Suspiria

Year:  1977

Director:  Dario Argento

Screenplay:  Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi

Starring:  Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosé, Barbara Magnolfi, Susanna Javicoli, Eva Axén, Alida Valli, Joan Bennett

Running Time:  99 minutes

Genre:  Horror

American ballet student Suzy Bannion (Harper) arrives at a prestigious German dance school, Tanz Akademie.  On the night she arrives, a fellow student is brutally murdered.  As Suzy settles in to the strange academy, a series of bizarre and disturbing events occur, leading her to the conclusion that the school is a front for a murderous coven of witches.

"Bad luck is not brought on by broken mirrors, but by broken minds."

Italian director Dario Argento is arguably the most influential Italian horror filmmaker.  Starting out as a film critic, and then working as a screenwriter, including working with Sergio Leone and Bernardo Bertolucci on the script for Once upon a Time in the West (1969), before making his name as a director with a series of influential giallo films (a popular mix of horror and thriller, which were forerunners of the American "slasher" films).  Suspiria, co-written with Daria Nicolodi, with whom Argento was in a romantic relationship at the time, and who had previously starred in Argento's film Deep Red (1975), marked Argento's first foray into supernatural horror.  The film was partly inspired by Thomas De Quincey's 1845 essay Suspiria de Profundis, and marked the first of a trilogy known as the "Three Mothers Trilogy" continuing with Inferno (1980) and concluding with Mother of Tears (2007).  While this is Argento's first foray into fantasy, it still has elements of his giallo work: a black-gloved killer, elaborate and gruesome death scenes, and the plot point of the lead character hearing or witnessing an important clue early in the film, which she only remembers or understands the full significance of towards the end.  Right form the start the film opens with deafening, genuinely disturbing music from rock band Goblin, which mixes atonal rock, a kind of nightmare lullaby, and distorted human voices (including Argento himself) shrieking "Witch!"  The film itself doesn't appear to take place in any recognisable real world, with lurid colours, skewed angles, sudden cuts, a swooping, mobile camera, even something as simple as an airport's automatic door opening seems loaded with dread.  The interior of the academy itself with brightly coloured rooms, in which everything seems slightly hostile and alien, becomes like another character in the film.  The dialogue has the strange stilted delivery common in many Argento films,  due in part to the fact that the dialogue was dubbed after filming, which was common practice in Italian film at the time, but that accentuates the oddness of the thing, and makes the film more alien.  Pale, wide-eyed Jessica Harper walks through the whole film like she is in a nightmare.  Argento has never really had much interest in the niceties of logic and plot, and this is one of the times where this approach really works for the material,  It is like a nightmare and so follows a strange kind of dream logic, and so it is Argento's finest work.

Jessica Harper in Suspiria

Oedipus Rex

Year:  1967

Director:  Pier Paolo Pasolini

Screenplay:  Pier Paolo Pasolini, based on the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

Starring:  Franco Citti, Silvano Mangano, Alida Valli, Julian Beck, Carmelo Bene, Ninetto Davoli, Luciano Bartoli, Ahmed Belhachmi

Running Time:  104 minutes

Genre:  Drama

As a baby, Oedipus (Citti) is abandoned on a mountain slope, but is rescued and raised by King Polybus (Belchami) and Queen Merope (Valli) of Corinth.  Now an adult, Oedipus suffers strange nightmares and leaves home to visit the Oracle at Delphi to learn what the dreams mean.  However the Oracle tells him that he is destined to kill his father and marry his mother.  Horrified, and unaware that Polybus and Merope are not his biological parents, Oedipus decides not to return to Corinth.  However, as much as he tries to avoid the prophecy, he can't cheat his fate.

