Suspiria (1977)

I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into when I started watching Suspiria. I am not very familiar with the Italian genre of Giallo films or with the work of the director Dario Argento so this was going to be a double first for me!

Suspiria opens with a young woman arriving at an airport. It’s chucking it down with rain outside and for some reason there’s no taxis waiting at the taxi rank — a bit odd for an airport even at that late hour. And that serves as the first clue that perhaps something isn’t quite right.

The woman finally gets a taxi from the most untalkative driver ever to have existed and after a bit of miscommunication is taken to her destination, the prestigious Tanz Akademie, a ballet school in Freiburg, West Germany. As the taxi pulls up a woman is fleeing the blood-red building, slamming the door behind her.

The woman gets out of the taxi and asks him to wait and she goes to the door intercom and says that her name is Suzy and she’s expected but a disembodied voice tells her they’ve never heard of her and she needs to leave. Confused, Suzy gets back into the taxi and they drive away, seeing the woman who fled the Academy running wildly though the woods.

The fleeing woman, Pat, makes it to a friends house. She’s clearly rattled and is happy she’s left the Academy but we don’t know why. Going to the bathroom to clean herself up from her rainy run through the woods, she’s distracted by something at the window. Before she knows what’s happening she’s being dragged through the window to the apartment’s roof.

Whatever or whoever it is that grabbed Pat doesn’t want her speaking about her time at the Academy and throws her through a decorative window topping the apartment’s entrance hall, killing her friend the in the process with the falling glass and metal work — it’s a two for one!

The following morning Suzy returns to Tanz Akademie where she’s welcomed by the main teacher, Miss Tanner, and also introduced to the Vice-Director Madame Blanc who used to be a famous dancer (although looking at her, I can’t see it myself).

Madame Blanc welcomes Suzy and apologises for the confusion the night before and tells her that as her room isn’t ready yet she’s to stay with a third year student called Olga.

Madame Blanc was in the middle of talking to the police and explaining that Pat had been dismissed from the Academy the day before due to bad behaviour. Seeing this, Suzy pipes up and says that she saw someone fitting Pat’s description leaving the Academy the night before which seems to please Madame Blanc a great deal.

The following day, Suzy is attending a class — well, I say it’s a class but Miss Tanner outright says she’s not there to teach anyone to dance as they should already know how to do that so what’s she’s there for I don’t know! During the class, Suzy starts to feel weak and woozy and collapses, waking later to find that she’s been moved to a room in the Academy and won’t be staying with Olga any more (which is probably a good thing as Olga’s a bit of a bitch).

While they don’t know exactly why Suzy fainted and had a nose bleed, the doctor seems to think that she was out of practice dancing and this caused a haemorrhage which then made her faint. His solution is a glass of wine with dinner each night — now, that’s the kind of medicine I can get behind!

Strange things start to happen in the Academy — maggots fall from the ceiling, the piano teacher’s seeing eye dog attacks Madame Blanc’s nephew, teachers who claim they are leaving the premises at night can be heard roaming around the halls and Suzy’s friend Sara leaves without telling anyone.

What is going on behind the illustrious doors of the Tanz Akademie? Did Sara discover something that made her leave, or was she silenced? And what will happen to Suzy when she’s left alone within the Tanz Akademie’s walls?

Not Suspensful, Just Sus

🎃Warning! Spoilers for Suspiria ahead!🩰

As I said before, I am not really familiar with Dario Argento’s work or the Giallo genre so I wasn’t sure what to expect, especially when what I have read about Argento and Suspiria lead me to believe that this was supposed to be some kind of cinematic masterpiece.

And while this is an interesting film, and it looks good, it’s lacking in so much substance that I can’t in any way call it a “masterpiece”.

Dario Argento was also the writer (along with Daria Nicolodi and 19th century poet Thomas De Quincey) and I think the problem of the writer knowing the work too well affects how the story is translated to the screen. The plot is paper thin: Girl goes to creepy school, creepy things happen to girl, girl uncovers sinister plot, girl escapes.

