On Loca­tion: The dance acad­e­my from Dario Argento’s Suspiria

It is per­haps sur­pris­ing to find that one of the most intim­i­dat­ing build­ings in 1970s hor­ror cin­e­ma is a Ger­man dance school. The build­ing in ques­tion is a set built for Dario Argento’s chill­ing yet vibrant 1977 film, Sus­piria, and is eas­i­ly one of the director’s most allur­ing and hyp­not­ic of cin­e­mat­ic spaces.

With its lav­ish gold­en columns and bright pink walls, it’s even more aston­ish­ing how such daz­zling, even camp, archi­tec­ture becomes so omi­nous a pres­ence. The vis­it to the fic­tion­al build­ing of the film is obvi­ous­ly impos­si­ble. Yet Argen­to took inspi­ra­tion from a gen­uine his­toric build­ing in the real town of Freiburg where the film is set, and so the acad­e­my in ques­tion has, in some sense, a ghost­ly real-life twin.

Sus­piria fol­lows Amer­i­can bal­let dancer-in-train­ing, Suzy Ban­nion (Jes­si­ca Harp­er), who is sent by her par­ents to a pri­vate dance school, the Tanz Dance Acad­e­my in Ger­many. From the moment she arrives at Munich Air­port, strange events begin to occur. Mag­gots drop from the ceil­ings, stu­dents are found vio­lent­ly mur­dered, and the direc­tor of the acad­e­my goes mys­te­ri­ous­ly unseen. On talk­ing to the oth­er girls, it is clear to Suzy that some­thing is awry at the school and she fol­lows her curios­i­ty in search of the links between the acad­e­my and the local folk leg­end that sug­gests it was found­ed by a malev­o­lent Greek witch, Hele­na Markos.

With Argen­to being one of horror’s great styl­ists, it’s unsur­pris­ing to find his use of loca­tions equal­ly as grand. For much of the film, the real loca­tions are used to give ground­ing for the main school, as if its malig­nant pres­ence black­ens and infects every­where around it. Be it Munich Air­port where we first meet Suzy, or the fore­bod­ing Königsplatz where we see the blind pianist Daniel (Flavio Buc­ci) meet an untime­ly end, every­where is taint­ed by the pres­ence of this acad­e­my. The sense of dread is there in the loca­tions from the off but is real­ly part of an effec­tive con­jur­ing trick; cre­at­ing a world around the school using real loca­tions to hide the fact that the school itself is in fact a set.

Argen­to achieves a sense of strange authen­tic­i­ty in cre­at­ing his lav­ish dance acad­e­my thanks to the gen­uine build­ing he bor­rowed from. Though not housed in the mid­dle of a bleak for­est as sug­gest­ed in the var­i­ous jour­neys of the film, Argen­to and his pro­duc­tion design­er, Giuseppe Bas­san, were inspired by one of Freiburg’s most famous build­ings: the Haus Zum Wal­fish or Whale House.

Sat in the cen­tre of the uni­ver­si­ty town, the house in its ear­li­est form was built in the first quar­ter of the 1500s, and the restored build­ing is in parts even more lav­ish and stylised than Argento’s recre­ation of it. Though now hous­ing part of a muse­um and a bank, the build­ing is most famous for being the brief res­i­dence of not­ed clas­si­cal and the­o­log­i­cal schol­ar, Desiderius Eras­mus. The plaque seen on the out­side of the real build­ing cel­e­brat­ing this link is mis­chie­vous­ly recre­at­ed by Argen­to for his set, know­ing the irony of hav­ing an occult con­spir­a­cy housed in the refuge of one of Christianity’s most not­ed humanists.

On my vis­it, it was dif­fi­cult to walk around Freiburg with­out the famous sound­track by Gob­lin play­ing over and over again in my mind. Though far from the atmos­phere of the film, with the sur­round­ing Black For­est being more pic­turesque than unnerv­ing, it was impos­si­ble to shake the music and its eerie melodies. Wan­der­ing through the Old Town quar­ter and its nar­row cob­bled streets, the set of build­ings of which the Whale House is part of came into view.

The main entrance recre­at­ed by Argen­to is tucked away in Franziskan­er­straße and was suit­ably qui­et. The bikes of stu­dents ran along the front whilst some­one from the bank sat with a sand­wich by the steps. See­ing the build­ing in real life shows how bril­liant Argento’s fac­sim­i­le real­ly is though it was telling from wan­der­ing around the back and see­ing an even more extrav­a­gant entrance that the direc­tor took what he need­ed from the build­ing and noth­ing more.

If not for the mis­plac­ing of the Eras­mus plaque in putting it too close to the door­way, Sus­piria could almost get away with claim­ing to have real­ly filmed the Whale House. With the vis­it over, I sat in a café just around the cor­ner, com­par­ing the Polaroid to pic­tures I had of the film set, still qui­et­ly debat­ing whether some­thing else had been cap­tured in recre­at­ing the build­ing. Argento’s whole cin­e­mat­ic project plays with the bal­ance between gar­ish, kitsch style and an unset­tling sense of the real behind the pulp.

In his ear­li­er gial­lo films, this is a clear­er rela­tion­ship as he was always using real loca­tions and large­ly earth­ly nar­ra­tives of mur­der. But there’s some­thing strange about the inspi­ra­tion in choos­ing this build­ing and design, some­thing that makes Sus­piria far more effec­tive; as if he uncon­scious­ly tapped into the poten­tial of the gen­uine­ly oth­er­world­ly – per­haps even the occult – and unknow­ing­ly recre­at­ed and pre­served it for future pur­pos­es unknown.

With thanks to Alexan­dra Heller-Nicholas.