Suspiria

It only makes sense that I should review the 1977 film Suspiria by Dario Argento, as I have referenced its title in my blog name, thus I am revisiting the film for the third time; this time at the Astor theatre. I wanted to see if Suspria’s tagline of “The only thing more terrifying that the last 12 minutes of the film… are the first 92” can still be as effective as it once was on me.

And yes, it still was a hallucinogenic nightmare.

Right away its atmosphere is vivid, beginning with heavy rain at night-time we see Suzy (Jessica Harper) become increasing distressed as she tries to hail a taxi to take her to a prestigious dance academy in Germany that she’s been accepted into. Upon her arrival and Suzy’s refused into the academy we are introduced to another girl (Eva Axen) who flees the academy, muttering to herself, as the camera trails her into the woods. We can perhaps relax a little, she leaves the woods and arrives at a friend’s place where we get the feeling she might be safer. Only to witness more, when we are confronted with a scene that continues to terrify me, it involves a curtain-less window, a mysterious arm and a large knife. Welcome to Giallo.

Giallo not only describes Argento’s work, but also that of other Italian Directors such as Mario Bava and Lucio Fulcio which translates to simply mean yellow. However, this is a particular type of yellow, which originated from a series of yellow covered detective novels and became a genre of film that uses heavy colours, large splatters of blood, orchestral scores, in which beautiful women are often slayed. In saying this, it may seem like a genre that could be looked at as smutty, over the top, and a little too obvious. And on some occasions, it is and can seem over stylised and convoluted. Suspiria’s narrative may be simple but this works in favour of Argento’s camera angles, filters, score, along with a supernatural theme he brings to the genre in this film. Compared to the likes of his 1982 film Tenebre, which has a narrative that becomes confusing and overzealous.

As for the score, Goblin supply a constant headache of sharp pains with croaky old ladies singing a kind of lullaby that gets louder and louder until it crescendos in explosions of heavy bass. They also guide us through the narrative, even in parts of the film where no music is used, making it that little bit more confronting and awkward, leaving us unprepared for the terror that waits.

Although, some viewers laughed at random and admittedly cheesy parts of the movie, it only helped highlight the other moments of deathly silence and the shocked gasps. Adding to the excitement of seeing it at the theatre, the Astor cat, Marzipan, also made a few of the audience members jump when he ran up the isle towards the door during the closing moments of Suspiria’s showdown.

For viewers that have seen Suspira and ones that haven’t, it’s not just an ordinary horror film or typically Giallo. It’s a film with many layers that uses the clever angles of Hitchcock, some themes from Polenski’s Rosemary’s Baby, whilst utilizing off key timing and litres of blood to make this a cut above the rest and introduced a form a of Art house Horror to cinema.