My Life In Pictures DARIO Argento
Total Film|May 2023
Exploding on to the scene in the 1970s with a series of grisly murder mysteries punctuated by killer set-pieces, Dario Argento then made Suspiria, a supreme supernatural suspenser that is now a fixture on every Greatest Horror Movies Ever Made list. Ahead of a new season at the BFI Southbank, the Italian maestro talks Total Film through seven of his most magnificent movies. Be afraid, be very afraid...
JAMIE GRAHAM
My Life In Pictures DARIO Argento

SUSPIRIA 1977

Argento embraces fairy tales and the fantastique with a vivid tale of an American ballet dancer attending a German academy run by witches.

‘After Deep Red [1975, marking the fourth giallo movie Argento had made in five years, starting with his debut The Bird with the Crystal Plumage], I really wanted to change something. I wanted to give a twist to my storytelling. So I found myself looking at the horror movies that I used to watch when I was in high school in Paris and I used to go to the Cinémathèque Française to see all these antique horror movies with the display of shadows and lights. I really wanted that to be reflected in Suspiria. I really wanted the atmosphere, the sorcery and the witches to be reflected in this movie, which I wanted to be completely different from the other ones, but still with a Dario Argento feeling.

‘I wanted colours, gore and flamboyance – a magical acid trip. I love things on the border of reality and fantasy – the supernatural. Witches were something special. As a child, I would have liked, maybe one time, to meet a witch. I used to think my headmistress was a witch. It didn’t scare me. Witches are interesting…

‘The opening set-piece [Jessica Harper’s Suzy Bannion takes a hellish taxi ride through a rain-lashed forest to arrive at Freiburg’s ballet academy just as an elaborate double murder takes place] was not particularly hard for me to shoot, because I knew I wanted to shoot in the German Black Forest. So I went scouting for locations there. I was looking for the little villages, the little houses. So the set was there. I mean, I didn’t have to do anything special to the set because it was naturally there.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 2023 من Total Film.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 2023 من Total Film.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

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