10/16/14 (Part One): A Haunting We Will Go

Tags

1960s cinema, 31 Days of Halloween, based on a book, black and white film, cinema, Claire Bloom, film reviews, films, ghosts, haunted house, haunted houses, Hill House, horror movies, Jan de Bont, Julie Harris, Lois Maxwell, Movies, opening narrator, paranormal investigators, poltergeists, repressed sexuality, Richard Johnson, Robert Wise, Rosalie Crutchley, Russ Tamblyn, Shirley Jackson, The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Haunting, The Haunting of Hill House, The Sound of Music, Valentine Dyall, voice-over narration, West Side Story

Long held as one of the greatest haunted house stories ever, Shirley Jackson’s classic novel, The Haunting of Hill House, is a masterpiece of mood, a subtle examination of the very nature of fear that relies more on unsettling impressions than outright scares. It’s a treatise, in a way, on the manner in which all humans are, to a greater or lesser extent, “haunted” by their own pasts, powerless to resist the myriad phantoms and specters of the mind. It’s a book in which the suffocating atmosphere of fear is strong. even if very little appears to actually happen before our eyes…as the best writers and filmmakers have always known, what takes place in our minds is infinitely more terrifying than anything physical we can be shown. When given the option, our imaginations will always find new and unique ways to put the screws to us.

Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963) stands as the first and, arguably, best adaptation of Jackson’s book, standing head and shoulders above the far sillier CGI extravaganza that was Jan de Bont’s 1999 version. As befits the source material, Wise’s film is a subtle, low-key affair that relies heavily on sound design and an outstandingly creepy location to make its point: despite featuring a number of highly effective setpieces, The Haunting is anything but a typical thrill ride. Despite possessing a surplus of atmosphere, however, Wise’s version of the material is almost sunk by an unnecessary, constant and rather irritating voice-over narration, courtesy of lead and focal point Julie Harris: her take on Eleanor is often more of a chore than a blessing, leaving the rest of the cast and atmosphere to do all the heavy lifting. Due to this issue, Wise’s version of The Haunting ends up being sporadically entertaining, a film that I can honestly say I respect more than actually like.

Hewing close to the source material, Wise’s film begins with a short discussion of the origins of Hill House, which features the frankly awesome proclamation that “whatever walked at Hill House walked alone.” We’re then introduced to our industrious cast: the kindly, inquisitive Dr. Markway (Richard Johnson), who heads up the paranormal investigation into Hill House; Eleanor (Julie Harris), the ridiculously high-strung member of Markway’s group who once experienced poltergeist activity; Theodora (Claire Bloom), the relentlessly nasty ESP expert who bullies Eleanor as if her life depended on it and Luke (Russ Tamblyn), nephew to the house’s elderly owner and along as a representative, of sorts.

Once the crew of ghost-hunters get to Hill House, things begin to proceed in ways that should be immediately familiar to anyone who’s ever read or seen anything relating to haunted houses: things seem to move out of the corner of one’s eye, strange noises abound and the house is full of inexplicable cold spots. These subtle moments end up being the film’s greatest asset: Wise is able to wring maximum impact out of scenes that feature nothing so much as an incessant banging, similar to how Paranormal Activity (2007) gets so much mileage out of opening doors and slamming cupboards. As the group continues to investigate the phenomena, it becomes abundantly clear that much of the spectral activity seems to center around Eleanor: her agitated state of mind and extreme neurosis appears to be giving the house and its “inhabitants” a nice little jolt of pure paranormal power. When Dr. Markway’s disapproving wife, Grace (Lois Maxwell) shows up at the house, uninvited, she inadvertently sets off a chain of events that will ultimately prove the old adage “There are some places people just shouldn’t poke around in.”

For the most part, The Haunting is an extremely well-made, subtle and effective film. Wise, a Hollywood veteran of such iconic films as The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951), The Sound of Music (1965) and West Side Story (1961), is an assured hand behind the scenes, keeping the tension high and the atmosphere thick. The house, itself, is a fantastically creepy affair: the actual haunted house is one of the most crucial aspects of any haunted house story and Wise’s depiction of Hill House is a real showstopper. The film also features several nicely realized setpieces, including the iconic scene where Eleanor thinks that Theo is holding her hand when, in fact, the other woman is actually all the way across the room: who, then, was holding Eleanor’s hand? It’s a truly great, scary moment, the kind of intelligent fright that we just don’t get enough of in modern horror films.

