava's own Blood and Black Lace as well as the gialli of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci.[51] Black Sunday also focused on combining eroticism and horror, specifically the eroticism of a tortured body.[51] A trend that would be followed by other European horror filmmakers such as Jean Rollin and Jesus Franco.[51]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Curti 2015, p. 37.
  2. ^ Curti 2013, p. 37.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Curti 2015, p. 40.
  4. ^ Conterio 2015, p. 21.
  5. ^ Lucas 2013, p. 283.
  6. ^ Bailey 2013, p. 10.
  7. ^ a b c d Lucas 2013, p. 295.
  8. ^ Lucas 2013, p. 296.
  9. ^ Lucas 2013, p. 292.
  10. ^ a b Conterio 2015, p. 31.
  11. ^ a b Conterio 2015, p. 32.
  12. ^ a b Conterio 2015, p. 33.
  13. ^ a b c Lucas 2013, p. 294.
  14. ^ a b Conterio 2015, p. 34.
  15. ^ a b c Curti 2015, p. 41.
  16. ^ a b c d e Curti 2015, p. 47.
  17. ^ Conterio 2015, p. 39.
  18. ^ a b c Lucas 2013, p. 299.
  19. ^ Lucas 2013, p. 301.
  20. ^ a b c d e Lucas 2013, p. 305.
  21. ^ a b Lucas 2013, p. 308.
  22. ^ a b c Conterio 2015, p. 40.
  23. ^ Conterio 2015, p. 7.
  24. ^ a b c d Lucas 2013, p. 309.
  25. ^ a b c d Lucas 2013, p. 310.
  26. ^ a b Conterio 2015, p. 41.
  27. ^ Lucas 2013, p. 313.
  28. ^ Lucas 2013, p. 314.
  29. ^ Lucas 2013, p. 315.
  30. ^ Conterio 2015, p. 8.
  31. ^ a b Lucas 2013, p. 316.
  32. ^ a b c d e f g Lucas 2013, p. 317.
  33. ^ a b c d Curti 2015, p. 48.
  34. ^ Blackford 2013, p. 110.
  35. ^ Hoveida, Fereydoun (1961). "Les grimaces du démon". Cahiers du Cinéma (in French). p. 119.
  36. ^ a b Conterio 2015, p. 42.
  37. ^ Masters 1961.
  38. ^ a b Clarens 1996, p. 158.
  39. ^ Archer 1961.
  40. ^ Clarens 1997, p. 158.
  41. ^ Sullivan 1986, p. 37.
  42. ^ Gilliam.
  43. ^ Marriott, Newman & 2018, p. 98.
  44. ^ Blackford 2013, p. 111.
  45. ^ a b c Lucas 2013, p. 327.
  46. ^ a b c d e Lucas 2013, p. 322.
  47. ^ a b Conterio 2015, p. 63.
  48. ^ Marriott & Newman 2018, p. 92.
  49. ^ a b Lucas 2013, p. 323.
  50. ^ a b Lucas 2013, p. 326.
  51. ^ a b c d e f g Curti 2015, p. 38.

Sources

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