Suspiria (1977 Review)

An enigmatic German ballet house entraps recipients, sprawling a chaos filled with cacophonous screams and draconious swirls of apothic necromancy.Sinister, harlequin shapes backdrop in harmony for terpsichoreans tiptoeing  in voluptuous motion to be contrasted in composition. 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 of mastery in a Giallo canon that consists of too little and yet fails what Suspiria maximizes. 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 works was Argento's way with phantasmagoric witchery more present than in the floral surroundings depicted in "Suspiria", the first part of his "Three Mother's Trilogy".

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 spectrum-extremity. Flickering hallway lights meet with burst-crimson, mixed with glittering obelisks and pasted death-florals, blossoming a shamanistic repertoire in vacillating verse.
In the center of any sub-cultural discussion on Gothic movie and TV entertainment, "Suspiria" is re-iterated and re-visited. It's distinct flair in cinematography by Luciano Tovoli calls upon a dreamscape of noirs in color or the German silent favorites such as, " Dr. Caligari", offerring familiarity in blackened corridors, the unveiling of abstract shapes and figurines cloaked more-or-less the way in cast shadow. i.e. There is a moonlight that is felt despite being inside, 'protected' from the dark.
Jessica Harper (Insects) plays the protagonist Suzy Bannion, an American dancer traveling to enroll at the academy when she discovers that the house is haunted by a witch. Suzy traverses through convoluted puzzles of outlandish, pop-out scares. 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) plays Olga, a female dancer participating with the team of dancers.
Suspiria to this day stands as this lone orphan in a paragraph as European cinema transitions from a golden age of nonlinear storytelling and into the misfortune of low-budget B-movie thrills. Standing up to a lot of modern horror films that have an over-indulged sense in CGI, Suspiria is difficult to age since most films around this time were minimal in it's choice of spectrum. We need more films that are far-reaching like it; films can find a consistency or a mature grasp on it's psychedelic range of opaqueness. Suspiria does just that; even going beyond a little of what was expected from it before the moments of suspense and after. For it's uniqueness, it becomes re-discussed and re-interpreted by film experts around the world, remaining one of the Gothic genre's hallmarks in entertainment.