Suspiria

Susie and fellow students dance

What’s the point of remaking Suspiria if you’re going to take out all the stuff that made the 1977 original so unique? Dario Argento, the director of the original, asked that question himself after he’d seen this remake – wondering, in short, “why?” – after director Luca Guadagnino’s new version debuted in 2018. There’s something in what he says. Out goes the original film’s original grand vision – its bad-trip looks – and with it goes the original story’s big idea of witholding of what was going on until the film’s dying moments. In comes a bracketing structure which introduces Chloë Grace Moretz at each end of the film, for no real reason … Read more

Suspiria

Jessica Harper as Suzy

Suspiria, the original 1977 one not the 2018 remake (a treat for another day), pulls a version of the same trick on its audience that Orson Welles pulled on his crew while making Citizen Kane. “It’s a dream sequence,” Welles would sometimes shout, when he ran into resistance against whatever novelty he was trying out on any given day. Park your timeserved-craftsman’s logical objections, in other words, and give it a try. Armed with a “dream sequence” Welles could experiment away to his heart’s content. If Welles had a dream, Dario Argento has a nightmare to deliver and everything in his film is shaped by it. Park expectations about “good” acting and “professional” … Read more