Director: Dario Argento
Year: 1977
Star rating: ★★★★★ 5/5
Star rating: ★★★★★ 5/5
“Suzy... Sarah... I once read that
names, which begin with the letter ‘S’, are the names of SNAKES! Sssss!
Ssssss!”
Horror, The Supernatural and Fantasy, are all elements that play a big
role in Dario Argento’s masterpiece ‘Suspiria’. Luciano Tovoli and Argento helped create a film that visually stood out amongst
the Italian horror genre of the 1970’s, and all horror films from that period
up until present day.
In 1977 Argento went on to create The Three Mothers trilogy and the
first to start off the trilogy was ‘Suspiria’ which today is regarded as a cult
classic and one of my all time favourite horrors. The film opens with Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) walking towards the
exit of an airport. The soundtrack at the beginning already builds tension as
it switches between synthesized melodies to silence. The airport doors become a
gateway into a nightmare; as they slice open the music is harsh and when they close
there’s silence. The chanting of gibberish, (which feature the vocals of Argento
himself alongside frequent collaborators – ‘Goblin’), suggests a sense of
teasing, this is played up until she arrives at the ballet academy. Goblin’s soundtrack
went on to enhance the films visuals and tension in a way that had never been
done before. Suspiria’s
soundtrack is best known as it doesn’t build only in the important scenes but
it’s a constant assault on the viewer throughout, this is evident in the track
“Witch” were the score teases us with
its repetitive chanting of “la la la la
la la la, la la la la la la la…WITCH”.
It was a common practice during the 70’s for the Italian
production to film without a soundtrack, and to later dub the dialogue. Most of
the cast could not speak English, so the voice actors who later dubbed the film
had this almost strange intensity in the way they acted out. Adding this
surreal break between the audience and the film.
Along with the chanting of what seems to be demons, flashes
of red can be seen while Suzy is in the taxi leaving the airport; this is also
signifying danger and death. Her journey towards the madness is beginning.
Throughout the film bright blocks of colour and lighting are placed scene by
scene, creating an almost theatrical set piece with the help of Luciano Tovoli’s
cinematography. Suspiria was one
of the last films to use the Technicolor process, as it was an expensive and time-consuming
process. “To intensify the contrast of the colours, we took out a filter used
to soften the borders so that every colour could remain absolutely pure. We
didn’t worry about having perfect borders, as it made it every more
unrealistic” says Tovoli.
The façade of the baroque style academy is dressed in blood
red and the rooms’ interiors also in this baroque style helped create a surreal
and gothic atmosphere in Argento’s film. Mario Bava being known as the master of Italian horror used the technique of block colours layered over each other to create tension in his horror's, this can be seen in his 1963 horror film 'Black Sabbath’ in the segment ‘The Drop of Water’. He burst onto the
scene in the 1960s delivering some of the scariest horror films to date (for
the time), which later influenced a wide range of directors, Argento being one
of them. Argento took these techniques of lighting, colour and sound further in
ways that challenged the viewer’s reactions.
The first 15 minutes of the film are a good example of challenging
the viewer’s reactions, as it sets the tone and mood for the rest of the film
with the two shocking death scenes, which frightened the audience before the
film had even got going. The first two death scenes for me are innovative in
the fact that they are creative in the way he executes them. The film’s deaths
are mainly of young girls in their early-twenties. In the original script
Argento wanted the cast to be of eight to ten year old girls but the production
companies would not allow the murder of children on the screen so he went for
girls in their early twenties instead. The set is exaggerated and enlarged with
the placing of doorknobs at head level to give that sense of being lost in a
labyrinth, a demented playground. This refers to such stories as Alice in Wonderland or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which visually
inspired Argento with their colour contrasts and expressionistic lighting. He
took these elements and turned them into his own nightmarish world.
The first death scene is unexpected. Silence follows and
then a clash of hard drums begin as an arm smashes through the glass window and
grabs a hold of the girl’s hair (an Argento trait in his murder set pieces was
to show just the arm or hand when it came to the stabbing/killing of females).
The fingers are claw-like suggesting a primal, otherworldly being. It reaches
for a knife and starts to violently stab the woman in the heart repeatedly; the
music builds faster with each strike. The “Giallo” element is included in the
scene, a common tool in Italian cinema where we only see the killer’s hand and
weapon. The knife pierces into the girl’s heart as it still beats, and then the
killer reaches for a telephone wire, electrocutes her and hangs her as she
crashes through the building’s glass ceiling.
There’s a quick cut to the next scene and the camera pans
down from the hanging body, eyes widened and body drenched in blood. The camera
follows it down to the pool of blood and to the second body, which lies against
this geometric floor with the shattered, coloured glass placed around resembling an abstract painting, reminiscent of artists such as Piet Mondrian. A
metal structure pierces the girl’s throat and chest; the blood, this vibrant,
shocking red paint, adds an artistic level of theatricality in Argento’s films.
The deaths are gruesome but there’s a sense of beauty in them. In the 1970’s
horror started to become more gory and visceral and creating unique death
scenes that challenged the ideas of death in cinema. Commercial cinema seemed
to avoid death or rather romanticized them therefore making them not
surprising. When we are faced with real life deaths on screen for example in
documentary’s, we want to avoid it at all costs. There’s a relatable connection
we have as humans. “For when we witness un-staged, real death in the cinema we
are frightened, caught in the sweet and deadly trap of the voyeur; mixed
feelings of attraction and repulsion take hold of us as we anxiously watch the
actual end of another being and search his face for hints of the mystery or
proper rules of conduct” (Vogel, Film As
A Subversive Art, pg. 263). Argento’s nightmarish deaths challenged these
ideas, they become unexpected to the point were we are frightened, the deaths
are fictional and hold the line between art and death, we can appreciate the
artistic element to them. What happens when the director himself is involved in
the scenes? When he holds the blade and slices into a woman’s heart? Argento
was mainly involved in the death scenes, it adds a sense of realism to the
scene; his artistic vision is being played out through him, he is in total
control. The cinematic image, the meticulous reproduction of whatever is before
the camera has a way of looking ‘real’ even if fictional; how much more
powerful its impact is when portraying a true event?
There is no horror that comes close to the masterpiece that
is Suspiria. The film touches on the
supernatural, the surreal and the horror. With all his films, nothing is
certain until the very last few minutes of the film. It creates uncertainty for
the audience; the characters are posed with suspicion, with red-herrings
aplenty, creating extra tension in the film. It’s the only horror, in my
opinion, that can combine these elements but still remain beautiful to watch.
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