BY SARAH BATY

This was the first horror movie that I actually liked! It was weird and witchy with a beautiful BEAUTIFUL aesthetic and I just dug itttt. We discussed how a good horror film makes you unable to avert your eyes which is something that I usually have no problem doing when watching horror films; however, I couldn’t look away from this film for a second because even the murders were pretty in a weird weird way.

In our reading titled Expressionist Use of Color Palette and Set Design, it discusses the aesthetic of the set and how the director, Dario Argento, used the set design to make the actresses appear smaller. It states that “the exaggerated ceiling-height and the vaulted doors of the interiors of the building constantly give the impression of dwarfing the actresses.” I noticed the high ceilings and the vaulted doors because they are the most obvious to see. To me it made everything seem big, daunting, and full of secrets. What I did not notice was the door handles. The door handles were placed higher than normal so it looks like it is told from a child’s point of view. This had to do with Argento’s original idea for the film. He wanted the set and story to be at a children’s school but after many arguments with his Italian distributor claiming that “children being chased through a school by evil witches” was highly inappropriate, they decided against the children’s school. By creating this kind of daunting and large type of set he was able to keep part of the original idea that he wanted. What I also found to be interesting was the big inspiration of nature and this appeal of symmetrical places. The interiors of the academy are “constantly punctuated by the mathematical alternation of both styles that rigorously identify the various areas and sometimes coexist within a single space.” The techniques that they adopted were to reproduce animal and natural shapes through architectural décor and to directly paint explicit or stylized anthropomorphic and organic features onto the wall.” The point of this was to create an ideal combination of artifice and nature.

In our other reading Dario Argento’s Suspiria, it discusses visual strategies used throughout the film. A strategy that includes the camera picking apart “architecture in ways that resonate with killers picking apart bodies.” A connection that I didn’t really think about. The murders were all so elaborate and really focused on the gruesomeness of it all but so was all the long lingering shots of the architecture. It is also mentioned that because of the stunning imagery used throughout the film Suspiria was appears again and again on critics lists of the most frightening films of all time. I think the reading puts its really well when it states that Suspiria “leaves the reality of specific places behind” creating a fairy-tale like reality that is both colorful and gothic at the same time.