The curi­ous case of the Sus­piria smile

Count­less hor­ror movies end with the Final Girl left insen­si­ble after a ter­ri­fy­ing ordeal. For she has run the gaunt­let of the cru­el, the strange, the per­verse, some­times the super­nat­ur­al and always the trans­gres­sive. In a film’s clos­ing moments, we – and they – reg­is­ter and acknowl­edge that nerves have been shred­ded, bod­ies bruised and blood­ied and minds scarred for a life­time. Yet Dario Argento’s Sus­piria, some­what sur­pris­ing­ly, does not toe the genre line.

No one is ever going to claim the Ital­ian direc­tor of styl­ish and pop­u­lar gial­li thrillers is a fem­i­nist. In his rad­i­cal­ly envis­aged goth­ic fan­ta­sia, Suzy Ban­nion (Jes­si­ca Harp­er, whose big, expres­sive eyes recall silent icon Lil­lian Gish) flees from a burn­ing dance acad­e­my hav­ing defeat­ed a coven of evil witch­es. Instead of scream­ing at the top of her lungs in the style of The Texas Chain Saw Mas­sacre​’s Sal­ly Hard­esty, she momen­tar­i­ly appears bewil­dered and then does some­thing which feels pro­found yet con­tra­dic­to­ry to the iron­clad tenets of hor­ror cin­e­ma: Suzy smiles.

It isn’t a Nor­man Bates ​‘I’m mad, me’ grin or a sur­prise twist-end­ing smirk, sug­gest­ing Suzy has become pos­sessed by the spir­it of a dead witch. It’s the smile of some­body feel­ing a sense of ela­tion, com­pa­ra­ble per­haps to a nar­cot­ic that’s sud­den­ly tak­en hold. She even licks her lips and is seen tak­ing tac­tile delight in being soaked to the bone by a tor­ren­tial downpour.

Sus­piria marked a major depar­ture for Argen­to. It set­tles on an unam­bigu­ous super­nat­ur­al premise which sees witch­es run­ning a Ger­man dance school. Ele­ments of gial­lo are thrown in for good mea­sure, while an exclu­sive­ly female-led cast (men are ban­ished to small sup­port­ing roles) is anoth­er notable rar­i­ty in the director’s back cat­a­logue, as is the involve­ment of a female co-writer (Daria Nicolo­di). The main source of inspi­ra­tion for Suzy Ban­nion and the film’s febrile colour palette might sur­prise too: Walt Disney’s 1937 pio­neer­ing fea­ture-length ani­ma­tion, Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs. Both used a three-strip Tech­ni­col­or dye imbi­bi­tion process to pro­duce its dreamy pri­ma­ry colours.

In the past, Sus­piria has been dis­missed as inco­her­ent and non­sen­si­cal, but that’s a grave mis­un­der­stand­ing, tan­ta­mount to an insult. Argen­to craft­ed what today would be con­sid­ered (like Luca Guadagnino’s forth­com­ing remake) ​‘ele­vat­ed hor­ror’. A nar­ra­tive of fairy tale sim­plic­i­ty is vio­lent­ly dis­rupt­ed by dream log­ic, gory inter­ludes and eardrum-shat­ter­ing blasts of music. All of it designed to offer an unfor­get­tably arty and bom­bas­tic rush of colour and sound. Rev­el­ling in arti­fice through­out, Argen­to uses counter-cin­e­ma tech­niques for total sen­so­ry impact.

This bold tac­tic is there right from the very begin­ning, when Suzy exits Freiburg Air­port. As with the guile­less estate agent Hut­ter walk­ing over the bridge into the land of vam­pires in 1922’s Nos­fer­atu, a Sym­pho­ny of Hor­ror, Suzy cross­es a secret bor­der between real­i­ties. Both scenes are about char­ac­ters unwit­ting­ly cross­ing thresh­olds. Upon see­ing Murnau’s icon­ic silent pic­ture, sur­re­al­ist writer André Bre­ton swooned at the inter-title he remem­bered (incor­rect­ly) as, ​“And when he crossed the bridge, the phan­toms came to meet him.” Sus­piria swapped an old wood­en bridge for auto­mat­ic doors, but the sym­bol­ism is the same. When Suzy left the arrivals ter­mi­nal, the witch­es came to meet her.

Per­vad­ing unre­al­i­ty is the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of Sus­piria and explains why none of the cast acts real­is­ti­cal­ly at any giv­en moment. The lead’s curios­i­ty, moments of con­fu­sion, hor­ror and fear, for exam­ple, are con­sis­tent with dream­like reac­tions. And as in a dream, we are drawn to dan­ger rather than repelled. Add to the aes­thet­ic arse­nal: an intro­duc­to­ry nar­ra­tion; a boom­ing, cacoph­o­nous score made up of litur­gi­cal chants; pound­ing drums; nursey rhyme melodies; shrieks played at rock con­cert vol­ume; unnat­ur­al light­ing effects and setups; char­ac­ters who exist pure­ly as grue­some set-piece fod­der and a hero­ine who sticks her nose into witchy busi­ness and acci­den­tal­ly van­quish­es evil in a man­ner which feels almost apologetic.

Suzy is akin to Alice (of Won­der­land fame) or Snow White say­ing sor­ry for mis­un­der­stand­ing a mat­ter of eti­quette. ​“Curi­ous and curi­ouser,” is Suzy’s atti­tude to strange goings-on. To top it all off, Argen­to ends the cin­e­mat­ic danse macabre with an on-screen mes­sage proud­ly boast­ing: ​“Avete vis­to Sus­piria” (“You have been watch­ing Suspiria”).

Hav­ing stopped Mater Sus­piri­o­rum, the saga ends on a lit­er­al­ly explo­sive note. The school begins to crum­ble and the coven’s malef­ic hold and influ­ence has been lift­ed. A fierce wind blows, fire guts the build­ing, rooms quake, objects crash. Suzy moves through it all as if deliv­er­ing an avant-garde per­for­mance piece, her body poet­i­cal­ly respond­ing to the may­hem. Step­ping out into the wild night, a momen­tary wince and sign of dis­tress trans­forms into a look of relief. But what’s most vital is that smile. It tells us the young girl will shake off the whole pecu­liar saga as noth­ing more than a bad dream. Suzy’s going to be all right.