Suspiria
Dir. Dario Argento
The arrival of American ballerina, Suzy Banyon (Jessica Harper), at a prestigious dance academy in Freiburg, coincides with a series of savagely brutal murders. Suzy slowly begins to realise that the academy is actually a front for a coven of witches led by the diabolical Mater Suspiriorum – The Mother of Sighs – who plans to unleash untold suffering and pain upon the world. With her friends falling prey to evil supernatural powers and no one to believe her seemingly outrageous story, Suzy must face her deadly foe alone…
The first film in a trilogy, Suspiria precedes Inferno (1980) and the only recently completed final chapter, Mother of Tears (2007). With Suspiria, Dario Argento and his co-writer Daria Nicolodi created one of the most vivid, nightmarish and hallucinogenic horror films of all time. Deeply influenced by the drug-induced and vivid writing of Thomas De Quincey, Argento also borrows from Lewis Carroll, the Brothers Grimm and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Stories of witchcraft and occult practices told to Nicolodi by her grandmother also inspired the screenplay.
Suspiria unfolds as a morbid and highly gothic fairytale; even beginning with a ‘once upon a time’ styled narration. Events bleed out from under a rage of primary coloured lurid lighting
and intense noise. The soundtrack, courtesy of prog-rockers Goblin, is supremely
sinister and pulsating and features a cacophony of otherworldly shrieks
and rasping whispers. As distracting as this sounds, it actually
enhances the experience of watching Suspiria. The viewer becomes utterly
immersed in a claustrophobic and insanely nightmarish world where
nothing is left to the imagination. The distinct lack of logic, while no
doubt bizarre, also fuels the infernal atmosphere
and adds a grotesquely skewed dimension to proceedings.
The fluid camerawork by Luciano Tovoli performs a few startling movements throughout the course of the film. One such moment occurs when Daniel, the blind pianist from the academy, is walking home with his dog at night through a large town square. The camera stalks him from every conceivable angle, even swooping down on him from the roofs of the buildings at one point, in an utterly breath-taking shot.
Jessica Harper as Susy, is one of Argento’s typical heroines: strong, resourceful and determined, if prone to bouts of memory loss: she attempts, throughout the course of the film, to remember several words whispered to her by the girl she met in the storm outside the school when she first arrived. These words are clues to unlock the mystery of the wretched academy. Suspiria is populated by a strong, predominantly female cast. Argento initially wanted the students to be played by adolescent actresses, but eventually changed his mind. However, events in the film still unfold as though witnessed from a child’s perspective. The actors are dwarfed by the grand set designs and if you look carefully, all of the door handles in the school are quite high up, adding to the child-like rendering of the characters. Suzy is down to earth and practical-minded, whilst her class mates play petty jokes on one another and too easily distracted. The teachers, particularly Miss Tanner (Alida Valli), are extremely overbearing and demanding.
The violence is extremely intense and at times unbearable, particularly the opening double murders which feature stabbing, hanging, impalement and the puncturing of a still beating heart with a blade. However, with such an opulent and fever-pitched intro, nothing else in the film can quite live up to the initial intensity. Events dissolve into a murky shimmer of illogicality. Characters wander around as though in a daze, exploring the ghastly interior of the malevolent building, bathed in swathes of reds, blues and greens, until they meet their gory demises, usually at the hands of unseen and presumably supernatural entities.
Suspiria is considered a classic of the horror genre, and rightly so. No film has ever really come close to touching its intensity, dreamlike qualities, artistic approach or majestic moodiness. A hellish and distinctly unsettling fairytale of graphic power.
