Greetings ghouls and boils, I'm back again with yet another Halloween Countdown post. I hope you enjoy those kinds of artsy horror flicks, a bit of hallucinogenics in your horror flicks if you will, because that is what we are getting with today's offering, with a film called Suspiria.
Suspiria is not only the crowning achievement of Dario Argento, but it is also the summa cum laude graduate of Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol, and a high watermark in the peculiarly Italian Giallo film movement. Not only does it cause the viewer to wince and look away, but it also tantalizes with the kalidoscopic menagerie of colors, creating a visual fairytale.
What is Giallo you ask? Well, my best answer is this. Giallo is what you'd get if you took Hitchcock thrillers, added a dash of pulp flavoring ('Giallo' means 'yellow' in Italian, so these are straight from the pulps!) and topped the whole mixture of with a pinch of psycho-sexual weirdness and an overall sense of surreal dream logic with the ugly furniture and wallpaper of the mid to late 70s.
The visuals on the screen delight and dazzle, the relation of the colors on the screen soaks scenes in atmosphere or convey emotions in a manner reminiscent of the simple coloring methods seen in Golden Age comics. It is as if the rainbow of color meshes with the dark, pushing Suzy Bannister on to find out just what is causing her fellow students in her ballet school to disappear in this dark fairytale.
The cinematography in this film is excellent, as Argento and cinematographer Tovoli not only use anamorphic lenses to distort the film and give an unsettling feeling to the action going on, but use techniques such as Murnau's unchained shot, subtly playing with the audiences expectations with the movement and angle of the camera. As a further nod to the German Expressionist masters, the architecture of the buildings reflect the lives of those in them.
Suspiria's plot uniquely, is partly inspired by an unfinished work called Suspiria de Profundis (Sighs from the Depths with those of you who don't do Latin) by an English essayist Thomas De Quincey. Rooted in his opium addiction, these were literary experiments in psychological fantasy and dreams, fuzzing the lines between real and unreal, form and shade.
While I could go on, I can only urge you to watch if you never have before. Suspiria is a film that still, nearly 40 years later continues to shock and surprise. It is more than just a good horror movie, it is a film that cuts across genre lines, and even if you are a squeemish individual, I urge you to see it.
I'll leave the trailer below for you curious types.
Until next time.
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