Thomas Farrington, Artist in Residence @ UCA Rochester: Suspiria (1977)

Fig 1

Suspiria is a movie that is supposed to be less about the story and more about the visuals, giving us a feast for our eyes. Suzy, one of the first of many secondary characters introduced throughout the movie, studies ballet in Germany which is where our film takes place. We then see a young woman screaming and fleeing from the school and into the forest beyond.

After meeting up with her friend in her room upstairs, Suzy gazes into a nearby window, suspense building up before an anonymous arm shatters one of the panes, choking the poor girl as the other girl hammers against the door in an attempt to call for help and get inside. The hand impales Suzy again and again before hanging her from the ceiling. Then, as her friend enters the lobby, a rain of glass shards showers down upon her, severing her head into two. This introduction is testament to what is to come: bright sets, dreamy imagery and the redness of blood.

Our main character arrives at the Dance Academy and discovers that the students are disappearing one by one, murdered by a myserious killer that roams the academy. She eventually finds out that a clan of witches is responsible for these acts and torches the place to ashes. This may just be a simple plot, but that is not what the film is about. It is instead a great excuse to throw wonderously created sets and visuals at the audience one after the other. The director, Argento, is a master at suspense and nightmarish scenes that last on the screen for more time than what other film directors consider the maximum. For example, a blind pianist that works for the academy is attacked by his dog and in the following gore sequence, we get morbid close-ups of the chunks of his gizzard being ripped from the poor man's throat. A student tends to her hair in the evening as a wriggling maggot falls into into. She looks up to see masses upon masses of maggots infesting the ceiling. Another sequence is where another student, fleeing for her life from the murderer, tumbles into an abstract pit of barbed wire. There is no camera movement and it sits still, focused souly on the student as she screams and writhes further down into the pit.

Fig 2

Then there is also the use of bright colors throughout the movie, mostly primary colors. The film's sequences are illuminated and lavished with reds, blues, greens and yellows which add to the film's dream-like imagery.

Fig 3

Argento's techniques, despite being somewhat abstract, make his gorish scenes much more appearing to look at than it should be within film. He's not the everyday director as 'SM' from the Time Out London Film Guide says in his brief review of the film, stating that “Thunderstorms and extraordinarily grotesque murders pile up as Argento happily abandons plot mechanics to provide a bravura display of his technical skill.” (SM, <No date avaliable>) He states that one doesn't need to follow the default film plot of creating a strict, consistent story that focuses less on art than it does on building the plot. (Fig3) True, such films like Suspiria, if done right, can be more of an artistically influenced experience than a feature film.

Fig 4

The sets created for this film are very artificial and stand out above the realm of reality, using stark, florescent colors to make a surreal, visual and definable film, which seem to be a lot more recognizable than the gore itself.(Fig4)(Fig5), summarized by Anton Bitel of LittleWhiteLies.co.uk, mentioning that “Sure enough, this is a film that entraps the viewer in baroque layerings of noise, colour and texture.”. Bitel mentions that set design can also be more important than the rest of the movie if done right, which is correct for such films as Suspiria, The Labrynth (1986) and even the recent Avatar (2009).

Fig 5