Prelude to the Sighs: Dario Argento's Suspiria

            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!”