Suspiria

SUSPIRIA                   A-                   

Italy  (98 mi)  1977  ‘Scope  d:  Dario Argento 

The Only Thing More Terrifying Than The Last 12 Minutes Of This Film Are The First 92.    —poster tagline    

One of the Granddaddy’s of horror films, largely due to the spectacular effects, where this is one of the most outstanding uses of color of any film ever made, using the three-strip Technicolor process (already obsolete at the time of shooting), where every single shot is literally bathed in the sensuous beauty of Technicolor, always accentuating the eye-popping visual design of the film, shot by cinematographer Luciano Tovoli.  Using something of a barebones story, the film is instead prone to extreme exaggeration, featuring spectacular murder sequences, where much of the film plays out like a visit to a mad funhouse, where behind each door is another frightful experience designed to produce shocking horrors, each one more astonishing than the last.  Using a repeating musical theme composed by Argento along with the band “Goblin,” this has a familiarity with John Carpenter’s creepy and hypnotic electronic score in HALLOWEEN (1978) released the following year, where you get a pervasive sense of foreboding dread just from the opening sequence, Suspiria (1977) Very scary first 15 minutes!!! YouTube in HD (15:12), which is a breathtaking lead-in to this nightmarish world drenched in brilliant colors, a master class of filmmaking technique taking place on fabulous sets, including the initial murder sequence starting at about the 9:30 mark.  The spookiness of the taxi cab ride may as well be an arrival to Transylvania, instead it’s Jessica Harper as Susy arriving in Germany to study at a prestigious dance academy, featuring an extraordinary sound design throughout, but also horribly amateurish dubbing and hysterical overacting.  In a sudden shift of narrative, a frightened woman, Eva Axén, flees the school in a panic, finding safe refuge in the apartment of a friend, only to be murdered by an unseen force in the middle of the night, two white eyes staring from out of the dark, where some may confuse this character with Susy, as both are soaked by the rain.  Argento, in something out of the Werner Herzog handbook for making movies, supposedly played the musical soundtrack at full blast on the set to force the actors into an unnatural sense of powerlessness to circumstances beyond their control, perhaps best expressed in this weirdly ominous sequence of Susy simply walking down the corridor of the new dance academy, MOVIE : SUSPIRIA [1977] - YouTube (1:18).    

Literally nothing can prepare the viewer for the assault on the senses that Argento throws at you, feeling as if you’re stuck in the hypnotic intrigue of a nightmare you can’t escape, captivated by a relentlessly horrifying, fear-inducing experience where you’re continually drawn deeper and deeper into this cavernous abyss, where you find yourself alone in a dark and hallucinogenic fever dream with an evil force on the loose.  Even before her entrance to the academy, all is not right, as things are strangely out of whack, where Susy is seen as a young, wide-eyed innocent lured into the mysterious lair of dark and hidden forces which have their own peculiar designs.  The school is run by Joan Bennett (her final screen appearance), a former film noir femme fatale in Fritz Lang’s SCARLET STREET (1945), as the seemingly sophisticated and ultra polite Madame Blanc, while the harsh taskmasker and disciplinarian is Miss Tanner, none other than Alida Valli from THE THIRD MAN (1949), both familiar faces that add character and and a kind of camp personality to the overall rich décor of what appears to be a witch’s coven, something along the lines of ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968), where we get a clue when the doctor treats the young ballet dancer’s blood instead of any illness, recommending a glass of red wine every night, which has the effect of inducing sleepiness, leaving her helplessly drugged each night.  Her roommate is Sara, Stefania Casini, best friends with the girl killed earlier, who suspects foul play but has little to go on.  When a shower of maggots falls from the ceiling, not to mention a bat attack, and the mysterious death of a blind pianist, mauled by his seeing-eye dog, you’d think this ought to provide sufficient warning to one and all, but no one leaves or turns to the police.  As dark fates continue to befall several more individuals, Susy stupefyingly remains on the premises, remaining drugged and clueless to the source of evil.  There’s even a Susy and Sara swimming pool sequence with the eerie tone of DIABOLIQUE (1955), where in the calmness of the still water, the atmospheric presence of a disturbing force is everpresent, which eventually leads to her roomate’s gruesome demise, another spooky sequence of slasher horror Suspiria's best scene - YouTube in HD (3:35) that is quickly covered up by the next morning.    