We don’t really get to know any of the characters enough to care about them: why is Suzy going to Tanz Akademie over other schools? Is it better, did she like it more? Did she just want to get out of America? What credentials does Tanz Akademie have? Have they sent anyone to the Royal Ballet or similar? Why trust Miss Tanner who doesn’t want to teach people to dance despite being at a school that teaches dancing? Who was Pat? How did she find out what she knows? Why did she trust Sara? Why did Pat’s notes only just get stolen?

These are minor annoyances that could have easily been covered with a couple of lines of dialogue but then you have the bigger question: What really was going on at the Academy and how was Suzy involved in it?

I like films that get you to ask questions and force you to examine yourself — The Substance and Midsommar are great examples of this that I’ve watched recently — but Suspiria doesn’t allow you to ask anything because its story is so non-existent there is nothing there to question.

Does Suzy have some magical powers that we don’t know about and that’s why she’s been drawn to the Academy? There was a throwaway comment about Suzy’s Aunt being a “patron of the arts” so was she involved with the Academy/Coven in some way in the past? How was Madame Black, the Greek witch that founded Tanz Akademie, kept alive? Was it the death of the girls? Was it just magic? Were the girls in the Academy involved at all or was it just the staff — and if so how did that work as there wasn’t enough to form a proper coven of 13!

Nothing is mentioned, it’s all ignored and I don’t know why — unless it’s because Argento doesn’t know himself which I think is the likeliest answer.

Style Not Substance

This film is the epitome of style over substance.

The visuals are gorgeous with corridors looking like the interior of a cathedral, arches adorning the ceilings and upper walls.

Triangles are everywhere within the first murder scene. A lot of them were upside down and I wondered if that was imagery to show the corruption of the Holy Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Ghost), we also had a lot of diamonds which could be seen as 2 triangles together.

The triangle motif was explained through the link to Thomas De Quincey who wrote the poem Levana And Our Ladies Of Sorrow which in itself is a trinity with the work featuring three Mothers of Sorrow: Our Lady of Tears, Our Lady of Sighs and Our Lady of Darkness which adds a dual meaning to the triangles and further distorts the Holy Trinity iconography.

But this trinity, whether holy or corrupted, isn’t really followed up on. There are hints of it when we see the body of Sara: she’s pinned to a board with large nails through her wrists which are reminiscent of the wounds Jesus received on the cross, but again there is no overt Christian reference to offset any satanic overtones the move pretends to have.

Colour is also used to great effect with reds, blues, greens and golds everywhere but again this seems to be a stylistic choice rather than the colours having any direct meaning.

In one scene the lighting colours swap from green to red to green and back to normal yellow lighting for no real reason. Red isn’t tied to an emotion or an action, it’s just used, or should that be overused?

At the start of the film we see that the Academy building is blood red, there’s red all over the apartment Pat visits but there’s no real deeper meaning in this. Red doesn’t mean death — Suzy is bathed in a red glow several times and she survives the film as the final girl.

The same is true with gold décor: the main steps of the academy’s interior are blue and gold, the apartment where Pat escapes to is covered in gold and the lair of Madame Black has black walls with gold flowers but the gold doesn’t mean anything. It’s not there to represent indulgence, power or riches, it’s just there because it looks nice.

Maybe it’s my background that made me think a film of this nature should have more meaning in the colour choices of the lighting and décor — I mean a lot of films do — and either I didn’t understand what the undertones where, I missed it or it truly meant nothing.

All-in-all I was left rather disappointed by Suspiria, it had always been placed on lists of horror films that were most influential that you just had to see. And now I am wondering why it makes those lists in the first place. It’s light on kills, light on plot, light on suspense and light on the supernatural and I can think of much worthier films of the 1970s that are routinely ignored on these lists in favour of Suspiria.

What do you think? Have I missed the point of the film or is it really as shallow as it appeared to me? Let me know in the comments below.

Watch Suspiria if you want to watch a horror film without the horror, or if you just want to gaze at some pretty colours on screen.

Where to Watch:

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