Oedipus Rex is one of the most famous of the Ancient Greek tragedies, with it's portrayal of a man who as he tries to avoid his fate, inadvertently brings it about, and brings tragedy down on himself and everyone around him.  Pier Paolo Pasolini gives the classic tragedy his own unique spin.  Bookended by sequences set in 1920s, in which a child is born to a wealthy woman and an Army Officer who resents him, and 1960s Bologna, in which blind Oedipus wanders the bustling streets playing his flute.  The rest of the film was shot in Morocco, with the cities made up of 15th Century buildings, and a mixture of African, Aztec and European style in the props and costumes, with the score made up of Romanian, Japanese and Indonesian folk music.  It depicts a world that is familiar and yet very much it's own.  Pasolini added autobiographical elements, stating that he was the child in the prologue, his father was. military officer and his mother was a teacher.  As with a lot of Pasolini's "historical" films, the loose, handheld camera work, and use of non-professional and often very unconventional looking performers, makes the film look like a strange documentary from another world.  Franco Citti gives a powerful performance in the lead role, and the film, while being quite a demanding watch, has a unique power if it's own.

Franco Citti in Oedipus Rex

Lisa and the Devil

Year of Release:  1973
Director:  Mario Bava
Screenplay:  Mario Bava and Alfred Leone
Starring:  Elke Sommer, Telly Savalas, Sylva Koscina, Alessio Orano, Alida Valli
Running Time:  95 minutes
Genre:  Horror, fantasy

Lisa Reiner (Sommer), an American tourist visiting Spain, sees a fresco in a church depicting a bald Devil hauling away human souls.  Wandering away from the tour group she winds up in a little antique store where she encounters a man named Leandro (Savalas), who looks identical to the Devil in the fresco. Unable to find her way back to the tour group, Lisa finds herself at a palatial villa owned by a strange young man (Orano) and his mother, a blind countess (Valli) and where Leandro appears to work as a butler.

This is only the beginning of Lisa's descent into a surreal nightmare.  This is a film with only the vaguest plot, and is kind of what you might come up with in a nightmare after reading too much Gothic horror stories and eating  a lot of very strong cheese.  Following the success of Baron Blood (1972), director Mario Bava was given a free hand to do whatever he wanted with this film.  The movie features some striking images, and it really is a beautiful film, full of offbeat camera angles, and it works if you see it as working with a kind of dream logic.  Elke Sommer walks through the film in a kind of sleepwalking daze, which actually works for the material.  Telly Savalas has a lot of presence, and is often quite sardonically funny as the mysterious Devil, whose fondness for lollipops was carried over to Savalas' most famous role in the TV show Kojak (1973-1978).  Following a disastrous premiere screening at the Cannes Film Market in 1973, the film was drastically re-edited and was further edited for its US release, with some additional exorcism scenes as well as additional nudity and gore, and was released under the title House of Exorcism, to cash in on the success of The Exorcist (1973).

Elke Sommers, Telly Savalas and Alida Valli in Lisa and the Devil   

The Third Man

Year of Release:  1949
Director:  Carol Reed
Screenplay:  Graham Greene
Starring:  Joseph Cotton, Alida Valli (as Valli), Orson Welles, Trevor Howard
Running Time:  108 minutes
Genre:  Thriller

In war ravaged, Allied-occupied Vienna, Austria, in the years immediately after the Second World War, racketeering thrives.  Holly Martins (Cotton), an American writer of pulp Westerns, now fallen on hard times, arrives in Vienna because his friend, Harry Lime (Welles), has offered him a job.  However, no sooner has he arrived, than he learns that Lime has been killed in a traffic accident.  With the help of Lime's girlfriend, Anna (Valli), Martins investigates his death, but becomes suspicious that it may not have been an accident.  To his horror, he learns from a British major (Howard), that Lime was a callous, murderous racketeer.

This British movie is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made.  It is a suspenseful, dark thriller.  Filmed in crisp black-and-white in an almost expressionistic style with harsh light and deep, inky black shadows, and shots frequently photographed in a distorted  "Dutch angle" style, and boasting a literate, witty and intelligent script from acclaimed novelist Graham Greene, with memorable performances.  Cotton is memorable as the alcoholic novelist torn between loyalty and conscience, and Valli as the mysterious, tormented Anna.  There is also of course Orson Welles, who despite not appearing much in the film is gifted with one of the most memorable introductions to a character in the history of cinema, and two memorable speeches.  The film's ear-worm theme music by Anton Karas performed entirely on the zither became an international hit, and spent eleven weeks at the top of the US charts.  From the cynical, opening narration (spoken by an uncredited Carol Reed) which introduces the situation in Vienna at the time of the film, to the final chase through the sewers, this depicts a bleak, fallen world of betrayal, and quick violent death with little to provide light or hope.   

