Suspiria (1977) Film Review

An enigmatic German ballet house entraps recipients, unleashing a chaos filled with cacophonous screams and draconious swirls of apothic necromancy. Sinister, harlequin shapes backdrop in contrast to the harmony of cryptic terpsichoreans tiptoeing in voluptuous motion. Beneath it's monumental design, is an orchestral eeriness evoked in Goblin's rock spells of demonic dissonance, amplifiying Argento's synthesizing arpeggio of spellbinding incarcerations, reaching a height in a Giallo genre that insists on propelling mediocrity with redundant hodgepodges like “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage” and “A Lizard in a Woman's Skin”. Shifts in illusion are hinted and represented in the robust mixtures of the aquatic-crimsons as it was trialed in the rowens of "Inferno" and "Mother of Tears". Nowhere in these workings though was Argento's poetic palette of phantasmagoric witchery more present than in each harrowing background constructed here in "Suspiria", the first part of his "Three Mother's Trilogy".

📷 In the center of any discussion on Gothic movie and television entertainment, "Suspiria" is mentioned, re-iterated, and re-visited. It's distinct flair in cinematography by Luciano Tovoli calls upon a dreamscape of noirs in color and the German silent film favorites like " Dr. Caligari", evoking familiarity in it’s blackened corridors; the unraveling of abstract shapes and figurines cloaked more-or-less two-thirds of the way in cast shadow. A moon illuminating each character’s appearance is present despite being ominously felt inside, invisible beneath it’s exterior, similar in any film-noir capturing of a subject.

Modelling the film on Disney's "Snow White and Seven Dwarfs", rainy weather, dead trees, eccentric airports, and smoky atmospheres crackle the dread and angst of a technicolor extremity. Flickering hallway lights meet and burst crimson, mixed with glittering obelisks and pasted death-florals, blossoming a shamanistic repertoire in vacillating verse.

Jessica Harper (Insects) plays the protagonist Suzy Bannon, an American dancer traveling to enroll at this academy discovering that the house is haunted by the witch. Bannon traverses through convoluted mazes comprising outlandish, pop-out scares that the witch has in store. Joan Bennet (Scarlett Street and Dark Shadows) plays Madame Blanc, offering nostalgic trips to a Gothic past with her supporting role as the teacher. Barbara Magnolfi (The Suspicious Death of a Minor) as Olga, a female dancer participating with the team, adding onto the Gothic vibe of the cast.

Suspiria to this day stands as an orphan at the end of a grim paragraph as European cinema phases from a golden age of nonlinear storytelling and into one that is silver and shoddy with low-budget B-movie thrills and cheap entertainment. Standing up to a lot of modern horror that have an over-indulged thought with CGI, Suspiria is a breakaway from that norm utilizing old school tactics to stage it’s focal point of fear. It is also a difficult one to age since most films released around this time weren’t as daring in it’s visual appeal. We need more films that are far-reaching like it; films that can find a consistency and mature grasp on it's range of psychedelic opaqueness. Suspiria does just that; even going a little bit farther beyond what is expected before these moments of suspense and after. For it's sheer uniqueness, it is re-discussed and re-interpreted by film experts, remaining one of the horror genre’s rarest hallmarks.