A girl runs dashing into the rain.
She hails three taxis before one stops to pick her up. There is nothing
blatantly out of place with the scene, yet it is unnaturally bathed in dizzying
red and green and yellow glows. Slowly, distantly, emerge the strains of
jarring, erratic music layered over discordant, whispered voices – “La la la la la la… WITCH!!!” And so
begins the delirious trip down the rabbit hole that is Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977).
Suspiria
has often been labeled as Argento’s career-defining masterpiece. The legions of
fans devoted to his unique filmography are frequently divided between this film
and his preceding giallo opus Deep Red
(aka Profondo Rosso) [1975]. In the mid-1970s, Argento was undeniably at
the height of his career. His first film, The
Bird with the Crystal Plumage (aka L’ucello dalle piume di cristallo) [1970],
announced his presence as a major new talent. But after half a decade of being
the ‘Italian Hitchcock’ it was time for a change.
Suspiria,
roughly translated ‘the sighs’, was a major departure for Argento in almost
every way. Aesthetically it retains many benchmarks of his early works, yet
exaggerated by vibrant colors and even more so by practically tuneless
jazz-influenced music by Claudio Simonetti. The most dramatic shift is
thematic. Where every preceding film Argento made centered on the giallo
blueprint of stylized violence combined with Hitchcockian mystery, Suspiria takes a sharp left turn into the
supernatural.
At its core, the film is a simple
story. Suzy Bannion comes to Germany to enroll in a dance academy boarding
school, supposedly the best in Europe. There she encounters strange happenings –
maggots, drugged wine, disappearances, and murder. And the otherworldly
suspicion that her school is run by a coven of witches!
Art is not often synonymous with horror
filmmaking. Cinematic explorations of death or evil are so many times relegated
to easily digestible personal dramas or historical epics. Films such as
Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993)
make ample use of evil as a thematic element or dramatic subject. Yet it is
this self-aware philosophy aimed at making sense of the senselessness that drives
such works from sincerity into the realm of pretense.
Central to the effectiveness of Suspiria is its preoccupation with evil.
No rhyme, no reason - just evil for evils sake. This is what sets the film
apart from the pretentious ruminations that occupy your modern neighborhood cineplex.
In truth, Argento’s movie doesn’t seek any sort of answers. Witches commit evil
because they can and that’s it. There is no mystery to it. Perhaps the art of the
film is revealed because of this stubborn refusal to explain anything.
The only scene of exposition to be found
(where Suzy goes to meet a professor to find out about witchcraft) does not
really provide all that much information beyond what we need to know. In fact,
it serves primarily to further the audience’s sense of foreboding, rather than
lend any explanation to the seemingly unconnected series of murders and strange
happenstance.
This does not mean Suspiria does not have a plotline, it does. It’s just a very simple
one. The fact of the matter is that story just isn’t the point here. What is
happening and why takes a backseat to the aesthetic look and feel. This is classic
Dario Argento. In a day in age when plot
is considered paramount, this may seem off-putting to the everyday viewer. But
one willing to delve a little deeper will find that dazzling, psychedelic wonders
await within.
Anyone familiar with the director’s work
knows the signature one-two punch of sight and sound that identifies a picture
as an ‘Argento film’. For all the departures from form to be found in Suspiria, the aggressive scoring and
indelible visuals (including the trademark ‘hands of the murderer’ sequences)
are completely intact and better than ever! No filmmaker understands the
potential of color like Dario Argento. Here every frame is awash in neon hues.
The resultant mesmerizing color palette is as responsible for setting the mood
in each scene as the actors and actresses. The steady camera work is remarkably
precise, yet never feels forced or unnatural, realizing each frame as its own
sort of moving still life. The end product is a film that seems a sort of
living, breathing watercolor painting filled to the brim with fairy tale
horrors beyond count.
Just as responsible for this
artistic impact is the score composed by Claudio Simonetti and his instrumental
rock band Goblin. Having previously been discovered by Dario Argento and
employed for Deep Red (aka Profondo
Rosso), Goblin provides an electric, aggressive sound that not so much
compliments a film as it assaults the viewers ears.
In Suspiria, the soundtrack is a startling amalgam of electric rock,
experimental free-form (á la The Doors’ Horse
Latitudes), and avant-garde jazz. The music fades in and out at odd and
inopportune moments. The effect is the audience is kept in a state of unease
that works expertly to the films advantage.
The title theme ‘Suspiria’ is sensual,
childish, and evocatively unsettling. Like the children’s lullaby in Deep Red, it is used to telegraph the
unknown. The simple melody played on a glockenspiel calls to mind a music box
with a dancing china ballerina – oddly appropriate for a film set in a dance
academy, and yet inexplicably ominous at the same time.
The combined effect of audio and
visual is an off-balance sort of atmosphere, as though the audience has been
transported suddenly into a sinister sort of déjà vu fairy tale. A waking
nightmare of witches, murderous illusions, and rooms filled completely with
barbed wire. Such evil depicted with callous disregard for decorum often
descends into exploitation and throw away double bills such as Torso (aka Il corpi presentano tracce di
violenza carnale) [1973] or Thriller:
A Cruel Picture (aka Thriller- en grym film) [1973] – both of which feature
an endless barrage of salaciousness, depravity, and violence.
Yet Suspiria circumvents these conventions while somehow simultaneously
displaying the evils they shamelessly exploit. Therein lay the art of the film
and the brilliance of Dario Argento. He seems to understand the deep-seated
psychological roots of human fear – the unknown, the supernatural, the mystical
– and the need for us to vent these apprehensions vicariously. The colors,
sounds, conspiracies, dark corridors, unexplainable bumps in the night… All
serve to channel our subconscious fears and turn them into an onscreen
experience. This is the art of Suspiria.
After the film’s success, Argento
would continue his career with many successful films in the 1980’s and 1990’s,
including Inferno (1980; a sequel to
Suspiria), Tenebre (1982), and
even films starring his daughter Asia Argento like The Stendhal Syndrome (1996). But in spite of the brilliance of
these later works, none would match the operatic power and artistic heights of Suspiria.
Like all of his films, Suspiria cannot simply be watched, it
must be experienced. Truthfully, despite the author’s best efforts, this
analysis is woefully inadequate in doing the film justice. Quite simply, it is
a ‘must-see’!
So go check it out! Like the iconic
poster declares: “The only thing more terrifying than the last 12 minutes of Suspiria, are the first 92!”
