Suspiria / Dario Argento (1977)
Suspiria makes nearly no sense on a critical storytelling level and Dario Argento couldn't have cared less because it is impossible to look away from. The story is a classic horror setup.
A woman comes to a strange land and becomes prey to evil forces. In this case, Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) comes to the prestigious Tanz Akademie to study dance. As soon as she arrives, students begin dying and disappearing. Suzy becomes ill, and has dreamlike experiences in the academy space, raising suspicions about the building and mysterious headmistress.
Honestly, you could watch this without even paying attention to the story. It's nearly incidental to the feeling the film generously gives to viewers. First, color. Argento and director of photography, Luciano Tovoli, create a magnetic, shifting dream of color more akin to animation or children's fantasy than typical horror. Saturated reds, blues and greens fill rooms, and come from no particular source. The color is there to be the mood. The tension. However, don't try to decode it.
In the opening scene, Suzy walks through an airport and walls of red surround her and lead her path. While it's clearly intentional, Argento doesn't force that. He uses washes of deep red to fill rooms and hallways, but also cuts to blues in the adjoining spaces even as the mood remains tense. The main rehearsal space is known as the Red Room. But it's not a ritual space, as far as we're shown. Red also shows up in safe spaces, like Suzy's bedroom as she talks to Sara. It suggests the space isn't as safe as we think. Or maybe it just looks cool.
The lack of lighting source creates peculiar shadows that aren't necessarily related to any object. Argento wasn't going for the realism of Seven here and he was extremely successful. He created a dream. A nightmare, rather. Characters who seem important to the narrative spring up and disappear without explanation. The interior shape of the Academy is incomprehensible. The logic is broken, which is what makes the movie work.
They are malefic, negative and destructive. Their knowledge of the art of the occult gives them tremendous powers. They can change the course of events and people's lives, through harm.
I watch horror for story. Typically, that's highly structured three act stories, told in a linear or understandable way. I find horror a fertile ground for innovating storytelling because the genre allows for anything to be possible. Suspiria delivers the latter, even if it abandons the former. Anything can happen. A character can escape through an impossibly high and small window that clearly leads outdoors, only to fall into an interior room full of razor wire.
Earlier, we're shown a second storey window. Outside, clothes hang to dry on a line, despite the pouring rain. Our first victim, Pat (Eva Axén) leans against the glass with a lamp, sensing a presence behind the clothes. A hairy arm breaks through the glass from the inside, mashing her face against the window before pulling her through, slashing her with a knife, stabbing her directly in her exposed heart and finally tying a rope around her waist that becomes a noose when she throws her through a skylight.
This film is what the kids call an entire vibe. I rewatched it with the sound nearly off, which relieved me of the dubbed dialogue but deprived me of the killer score by Goblin. The film still works. In Suspiria the idea of the violence, the sense of conspiracy, the disorientation is the idea. The details are a nice-to-have. The movie's visual construction is so powerful that removing much of its sound doesn't collapse it. Dialogue is less important. The exposition is nearly irrelevant. But Goblin's score would be badly missed.
The film feels more choreographed than acted. Both the sourceless lighting and the editing of the murder scenes build this impression. In particular, a scene where the students sleep in the main hall, while the instructors sleep on beds on the other side of a red curtain emphasizes the feeling of a stage play. The instructors are treated in silhouette beyond the curtain, while the students prepare for bed downstage. It makes it clear that Argento is more interested in the drama of a scene than the specific activity. True, he doesn't deliver story. Argento delivers an immersive horror experience better than most horror.
Key scene
Spoilers below.
Maggots. Suzy sits down to brush her hair. She senses something caught in the brush. She looks. Is that-? A maggot? Another? Soon, maggots are raining from the ceiling of an entire floor of academy. The explanation is that spoiled meat has been stored in the attic, but the situation is so bizarre and unexplained that the mundane explanation doesn't really resolve anything. Nobody questions it.
It demonstrates (further) Argento's ability to turn an ordinary physical space into something disgusting. Nothing supernatural needs to appear. Maggots are enough. Something happens. Someone offers an explanation. The explanation technically makes sense. It doesn't matter. The building remains terrifying.
It doesn't matter. Suspiria is infinitely rewatchable because of the energy it creates, not the story it tells. Argento doesn't make the academy feel like a real place where supernatural things happen. He makes it feel like a nightmare that happens to have a story.
Own it
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