When Sara supposedly disappears, according to school officials, packing and leaving without a word early the next morning, Susy contacts one of her friends, a young, cherubic faced Udo Kier who plays Sara’s former psychiatrist.  They discuss the possibility of witchcraft, as if this is the message Sara was trying to send her from the grave, but Udo offers the standard psychobabble mantra, “Bad luck isn’t brought by broken mirrors, but by broken minds.”  However one of his colleagues offers keen insight by suggesting witches have an insurmountable desire to accumulate power, where all the minions of the coven collectively offer their knowledge to a single leader who rules over them all, amassing supernatural powers that can literally alter reality.  Most of this narrative information is for the audience’s behalf to help them find their way through this dizzying weirdness, as the director only accelerates the relentless slasher assault with terrifyingly creepy, wall to wall music that continually sounds like glass shattering.  Argento really is a master of the tracking shot, as this is his chosen method to take us slowly on a dreamlike journey into a strange new world, becoming something of a haunted house movie, where characters are forever exploring the remote interiors of the building at their own peril, including Susy who finally throws out the wine and thinks she’s on to something.  The slow pan of the camera through the hallways literally becomes her hesitant, but curiously fearful perspective as she attempts to trace the source of evil, following her down corridors that are suddenly saturated in a torrent of red, continuing through hidden doors into strange, mysterious rooms, all with a strikingly beautiful decorative design, accompanied by the sound of whispered shrieks on the soundtrack, past two Russian fat ladies who menacingly stand guard to their eerie, secret world, seen in the kitchen giggling hilariously while they chop meat.  As Susy climbs deeper into the unknown, with the mind-altering music weighing upon every anticipated thought, the suspense by itself is hair-raising, but she continues to wander into the mysterious lair of a Hellish underground, a place where the living and the dead coincide, where we’ve already seen what can happen to her helpless friend Sara.  Argento’s slowly building sense of dread is met with simply extraordinary Art Deco splendor, using lush visual effects to create an unsurpassed boldness that literally redefines the genre through such a brilliantly extravagant, heavily stylized art design, where the frightening onslaught of terror onscreen becomes a uniquely individualized film experience. 

The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la Peur)

THE WAGES OF FEAR (Le Salaire de la Peur)          B+                  

France  Italy  (131 mi)  1953    French restoration (156 mi)  Director’s Cut (148 mi)   

d:  Henri-Georges Clouzot 

In the manner of GREED (1924) or THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948), this is a film that pits men against their most primal instincts, themselves, pitiless victims who are tragically unable to control their baser instincts, set against a larger canvas of enveloping darkness that is all but waiting to envelop them—capitalism.  Like an entryway to Hell, the film opens in a godforsaken, backwater town in the middle of nowhere, supposedly somewhere in South America, a place one could legitimately call the end of the road, filled with penniless, out-of-work men, mostly European exiles with expired or non-existing visa’s lining the streets desperate for money and a ticket out of there, instead sitting on their hands in a kind of involuntary purgatory of the down and out, a way station where there’s no telling how long they’ve been stuck there like prisoners.  Set in two parts, where the initial scenes have the claustrophobic feel of men continually getting on each other’s nerves, a hopeless and monotonous life where day after day nothing ever changes, where perhaps the only consolation is the pretty barmaid, played of course, by the director’s wife Véra Clouzot (actually born in Brazil), the object of every man’s desires, yet continually mistreated by the sleazy bar owner who treats her like property and Mario (Yves Montand), who she actually cares for.  When a white-suited big shot from Paris arrives into town, Mr. Jo (Charles Varnel, penniless like the rest of them), milking it for all it’s worth, as yet to be exposed as a fraud, he strikes up a friendship with Mario, as they are both French con men at heart.     

