“Bad luck isn’t brought by broken mirrors, but by broken minds.”
SUSPIRIA is one of the most beautiful movies ever made and because of that, too often gets derided by horror fans as being totally style over substance, along with most of director Dario Argento’s career, and honestly Italian horror as a whole. I think many people just take it at face value that the visuals are important and the story and characters are not, which is simply not true. Storytelling that is heightened, that is not “real” or “grounded” is still storytelling and it still conveys the same things, just in different ways. In the case of SUSPIRIA though, and it’s one of my absolute favorite things about it, the filmmaking techniques and the story are never separate, at all. Cinematography, editing, score, these things are always a part of the storytelling process and all work in tandem but in SUSPIRIA that’s so much more literal than most movies.
The score and cinematography feel like a physical presence, a tangible thing within each scene, the characters, performances and choices are just as heightened and exaggerated as the camerawork and colors. My favorite example of this, maybe one of my favorite choices in any movie, comes right at the beginning. As our heroine Suzy is walking through the airport, the haunting score is heard every time the automated doors open and cuts off every time they close. As if the score is *in* the storm, waiting for her just outside. In the airport, she’s safe, but every step brings her closer to that sense of doom, and as soon as she steps outside, the score is booming all around her, wrapping her up to take her away as she begins her nightmarish journey.
The plot revolves around a German ballet school that is actually home to a coven of witches. The fact that it's an Italian movie about an American girl at a German school gives it such a unique flavor, it feels almost totally out of time and place, just its own little world. Suzy and other students embark on a mystery to uncover the secrets of the school with an exaggerated, child-like sense of wonder, partly because Argento initially intended on the characters being children before realizing that wouldn’t gel with the movie’s graphic violence. Nonetheless, SUSPIRIA is in many ways a fairy tale, and some of its bright, technicolor aesthetic was inspired by animated classics like SNOW WHITE. The beauty of the movie is so much more than its use of overwhelming colors, too. It’s in every frame, it’s the production design and location scouting just as much as the vibrant Kool-Aid reds and Windex blues. SUSPIRIA overwhelms the senses. It’s an experience totally unique to itself and one of which I never tire.