Suspiria
Suspiria is a 1977 Italian supernatural horror film directed by Dario Argento, who co-wrote the screenplay with Daria Nicolodi, partially based on Thomas De Quincey's 1845 essay Suspiria de Profundis. The film stars Jessica Harper as an American ballet student who transfers to a prestigious dance academy but realizes, after a series of murders, that the academy is a front for a coven of witches. It also features Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé, Alida Valli, Udo Kier, and Joan Bennett, in her final film role.
This article is about the 1977 film. For the 2018 remake of the film, see Suspiria (2018 film). For other uses, see Suspiria (disambiguation).Suspiria
- Dario Argento
- Daria Nicolodi
- Goblin
- Dario Argento
Produzioni Atlas Consorziate
- 1 February 1977 (Italy)
99 minutes[1]
Italy
- English
- Italian
The film is the first of the trilogy Argento refers to as The Three Mothers, which also comprises Inferno (1980) and The Mother of Tears (2007). Suspiria has received a positive response from critics for its visual and stylistic flair, use of vibrant colors and its score by Argento and the progressive rock band Goblin.
Suspiria was nominated for two Saturn Awards: Best Supporting Actress for Bennett in 1978, and Best DVD Classic Film Release, in 2002. It is recognised as one of the most influential films in the horror genre and has received acclaim from critics in retrospective reviews. It served as the inspiration for a 2018 film of the same title, directed by Luca Guadagnino.
Plot[edit]
Suzy Bannion, a young American ballet student, arrives in Freiburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany during a torrential downpour to study at the co-ed Tanz Akademie, a prestigious German dance school. She sees another student, Pat Hingle, flee the school in terror. Suzy is refused entry to the school and forced to stay in town overnight. Pat takes refuge at a friend's apartment and tells her that something sinister happened at the school. Pat is ambushed by a shadowy figure who stabs her repeatedly and drags her to the roof of the apartment building before hanging her with a noose by throwing her through the building's skylight. Pat's friend is also killed after being impaled by a falling giant shard of glass while trying to alert other tenants to the murder.
Suzy returns to the school the next morning, where she meets Miss Tanner, the head instructor, and Madame Blanc, the deputy headmistress. Tanner introduces Suzy to Pavlos, one of the school's servants. She also meets classmates Sara and Olga, her new roommate. Suzy experiences an unsettling encounter with one of the school's matrons and Blanc's nephew, Albert, before passing out during a dance class. When she regains consciousness, Suzy learns that Olga has thrown her out of her apartment, forcing her to live at the school with Sara in the room next door.
While the students are preparing for supper one night, maggots rain down from the ceilings of their rooms due to a shipment of spoiled food in the attic, forcing them to sleep in one of the dance studios. During the night, a woman enters the room but is obscured by a curtain hung around the room's perimeter. Sara, frightened by her hoarse and labored breathing, recognizes her as the school's headmistress, who is supposedly out of town. The next day, the school's blind pianist, Daniel, is abruptly fired by Miss Tanner when his German Shepherd bites Albert. Daniel is stalked by an unseen force while walking through a plaza that night; his dog turns on him and viciously rips out his throat.
Sara tells Suzy that she was the one on the intercom who refused her entry the night Pat was murdered. She reveals that Pat was behaving strangely before her death and promises to show Suzy the notes that she left behind. Sara finds that Pat's notes are missing and is forced to flee when an unseen assailant enters the room. They pursue her through the school before cornering her in the attic. She escapes through a small window before falling into a pit of razor wire, entangling her and allowing her pursuer to kill her by slashing her throat.
Suzy investigates Sara's disappearance the next morning. Tanner tells her that Sara has fled the school. Suspicious, Suzy contacts Sara's friend and former psychiatrist, Frank Mandel. He reveals that the school was established by Greek émigrée Helena Markos in 1895, who was allegedly a witch. Suzy also consults with Professor Milius, a professor of the occult. He reveals that a coven of witches perishes without their leader, from whom they draw power.
When Suzy returns to the school, she finds that everyone has left to attend the Bolshoi Ballet. After being attacked by a bat and recalling a conversation with Sara about footsteps, she follows the sound of them carefully, leading her to Madame Blanc's office. Remembering that Pat uttered the words secret and iris the night that she was killed, Suzy discovers a hidden door that opens by turning a blue iris on a mural in Blanc's office. Suzy enters the corridor and finds the academy's instructors, led by Madame Blanc, plotting her demise in the form of a human sacrifice. Albert alerts Pavlos to Suzy's presence. Suzy hides in an alcove, where she finds Sara's disfigured corpse.
