Suspiria

Suspiria directed by Dario Argento (1977). A young American dancer goes to Europe to join an academy ballet school. When she arrives she sees another young girl fleeing only to be later seen murdered. After many strange incidences and rather obscure occurrences she sets out to discover the reason behind it. Only to find out that the teachers at the school are witches and plan destruction.

This film uses various effective techniques to fill the viewer with fear that they cannot escape. The Lighting used in this film has a prominent effect on how Argento wants the viewer to feel. The greens and reds combined with the long narrow corridors give a sickly phobic feeling. And the lighting is used to highlight certain aspects in the scenes. When the girl is being chased through the building its lit up various different colours to make the viewer feel what she is feeling, and to feel the same kind of sickness people get when fear grips them. The colour green is also a colour regarded with fear and sickness.

The school is also made up of lots of corridors and passage ways.The creates claustrophobia and combined with the lighting used in the film it creates and strong unique feeling which is hardly meet in modern films. When the viewer is following the girl being chased, the corridors are narrow and long. The viewer is made to feel confined and the fear of running into a dead end which inevitably happens.

Through the film the viewer keeps the feeling that something isn’t right, from the beginning of the film when you see the girl outside running and the hanging at the start. From the outset the viewer is made to suspect various aspects in the film which keeps them on edge all the time. There is a notion that the teachers are in fact witches, which isn’t immediately clear as Argento lets the thought brew in the viewer’s mind. It creates paranoia and conspiracy in the viewer about all the teachers in the school.