What transpires next is the kicker, as a seedy representative from an American oil company arrives with armed guards and is looking to hire experienced truck drivers for a delicate mission hauling 200 gallons of highly explosive nitroglycerin over 300 miles of rocky, mountainous terrain.  It seems a handful of men have already died and nearly a dozen more injured in a massive oil rig fire, a little known fact the company wants kept secret to avoid a public relations disaster.  More to the point, a.) the oil company has trucks but no shock absorbers or safety equipment, b.) nitroglycerin is highly unstable and explodes if shaken or spilled, but c.) is needed to put out the oil rig fire, as a carefully induced explosion can suck the oxygen out of the fire.  Oh, and the company is willing to pay $2000 to any man who can deliver the goods without getting blown to bits.  Despite being a suicidal mission, every man in town lines up for the job and are angry about being turned away.  The company hires four drivers for two trucks, a Corsican (Yves Montand), a Parisian (Charles Vanel), a German (Peter Van Eyck) and an Italian (Folco Lolli), where those turned away are angry, knowing this is their only ticket out of town, where one of the rejected drivers commits suicide while another may be murdered so that the Parisian can take his place.  From the outset, it’s a dirty business where you have to resort to any means just to have a chance to get yourself killed, and with luck, survive.  The trucks pull out in the dead of night, where what follows is a highly charged suspense thriller where the director delights in placing unforeseen obstacles in their path, upping the ante in exposing just what men are willing to do for the money. 

Turning into a truck lover’s dream, where we follow trucks and nothing but trucks for the last hour and a half, where at any moment catastrophe awaits, this also becomes a battle of nerves and wits that plays out in the minds of the drivers.  Sitting in the self-enclosed driver’s seat, the conversation resembles an existentialist play like Sartre’s No Exit, as you can’t predict what’s in the twisted minds of these desperados, where both sets of drivers maniacally push the other to the limit, introducing daredevil tactics that only tighten the screws of the already unbearable tension, as they continually tempt death throughout the journey.  Adapted by Clouzot and Jérôme Géronimi from the novel by Georges Arnaud, this is a nailbiter of a movie, unusual for the adventure format as mostly nothing happens, but the anticipation cleverly instilled in the audience’s minds is searingly intense.  The bravado of the men comes into play, where Montand turns into a kind of reckless hotshot as his partner Vanel wilts under pressure, visualizing every rock and crevice along the road, while the other pair barely know one another at the outset and are highly suspicious, refusing to be undermined by the other’s lack of will or sheer incompetancy, but become fast friends, brought closer together by sharing the danger and the difficulty, where they eventually learn to respect each another.  Not so Montand and Varnel, where they are continually at odds with one another.  Overwhelmingly bleak and exhausting, the fatalistic atmosphere of doom is everpresent, stuck in one of the more barren landscapes ever devised for a film, occasionally broken up by moments of levity, where a nice touch thrown into the mix is Clouzot’s incessant use of cigarettes, as these guys continually light up in front of such volatile explosives, much like casually smoking around a gas pump, where any spark could set off a massive explosion.  And in this artificially devised waiting game, Clouzot does not disappoint.      

2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #4 Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires)

HEARTBEATS (Les Amours Imaginaires)     A                              

Canada  France  (95 mi)  2010  d:  Xavier Dolan 

When they devised Audience Choice Awards, this is the kind of film they must have had in mind, as this is a brilliantly inventive film, hilarious beyond anyone’s expectations, the most enjoyable film I’ve seen in ages, infectiously smart, wonderfully acted, devising the most inventive camera movements, original color schemes, and the absolute best use of music of any film seen in years, sensing the urgency, naivety, complexity and depth of passion of the characters.  The savagely funny Xavier Dolan writes, directs, edits, provides the art direction, and stars in this comedy of observations, where a host of people speak directly to the camera revealing their own personal insight into relationships, what thrills them about being in a relationship, but also how bummed they are when people don’t meet their expectations, which is shown in that ANNIE HALL (1977) rapid fire style, one closeup face after another.  Reminiscent of the colorful and early playful style of Jean-Luc Godard in the early 60’s with Anna Karina, Dolan uses the wacky energy and clever combination of personalities from Truffaut’s delightfully inventive threesome movie, JULES AND JIM (1962), featuring a dazzling display of wit and comic invention.  Dolan himself plays Francis, gorgeous, bright, and gay, whose best friend, the acid tongued Marie (Monia Chokri) is straight, but provides a high fashion statement in every shot, always featuring a kaleidoscope of bright colors, while her stylish approach to smoking cigarettes, including the development of an individual philosophy around cigarette smoking, is unparalleled.  The two of them fall for the same guy, Nicolas (Niels Schneider), a curly haired blond whose pouty lips and effeminate features seem to swing both ways, so they end up in the same bed together—for awhile, where their love theme seems to be Dalida’s multi-lingual version of “Bang Bang.” 