With so many things in its favor, then, why do I find myself so lukewarm regarding The Haunting? I’ve always had an affinity for subtle, “old-fashioned” horror films and haunted house stories are some of my all-time favorites (Shirley Jackson’s original novel was a staple in my childhood reading list). Due to these factors, The Haunted should be one massive home-run from start to finish. The main issue with the film, unfortunately, becomes Eleanor’s highly unnecessary voice-over narration. Harris’ portrayal of Eleanor is already a bit problematic, since she approaches it in the same way that Nicholson approached his version of Jack Torrance: she already seems unhinged when the film begins, leaving precious little breathing space before she’s full-on bat-shit nuts. On top of this, Wise pours on some thoroughly unnecessary voice-overs that find Eleanor waxing mundane about any number of subjects: there are times when her voice-overs approach the likes of “I think I’ll walk over here and see what’s going on before I walk over there and see what’s going on,” which becomes especially torturous when repeated ad nauseam.

I can’t recall how many times I was wrapped-up in the film only to have one of Eleanor’s stupid voice-overs haul me kicking and screaming back into reality. When a film’s entire impact is derived from its atmosphere, any attempt to wreck that mood is not only questionable but completely mind-boggling. To make matters even worse, the character of Eleanor becomes almost the entire focus of Wise’s film: getting stuck with an unlikable character is one thing…getting stuck with an unlikable protagonist for the entirety of a film is a whole other ball of wax, entirely.

Ultimately, I wanted to like The Haunting much more than I actually did. The atmosphere and mood are nicely realized, the location is great and the reliance on subtle chills versus overt shocks is always appreciated. Despite these pluses, however, I found myself constantly irritated by Harris’ performance (although, to be fair, I also found Claire Bloom’s Theo to be a thoroughly ridiculous character, such an unrepentant bully as to be one “Ha ha” away from a Nelson Muntz) and the unnecessary use of voice-over narration to spoon-feed information in the most obvious of ways. While I can state, unequivocally,  that Wise’s version is miles above de Bont’s, I can’t help but hope to one day see a version that gives Jackson’s source material the respect it deserves. As it stands, however, The Haunting is a decent, if flawed effort, full of rich atmosphere but nearly scuttled by a tedious lead performance that makes the film a bit of a chore to get through.

10/14/15 (Part Two): The Devil’s Dance Floor

Tags

31 Days of Halloween, Alida Valli, auteur theory, ballet, Barbara Magnolfi, cinema, classic films, co-writers, cult classic, dance academy, Daria Nicolodi, Dario Argento, dog attacks, favorite films, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Flavio Bucci, foreign films, Goblin, Helena Markos, horror films, iconic film scores, Italian cinema, Italian horror films, Jacopo Mariani, Jessica Harper, Joan Bennett, Luciano Tovoli, Movies, opening narrator, Renato Scarpa, Stefania Casini, stylish films, supernatural, Suspiria, Suzy Bannion, Udo Kier, violent films, witches, writer-director

There’s absolutely nothing subtle about Italian giallo-maestro Dario Argento’s classic supernatural shocker Suspiria (1977)…and there’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever, thank you very much. From the opening drum crash that cues Goblin’s iconic prog-rock score to the over-the-top murder setpieces to the near constant use of dramatic colored lighting to heighten mood, Suspiria is one of the all-time great cinematic mood pieces, a ferocious nightmare that has all of the narrative continuity of a fever-dream and is so unabashedly beautiful as to be almost hypnotic. In a 40+ year career filled with more ups and downs than a bakers’ dozen of filmmakers, Suspiria will always stand as not only Argento’s magnum opus but also one of the single most original, visually stunning films in the history of the cinema.

As befits Argento’s supernatural films (of which this was the first), Suspiria only makes as much narrative sense as it absolutely has to. If anything, the film is much more concerned with establishing and maintaining a haunted, skewed fairy-tale atmosphere than it is with ticking off plot points on a sheet of paper. Suffice to say that the plot can be boiled down rather succinctly to the following: Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper), a naive, young American ballet student, has just arrived at a mysterious dance academy in Germany that may or may not actually be the front for an ancient coven of witches. As Suzy witnesses one strange incident after the other, beginning with the dark and stormy night when she first arrives, it becomes more and more difficult to figure out what’s real and what she might be imagining due to a good, old-fashioned case of the heebie-jeebies. As she continues her investigation, Suzy will gradually come to learn the truth about Miss Tanner (Alida Valli), Madame Blanc (Joan Bennett) and the sinister, unseen Helena Markos, who may (or may not) be the ancient, Satanic evil known as The Black Queen.