"You know what the fellow said, in Italy under the Borgias, they had warfare, murder, terror and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo and the Renaissance.  In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace.  And what did that produce?  The cuckoo clock."
 -Harry Lime (Orson Welles)

Orson Welles in The Third Man

Inferno

Year: 1989
Director: Dario Argento
Screenplay: Dario Argento
Starring: Irene Miracle, Leigh McCloskey, Eleonora Giorgi, Daria Nicolodi, Sacha Pitoeff, Alida Valli, Veronica Lazar
Running Time: 107 minutes
Genre: Horror, supernatural

Summary: New York City: poet Rose Elliot (Miracle) is fascinated by a book called The Three Mothers by alchemist and architect Varelli. Varelli's book tells of three evil forces living in three houses in three different countries: Mater Suspiriorum (the Mother of Sighs) lives in Germany, Mater Lachrymarum (the Mother of Tears) lives in Italy and Mater Tenebrarum (the Mother of Darkness) lives in the USA. Rose becomes convinced that the old building she is living in is the home of Mater Tenebrarum.
She writes a letter to her brother Mark, a music student living in Rome. Mark's friend, Sarah (Giorgi) becomes fascinated by Rose's letter and decides to investigate the book The Three Mothers for herself. A decision she very quickly regrets.
Mark travels to New York and discovers that his sister has gone missing. As he investigates her disappearance he soon learns that the legend of the Three Mothers is far more than just a legend.

Opinions: This film was concieved as the middle part of a trilogy about the "Three Mothers", the first part was Suspiria (1977) and the trilogy concludes with Mother of Tears (2007), although Argento has stated that he has not ruled out making a fourth film in the series. The idea of the Three Mothers comes from a piece called "Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow" from a book called Suspiria de Profundis by Thomas De Quincey, published in 1845.
As with Suspiria this film is more of a fairy tale for adults. It has a striking visual style, with swooping, mobile camera movements, bizarre angles and luridly coloured lighting. It also features many of Argento's trademark elaborately choreographed and gruesomely violent set-pieces. The production design is very impressive with the interiors of the old New York building a mix of bright red and gold walls and polished black wood. Despite being filmed mostly on studio sets in Rome, there are some location scenes filmed in New York.
The sheer strangeness of the film's look and frequent sudden bursts of violence and gore, along with the loud score which combines weird electronic music from Keith Emerson (of Emerson, Lake and Palmer fame) with music from a Guiseppe Verdi opera, makes for a very disconcerting experience and for the most part the film is genuinely scary, particularly if you are frightened at all of either cats or rats. It certainly delivers plenty of shocks. Some scenes are also genuinely beautiful, for example during a memorable underwater sequence featuring Irene Miracle ina submerged ballroom.
The movie suffers from stilted performances at times, in particular from Leigh McCloskey, and sometimes the special effects aren't equal to Argento's ambition. As with many other Argento films, the story doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but then that doesn't really matter. It's not about the story, it's about the mood conjured up by sounds and images.
The film was shot under difficult circumstances. Daria Nicolodi came up with the basic story, but decided not to seek credit due to her miserable experience trying to get a writing credit for Suspiria. Argento was severely ill most of the time they were filming. Also the film was made for the major Hollywood studio 20th Century Fox who were so unhappy with the finished film that they did not release it in the USA until 1985, five years after it was made, and then direct to video. It did have a limited theatrical release in the US the following year though.
In recent years, though the film has been reassessed and has become something of a cult classic. In 2005 Britain's Total Film listed it as 35 in their list of the 50 greatest horror films of all time.
This is a startling and nightmarish movie that is definitely worth checking out.



Sacha Pitoeff and Irene Miracle in Inferno