The sur­re­al, sin­gu­lar genius of Dario Argento’s Suspiria

Sus­piria begins with an arrival, and an entrance. Hop­ing to per­fect her bal­let stud­ies at Europe’s most famous Dance Acad­e­my, Amer­i­can Suzy Ban­nion (Jes­si­ca Harp­er) has just land­ed at the air­port in Freiburg, Ger­many on a wet and windy night. As she approach­es the glass auto­mat­ic doors lead­ing out­side, the film repeat­ed­ly switch­es between a medi­um shot track­ing Suzy’s walk through the airport’s lob­by (accom­pa­nied only by the airport’s nat­u­ral­is­tic noise), and her own POV shot of the auto­mat­ic doors ahead (accom­pa­nied by the seduc­tive tin­kling of Goblin’s score).

Here, through the manip­u­la­tion of sound alone, direc­tor Dario Argen­to con­jures both the nor­mal­i­ty that Suzy is leav­ing behind, and the enchant­i­ng fairy tale world beyond that she is about to enter. As she pass­es through, there is a dis­con­cert­ing and dis­ori­ent­ing cut to the doors’ elec­tric mech­a­nism oper­at­ing as they open and close again – and Suzy is out, in the harsh ele­ments, soaked and alien­at­ed and strug­gling to hail a taxi. From this point on, Goblin’s wail­ing, stri­dent prog rock score – all susurra­tions and strums and pound­ing rhythms, like noth­ing ever heard before in a hor­ror film – becomes the near ever-present sound­track to Suzy’s nerve-shat­ter­ing bewitch­ment. This is a film whose over­whelm­ing effect can only tru­ly be expe­ri­enced with the vol­ume turned way up.

In fact Sus­piria is a sto­ry not of one out­sider in Freiburg, but of two. The oth­er is Hele­na Markos (an uncred­it­ed Lela Svas­ta), a Greek migrant who came to Ger­many under a cloud at the turn of the cen­tu­ry, con­struct­ing the Tanz Akademie as a home for her­self and her extend­ed fam­i­ly, and who, despite being pre­sumed dead, has ever since been cor­rupt­ing the city, step by step, in her own vicious (if con­cealed) image. Seen flee­ing the Acad­e­my just as Suzy arrives, Pat Hin­gle (Eva Axén) is only the lat­est stu­dent to try escap­ing Markos’ sin­is­ter clutches.

But as the Esch­er prints on the walls of the Art Deco apart­ment where Pat seeks refuge sug­gest, here all of Freiburg is a dead­ly labyrinth of illu­sions. Pat suf­fers a hor­rif­ic death at the hands of an irra­tional, demon­ic force, and now Suzy, effec­tive­ly Pat’s replace­ment at the school, seems des­tined to meet with the same wicked fate – but the curi­ous, wil­ful young woman is deter­mined to unrav­el what is going on at the Acad­e­my, and to con­front and expose what can­not be explained or even seen.

Argento’s gial­li often involved strange slices of pseu­do­science (like the fac­toid from 1971’s Four Flies on Grey Vel­vet that the human eye retains an imprint of the last thing it saw before its host died), but Sus­piria was his first for­ay into the full-blown super­nat­ur­al. Lit by DoP Luciano Tovoli in gar­ish reds, blues, greens and yel­lows, the film cre­ates a world of queasy arti­fice that induces some­thing like a hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry synaes­the­sia in the view­er, to match Suzy’s own increas­ing sense of nau­sea and entrap­ment. The Acad­e­my is a place of sick­ness and rot, caus­ing a mys­te­ri­ous ill­ness in Suzy, and at one point even becom­ing infest­ed with maggots.

It’s also a death­trap, and a maze, with hid­den inte­ri­ors and dead­ly spaces – and the body­count con­tin­ues to rise, made of any­one who defies the will of instruc­tors Miss Tan­ner (Ali­da Val­li) and Madame Blanc (Joan Ben­nett). Every­thing draws Suzy clos­er to Markos, as the stu­dent, like some folk­loric detec­tive, fol­lows a series of absurd nar­ra­tive bread­crumbs to the elu­sive direc­tress’ loca­tion. In that secret room, wiz­ened evil will wres­tle with inno­cent youth, and fairy tale log­ic will pre­vail, even as Suzy acci­den­tal­ly over­turns and breaks an orna­men­tal glass pea­cock in a sym­bol­ic act ulti­mate­ly sig­nalling Argento’s depar­ture from the method­ol­o­gy of his ear­li­er crime films (his 1970 direc­to­r­i­al debut was called The Bird With The Crys­tal Plumage).

Sus­piria has been very influ­en­tial, inspir­ing two direct sequels (Infer­no in 1980 and Moth­er of Tears in 2007) and many a witchy fan­ta­sy or tale of bal­let­ic break­down from oth­er direc­tors. It has even spawned a long-ges­tat­ing remake due for release in 2018. Yet it is also, para­dox­i­cal­ly, an inim­itable sin­gu­lar­i­ty – a mes­meris­ing, if con­found­ing, danse macabre that treads that strange ter­rain between the psy­cho­log­i­cal and the mag­i­cal. It cer­tain­ly marked the arrival of Argen­to as a mas­ter not just of the stylised mur­der set-piece (for he had already achieved that with his ear­li­er, more con­ven­tion­al gial­li), but also of the sen­su­al and the sur­re­al. Sus­piria is a baroque piece of eso­teric expres­sion­ism that you enter – and exit – with­out under­stand­ing so much as feeling.

Sus­piria is released by Cult­Films on dual-for­mat spe­cial edi­tion Blu/​DVD in a 4K restora­tion on 4 December.