Trailer
Plot summary
Suzy Bannion, an American ballet student, travels to Freiburg to study at the Tanz Akademie, a prestigious dance school. She arrives during a downpour and is turned away after another student, Pat Hingle, runs from the building in terror. The next morning Suzy is admitted and meets the head instructor, Miss Tanner, and the deputy headmistress, Madame Blanc, along with her classmates Sara and Olga. She learns that Pat has been found dead. Strange events follow: Suzy falls ill and is placed on a special diet, maggots infest the school, and unsettling sounds fill the halls. The academy is a front for something sinister.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Suspiria (1977)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Jessica Harper auditioned through the William Morris Agency and won the lead of Suzy Bannion; Argento cast her on the strength of her performance in Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (1974). She turned down a role in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977) to appear in Suspiria.
- Suspiria was one of the last feature films processed in Technicolor, using the last remaining Technicolor machine in Rome; the vivid imbibition process had also been used for The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind.
- 20th Century Fox, worried about the film's violent content, released Suspiria in the United States through a shell company, International Classics, and cut the original American prints by a total of eight minutes to secure an R rating.
- Co-writer Daria Nicolodi based part of the screenplay on a story her grandmother told of taking a piano lesson at an unnamed academy where she believed she met black magic; Argento later said the story had been fabricated.
- Suzy Bannion was based on Snow White, and the characters were first written as girls of about eight to ten years old; the age was raised because the producers were hesitant to make a film with all young actors.
- Daria Nicolodi had planned on playing Sara herself, but an injury ruled her out, so Stefania Casini, an admirer of Argento's films whom he had requested, was brought in at the last minute.
- Goblin's score was composed before the film was even shot, as Ennio Morricone had done for Sergio Leone, and it was later reused in Hong Kong films including Yuen Woo-ping's Dance of the Drunk Mantis (1979) and Tsui Hark's We're Going to Eat You (1980).
