None of Suspiria’s color choices are subtle, but it isn’t aiming for subtlety: From its opening moments, the famous score by the trippy band Goblin shouts, “ Witch! witch!” from the shadows, letting you know exactly what kind of movie you’re in for. The film’s highly stylized aesthetic was inspired by the color scheme of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), which Argento also drew on for its mythic tone and its presentation of a young, virginal heroine surrounded by evil. And when the horror comes, it’s sumptuously, terrifyingly red as well.Īrgento’s Suspiria is famous for its garishly psychedelic color palette, which mixes all this red with electric greens and blues and jagged black-and-white Expressionist patterns. The lipstick on the pale faces of Suspiria’s unwary ballerinas, and their nail polish, is red. When the walls aren’t red, the backlighting is, frequently casting a red glare over everything. The walls of the demented ballet school that serves as the film’s nightmarish setting are blood red, both inside and out. There’s hardly a frame of Argento’s Suspiria that doesn’t feature at least a glimmer of red somewhere. Argento was so committed to creating the most vibrant color palette possible that he insisted on using the same three-strip color process for his film that 1939’s The Wizard of Oz used, even though the technique was antiquated by the time he was making Suspiria in the late ’70s. Suspiria uses color as a part of its plot in a way that films almost never do, let alone so effectively. Please note: There are basic plot spoilers for both films below! Argento’s Suspiria starts out excitedly red and stays that way Seeing red in Argento’s 1977 Suspiria. Suspiria reimagines a cult classic as a bone-cracking tale of women, power, and painīut to understand why it pays off, it’s helpful to understand how Guadagnino’s aesthetic is in conversation with Argento’s (with a nod to their respective production designers, Inbal Weinberg and Giuseppe Bassan), and how the new film’s visual evolution reflects its surprising main theme.
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