While Suspiria isn’t necessarily concerned with connecting the dots from Point A to Point Z, it is absolutely, thoroughly dedicated to immersing the viewer into a completely surreal, eye-popping, nightmarish environment. Argento accomplishes this suffocating sense of atmosphere in many ways, although some of the most notable are the extensive use of colored lighting, tricky camera angles and the near constant, moody score. As mentioned earlier, Suspiria is a gorgeous film, thanks in no small part to the evocative cinematography of veteran DP Luciano Tovoli: there’s one scene in the film, lit with a green light and shot through a light-bulb that is absolutely stunning…it’s doubtful that even Peter Greenaway has been responsible for an image this lovely, which gives some (small) idea how massively impressive Suspiria’s visuals truly are.

As with almost all of Argento’s films, Suspiria is built around a series of escalating, over-the-top set-pieces, sort of like individual rides in one, large amusement park: the opening murder involving multiple stabbings and a stained-glass window…the maggot rain…blind Daniel (Flavio Bucci) and his terrible death at the jaws of his own dog…the extraordinary, red-lit scene where the practice hall is turned into a dormitory and Helena Markos makes her first “appearance”…the stylishly weird scene where the housekeeper and ultra-creepy Albert (Jacopo Mariani) appear to hypnotize Suzy…Sara’s (Stefania Casini) horrible demise via a room full of razor-wire…rather than feeling disjointed or episodic, Suspiria ends up feeling genuinely odd and unsettling. It’s almost as if we’ve been invited to peel back someone’s skull and peer right into the deepest, darkest corners of their fevered imagination.

Those new to the world of ’70s-’80s Italian horror will, undoubtedly, find some of Suspiria’s quirks to be a little off-putting, although they’re nothing if not endemic to that particular style of filmmaking. Some of the performances can come off on the wrong-side of stagey (the excruciating “fight” between Sara and Olga (Barbara Magnolfi) that consists of them sticking out their tongues and hissing at each seems to last for at least a month, if not longer) and some of the dubbing is a little suspect. In one of the most head-scratching moments, the evil Helena Markos is voiced by someone who appears to be channeling a stereotypical street thug by way of Cloris Leachman: it’s a strange, silly choice and has the unfortunate effect of taking you out of the movie, if only for a moment. Again, these aren’t issues that should be new to anyone who’s seen their fair share of Italian horror films but neophytes would be advised to exercise patience with some of the film’s “sillier” contrivances.

Make no bones about it, however: Suspiria is a vicious, hard-hitting film that’s managed to lose none of its power in the 37 years since its release. If I’ve seen the film once, I’ve probably seen it at least a dozen times, but it never fails to pull me in from the very first frame: hell, I get a practically Pavlovian response whenever I hear the score, similar to my extreme love for John Carpenter’s oeuvre. This time around, I tried to view the film as critically as possible, with an eye towards determining whether the film was actually “scary,” at least by modern terms. I may be a little biased here, since I’ve always been in love with the film, but I think that it still possesses all of its feral power, even for a generation that’s become jaded on every sort of cinematic atrocity imaginable. Make no bones about it: the violence in Suspiria is sudden, shocking and extreme, made even more disturbing by the fact that Argento frames everything in such lovely, stunning visuals. Even though the copious blood never manages to look like anything less than thick, red paint, the suspension of disbelief in the film is absolute: Argento, at the height of his power, was (arguably) the greatest European horror writer/director ever (which, of course, makes his fall from grace of the past couple decades even more depressing).

Horror fans tend to be a fairly fickle bunch but there are a few films that appear to be universally respected: Suspiria is certainly one of those. Although Argento would go on to make several exceptional films after Suspiria (very few filmmakers have had a string of quality films like Argento experienced with Profondo Rosso (1975), Suspiria, Inferno (1980), Tenebre (1982), Phenomena (1985) and Opera (1987)), this will always stand as the unholy height of considerable abilities. One of the greatest compliments that I can give the film is to say how completely and utterly jealous I am of anyone who gets to experience this for the first time: believe me when I say that, in all likelihood, it will open your eyes. October just wouldn’t be the same without Argento’s infamous “witch academy” and I wouldn’t have it any other way.