Pursued by Pavlos, Suzy retreats to Helena Markos's bedroom. Suzy finds Markos sleeping, recognizing her as the headmistress by her labored breathing. She accidentally wakes her by breaking a decorative peacock with crystal plumage. Markos renders herself invisible and taunts Suzy before reanimating Sara's mutilated corpse to murder her. When flashes of lightning inadvertently reveal Markos's silhouette, Suzy impales her through the neck with one of the peacock's broken glass quills. Markos's death causes Sara's corpse to vanish.
Suzy flees as the school starts to implode. Madame Blanc, Miss Tanner, Pavlos and the rest of the coven perish without the power of Markos to sustain them. Suzy escapes into the rainy night as the school is consumed by fire.
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
Argento based Suspiria in part on Thomas De Quincey's essay Suspiria de Profundis (1845).[3][4] Critic Maitland McDonagh notes: "In Argento's reading [of the material], the three mothers generate/inhabit a cinematic world informed by Jungian archetypal imagery, each holding sway over a particular city."[5] Argento said the idea for the film came to him after a trip through several European cities, including Lyon, Prague, and Turin.[6] He became fascinated by the "Magic Triangle", a point where the countries of France, Germany, and Switzerland meet; this is where Rudolf Steiner, a controversial social reformer and occultist, founded an anthroposophic community.[6] Commenting on witchcraft and the occult, Argento stated: "There's very little to joke about. It's something that exists."[6] The title and general concept of "The Three Mothers"—a concept Argento would expand upon in Inferno and Mother of Tears—came from De Quincey's essay, which was an uncredited inspiration for the film.[7] There is a section in the work entitled "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow".[8] The piece asserts that just as there are three Fates and three Graces, there are three Sorrows: "Mater Lacrymarum, Our Lady of Tears", "Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs", and "Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness".
Daria Nicolodi helped Argento write the screenplay for the film, which combined the occult themes that interested Argento with fairytales that were inspiring to Nicolodi, such as Bluebeard, Pinocchio, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.[6] Nicolodi also partially based her contributions to the screenplay on a personal story her grandmother had told her, in which her grandmother had gone to take a piano lesson at an unnamed academy where she believed she encountered black magic.[6] The encounter terrified her grandmother, prompting her to flee.[6] This story, however, was later said by Argento to have been fabricated.[9] Using Nicolodi's core ideas, Argento helped co-write the screenplay, which he chose to set at a dance academy in Freiburg im Breisgau, near the German borders with Switzerland and France.[6] The lead character of Suzy Bannion was based on Snow White.[6] Initially, the characters in the film were very young girls—around eight to ten years old—but this was altered when the film's producers were hesitant to make a film with all young actors.[6] Additionally, the final sequence of the film was based on a dream Nicolodi had while she was staying in Los Angeles.[6]
Casting[edit]
American actress Jessica Harper was cast in the lead role of American ballet dancer Suzy Bannion,[10] after attending an audition via the William Morris Agency.[6] Argento chose Harper based on her performance in Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (1974).[6] Upon being cast in the film, Harper watched Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) to better understand the director's style.[6] Harper turned down a role in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977) in order to appear in the film.[11]
Argento requested Italian actress Stefania Casini for the supporting role of Sara, a request which she obliged, having been an admirer of his films.[6] Daria Nicolodi had originally planned on playing the role of Sara, but was unable to due to an injury, and Casini was brought in at the last minute.[6] German actor Udo Kier was cast in the minor supporting role of Frank Mandel.[6]
Legacy[edit]
Three bands—the Norwegian thrash-metal band Susperia; a pioneering mid-1990s UK gothic rock band, Suspiria; and the witch-house project Mater Suspiria Vision—have named themselves after the film. Several albums have also used the title, including an album by gothic metal band Darkwell, an album by Darkwave band Miranda Sex Garden and Suspiria de Profundis by Die Form, which can also be regarded as inspired by Thomas De Quincey's work of the same title. The film's music has also been imitated and sampled by various artists, including Ministry in the track "Psalm 69" from their album Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs, Cage Kennylz on "Weather People" and Atmosphere on "Bird Sings Why the Caged I Know". The American death metal band Infester included a sample from the film in their song, "Chamber of Reunion", from their album To the Depths, In Degradation (1994). The Houston, Texas-based Two Star Symphony Orchestra included a track titled "Goblin Attack" on their 2004 CD Danse Macabre: Constant Companion that features a strings rendition of the Suspiria theme; the track's title also appears to be a reference to the band Goblin. The 69 Eyes have a song called "Suspiria Snow White" on their album Back in Blood (2009). In 1991, the California-based instrumental band Gargamel recorded a version of the Suspiria theme featuring dulcimer and tape manipulations amongst their covers of horror film soundtrack compositions.[50]
A section of the soundtrack cues "Markos", "Witch", and "Death Valzer" were incorporated into the Australian radiophonic work What's Rangoon to You is Grafton to Me, conceived and written by radio presenter and author Russell Guy, co-narrated by Guy and former ABC-TV newsreader James Dibble, and co-produced by Guy and Graham Wyatt. It was originally broadcast in 1978 on the ABC's "youth" radio station 2JJ aka Double Jay (the Sydney-based AM-band precursor to the current Triple J network).