There hasn’t been a more candy-colored movie since THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1964), which, by the way, was devastatingly sad and did not end up happy.  Here the colors really do reflect the internal moods of the characters, which for the most part is youthfully upbeat.  The film is constantly exploring the idea of relationships, where various observations cut into the movie at improbable moments, giving the film a feeling of community, as if everyone commenting is somehow personally involved in the making of this film.  Rarely are characters ever seen alone, as almost always they’re seen in groups vying for one another’s affections, where Francis and Marie grow a bit jealous when someone else has Nicolas’s undivided attention, and then step over themselves with embarrassingly awkward talk when it becomes their turn, where being foolishly in love is certainly demonstrated repeatedly with this threesome, especially as the two friends are in competition with one another, each attempting to have him all to themselves.  Dolan reveals shots from each other’s imagination, perspectives that show substantially different versions of how they envision Nicolas in love.  There’s a hilarious dance sequence where Nicolas is dancing at a party with his mother, Anne Dorval in a marvelously brief appearance, a professional dancer who shows up the next morning with her son’s monthly stipend, where she has occasion to chat with Francis instead, calling him a gorgeously attractive “twinkie,” recalling how she used to bring her young son to the dance sessions and all the other dancers would fall over themselves to swarm him with kisses and adoring affection, so affection is something that he’s used to.  Despite their best efforts, which includes a trip to the country where Nicolas describes for Francis the proper technique of eating a roasted marshmallow, neither one seems capable of holding his attention for long.     

When they inevitably both get dumped, Nicolas is as cold and cruel as they get, where the theme music changes to Fever Ray’s hauntingly atmospheric “Keep the Streets Empty for Me.”  The color sequences grow darker and more somber and the mood of introspection is more prevalent.  Dolan uses slow motion sequences, where especially effective is a pulsating strobe light segment that shows faces in closeup, including a subtle changing look of the eyes, a technique that was memorable in FLASHDANCE (1983) but may have had its roots in Clouzot's ill-fated yet dizzily experimental L'ENFER (1964), which was never completed.  Much of the film’s appeal is the way the actors relish their roles, especially Monia Chokri who seems to wrap her tongue around some of the dialogue, exuding a witty sarcasm through invented pronunciations.  She’s incredibly smart, but she also sticks her foot in her mouth when she gets nervous.  Chokri and Dolan are two of the more delightful characters seen onscreen in awhile, and the screenplay gives them a full range of expression while Dolan behind the camera seems to be experimenting with a kind of ecstatic, uninhibited glee.  The stylishly impressionistic mood of comic originality continues unabated throughout the entire film, where the energy never sags, and where the finale is drop dead hilarious.  While Dolan’s initial film is more personal and is perhaps the more audaciously accomplished effort, rarer still is one lured into an intelligently written comedy that offers both funny and heartbreakingly meaningful drama, from the superficiality of hip clubs to the despair of self-deception, where this is a free-spirited take on the absence and exuberance of love that is given enormous energy and appeal from both the writer and the performers.  While Dolan will appeal primarily to the gay community, because his wit and humor reflect themes of gay tolerance and love, but it should be noted that Dolan may be the only filmmaker on the planet who can make a straight person identify with an appreciation for being gay, and not in any tragic sense, like MILK (2008) or BOYS DON’T CRY (1999), but in the euphoric brilliance of his art.