french suspiria dvd interview transcript

This is a transcript of the interview on the French DVD of Suspiria translated by Emmanuel Denis.

Q: Suspiria, it's maybe your favourite movie...?

DA: I don't really have a favourite movie. It's a movie which gives me much satisfaction, and which was appreciated everywhere. It was very successful in France. When it was released in Italy, the audience must have been sceptical, because my previous movies were giallo's. This one had another structure. Suspiria, it's a delirium, a kind of trip through witchcraft. When it was released in Italy, critics hated it, and it was not very successful. Then it was released in France, at a Paris festival, 'le Festival du film fantastique', in the theatre called 'Le grand Rex'. It was a huge success. I thought, maybe it had not been understood in Italy. It was released in the USA, where it was a big success. it's my most successful film in the world, in Japan, everywhere. I like it because it brought me much satisfaction. I can't say that it is my most beautiful film. It's a film I've worked much on. On the shooting, on the preparation, on the story, on the studies I made about witches and magic.

Q: The pictures are amazing. It feels like you have spent days on the lighting, to find each color...

DA: It's not true. It's a movie... After making the story-board, it's a movie we have shot with much enthusiasm. We knew we were making a film in which each frame should be something new, all the close-up... All the normal things should look like an invention. In the movie, there are references to understand all this: there is Escher, a great Austrian, and the name of Kokoshka. This is a tribute: the school is in Escherstrasse. There is the Escher ballet. There are many references to Escher, an Austrian painter. And you can read the name Kokoschka. Kokoschka inspired me much. This movie is a kind of delirium. Many pictures are crazy. You have all sort of picture associations completely surrealist with no exact reasoning. They are psychoanalytical associations.

Q: You've told me that you have studied about witchcraft and magic. What studies were useful to Suspiria?

DA: I was interested in it for this movie. I am not a specialist about magic. I don't meet people who are in magic, witchcraft, esoterism. I don't believe in all these things. But I find that it's interesting from an artistic point of view. Like Edgar Alan Poe was interested in it without believing in people coming back from the dead. I am very fond of these stories about witchcraft and magic. I travelled in France, in Switzerland, in Germany and in Italy in order to meet covens, people who call themselves witches or sorcerers. I met as many people as possible in order to discover their powers and all these things. All across Europe. In Prague too. In order to find documents.

I did the same for the following movie, Inferno. I've started a trilogy that I've never finished. The three mothers trilogy. I've only made the first two movies. The third one is in God's hands... Suspiria is a movie I've worked much on. It must be understood that when I started making movies, digital special effects did not exist. All the special effects in the movie are mechanical or lighting effects. The most sophisticated effect was the light reflecting on the crystal. All this made the shooting a little difficult. Today, to make films like that... There's been several films made with computers about magic.

Q: If you were making Suspiria today, you would make another movie...?

DA: No, I don't want to make my movies again. But I know that American companies would like to make Suspiria or Deep Red again. I've sent letters telling that I will do everything I can to stop them. I don't want these movies to be made again. They were made at a moment in my life, and taken from their context, they have no meaning. They are nothing. They become a plastic thing, to make money. I fight against this, with all the people on internet who help me to stop this.

Q: In Suspiria, more than any other of your movies, music is very important. It feels like some scenes were shot when the music was already made...

DA: It's true. Goblin made the music before and during the shooting. Many times, we shot with the music playing on the set. With the music, actors are taken by a rhythm. I discovered that when you put music on a set, actors have the same rhythm that the music has. Several times, I've put music on the set. It influenced me very much. And it influenced the actors too.

Q: It's like a dance...

DA: Yes, it's a little like a dance. Before shooting Suspiria, I made a trip to Greece. I went to see a folk music show. I discovered there a string instrument, typical for Greece: a bouzouka. I bought a bouzouka in Athens. I brought it to Rome. I gave it to Goblin, and told them: "We must find strange sounds, really morbid".

Q: Don't you think it's your most violent movie?

DA: No. It's a kind of vision, like middle-age painters. They were making violent paintings, it's true... And let's not forget other paintings like the Christ of Grunenwald which is at Colmar, or the Hell that can be seen in Orietto. These paintings were used to make people kinder, better. People did not say: "Oh no, it's violent...". They said that it was a part of life that they should know too.

Q: The movie is still as impressing as before, because of the cinematography, the light, the music. It looks like an opera out of time.

DA: We worked very much on this film. On the lighting, the colours, the colours of the costumes. It is not an improvised movie.

Q: Nothing is improvised in it?

DA: No, there's no improvisation. In my movies, nothing is improvised. Everything is prepared, maybe one day before, but never on the set, the day of the shooting.

Q: You don't go to the set with nothing prepared...?

DA: No, absolutely not. Everything is planned before, with the cinematographer, with the actors, we are talking much, we are preparing, we are making drawings. I think you must work this way for this kind of movie. There may be films in which people should improvise, let go, but in this sort of film, it is impossible.

Q: Why did you choose Jessica Harper?

DA: I saw her in 'Phantom of the Paradise'. I met her in Los Angeles, and I fell... not in love... but "in admiration" with her. She accepted the movie with enthusiasm. She created that interesting character.

Q: The casting of Suspiria is very rich. There are great American and Italian stars. You did not choose them by chance?

DA: Absolutely not. Joan Bennett , who acts as the headmistress of the dance academy, is one of the deepest faces in American cinema. She was too Fritz Lang's wife, my great master in cinema, my director's dream. And Alida Valli who acted in the 'Paradine Case' by Hitchcock and 'Senso' by Visconti. She is a powerful actress.

Q: What was the hardest scene to shoot? The hanging with the pieces of glass falling?

DA: No, it was easy. The more difficult was the wide square with the temples. It was a very wide space. Then we did something complicated, like a cable car at the top of the temples. Then the camera swings at the end... Today it would be easier to do. But then, it was difficult to shoot.

Q: You like challenges?

DA: Yes, it's always a challenge. Each movie is a challenge. You must always find something new, use a new technology, a new editing system. All this brings enthusiasm to work. Doing the same thing all my life does not interest me. I hope each new subject stimulates me, wakes my curiosity.

Q: In Suspiria, haven't you cut some violent things, that you thought were too...

DA: No, I, I have never cut a thing in this film. if I shoot a very bloody scene, which seems justified to me, I never cut it. Censorship has cut scenes, but distributors, who are worst than censorship, cut them too. They have so much money that they are afraid to lose it! They are terrible. I, I don't cut. If I think that a scene must be filmed this way, I shoot it this way.

Q: When you're watching Suspiria today, are you scared?

DA: No. Only during the creation of the movie. When I am imagining it, and when I am writing it. As I am writing the story, I can feel something else than fear, I can feel a kind of chill, just like a memory, just like something which happened to me before. Then I think more and more about this memory. It gives me chills, a kind of fear. I remember that I was scared several times when I was writing Deep Red.

Q: But Suspiria is still frightening. There are few movies like that, like 'The Exorcist', which become scarier and scarier as years go by.

DA: Today, movies are filled with digital special effects. The audience can feel that it's false, that it is not true... With older movies, a kind of truth can be felt. This truth is... given by the fact that there is not really true special effects. Things happen before your eyes, almost like a living theatre.

Q: Suspiria is rather like an opera. The movie is a baroque opera...

DA: Yes...

[interviste]

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