In books by Simon R. Green, mentions are often made of a "Black Forest Dance Academy" in Germany, a place where witches and Satanists gather, a possible reference to Suspiria.
Suspiria is featured in the documentary film Terror in the Aisles (1984). In the comedy-drama film Juno (2007), Suspiria is considered by the title character to be the goriest film ever made, until she is shown The Wizard of Gore and changes her mind, saying it is actually gorier than Suspiria. The film is also mentioned in the episode "The Seminar" of The Office (season 7), Kirby Reed's horror film collection in the horror film Scream 4 (2011), and in Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Hotel where a character watches Suspiria on television.
In March 2020, a new score, featuring members of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard alongside other Melbourne musicians, was performed live with a screening of the film.[51]
Related works[edit]
Subsequent films[edit]
Suspiria is the first of a trilogy of films by Argento, referred to as "The Three Mothers".[52] The trilogy centers around three witches, or "Mothers of Sorrow" who unleash evil from three locations in the world.[53] In Suspiria, Helena Marcos is Mater Suspiriorum (lit. Latin: "Mother of Sighs") in Freiburg.[54] Argento's 1980 film Inferno focuses on Mater Tenebrarum (lit. Latin: "Mother of Darkness"), in New York City.[14] The final installment in the trilogy, The Mother of Tears (2007), focuses on Mater Lachrymarum (lit. Latin: "Mother of Tears") in Rome.[14]
Film scholar L. Andrew Cooper notes "Aesthetic experience is arguably the ultimate source of 'meaning' in all of Argento's films, but Suspiria and the other films of the Three Mothers trilogy...take their emphasis on aesthetics further by self-consciously connecting their irrational worlds to nineteenth-century romanticism and the aestheticism that grew out of it."[4]
Unfilmed remake[edit]
It was announced through MTV in 2008 that a remake of Suspiria was in production, to be directed by David Gordon Green, who directed films such as Undertow and Pineapple Express.[55] The announcement was met with hostility by some,[56] including Argento himself.[57] The film was to be produced by Italian production company First Sun.[58] In August 2008, it was reported that Natalie Portman and Annette Savitch's Handsome Charlie Films were set to produce the remake, and that Portman would play the lead role.[59] The project was also announced to be produced by Marco Morabito and Luca Guadagnino.[60] After a period of no news in which it was thought that the remake attempt had failed, Green said in August 2011 that he was still trying to remake the film.[56] It was announced on 15 May 2012 that actress Isabelle Fuhrman would be cast as the lead.[61] Later that year, however, the planned remake was put on hold. In January 2013, Green revealed that it might never happen due to legal issues.[62] In April 2014, Green admitted the remake was too expensive to make during the "found-footage boom", and thus the film was ultimately not made.[63]
In April 2015, an English-language television series based on the film—along with a series based on Sergio Corbucci's Django (1966)—was announced as being developed by Atlantique Productions and Cattleya. Both series were set to consist of twelve 50-minute long episodes, with the possibility of multiple seasons.[64][65][66][67][68]