Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC recalls the details of his approach to director Dario Argento’s legendary 1977 horror film.

Author’s Note: This retrospective article was originally published in the February 2010 issue of AC. A PDF of that original magazine layout can be found here.

The horror film is stylistically rooted in German Expressionism of the 1920s, but the 1970s found the genre in transition. Smash Hollywood hits such as The Exorcist (1973), Jaws (1975), Carrie (1976) and The Omen (1976) not only offered graphic shocks, but also transformed or completely shed the genre’s traditional trappings of ghouls, ghosts and goblins. Instead, the characters and situations became somewhat familiar, the settings were contemporary and even homey, and the films’ largely naturalistic cinematography firmly grounded the fantastic in reality.

A world away, in Italy, filmmaker Dario Argento had carved out a unique niche in the fright-film business with such thrillers as The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970) and Deep Red (1975). These atmospheric stories, populated with demented killers and boasting grotesque set pieces, drip with equal parts gore and suspense — pop-culture products of the changing times. Flush with success, yet seeking a new creative direction, Argento then decided to envelop himself in the macabre lore of Old Europe. Working with fellow screenwriter Daria Nicolodi, he concocted a heady tale of witchcraft and the occult set in a ballet academy poised on the edge of Germany’s Black Forest. There, a young American student, Suzy (Jessica Harper), becomes the target of Mater Suspirium, the Mother of Sighs, a demonic headmistress whose murderous minions dispatch those around Suzy with operatic aplomb. Their elaborate, Grand Guignol-style deaths unfold in a series of bloodchilling sequences.



Top: From left, writer-director Dario Argento, Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC and actress Joan Bennett prepare for a scene. Above: From left, co-stars Alida Valli, Bennett and Jessica Harper in a scene set in the baroque ballet academy.

The evocatively titled Suspiria (1977), photographed by Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC, is a feast of intensely expressive images and sound. A creative touchstone among horror aficionados, the picture stands as an example to all filmmakers seeking to create tangible onscreen synergy between story, design, direction and cinematography.



Inspired in part by the Technicolor grandeur of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Argento wanted to achieve a palette rich with primary hues and deep blacks. Tovoli notes that when Argento approached him about the project, “I had not seen any of his films, but, of course, I knew him as a very successful director.” At the time, Tovoli was perhaps best known for his work in Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger (1975). “Horror films did not interest me at that moment of my professional life — I was a very impressionable guy, you see,” he continues. “But I do remember one summer afternoon in my apartment, when I heard a loud noise coming from the street. I looked out and saw a huge crowd sprinting from one movie theater to another. I later discovered that both theaters were showing Argento’s The Cat O’ Nine Tails [1971], and they were hoping to find a free seat! I said to myself, ‘A director who provokes such brisk movement in a crowd should be a very good one!’ After that I searched to see all of his movies. Ignorance is a curable sickness!”

Tovoli was intrigued by Argento’s ideas for Suspiria. “I think describing it as a Gothic fairytale is correct, but normally, the director and cinematographer do not sit down the first day we meet and say, ‘This time we will do a Gothic fairytale.’ Instead, we start speaking about many subjects relating to — or sometimes not relating to — the film we have to do. A good director, or in this case a great one, does not give precise recipes or strict commands, but instead searches to influence his collaborators with the originality of his dream.”

For Tovoli, one fundamental issue on Suspiria was “the choice of colors and the way I utilized them in accordance with [production designer] Giuseppe Bassan, who was working under Argento’s inspired guidance. We were often making our decisions in the flow of the shooting, without too many elaborate consultations or directions, but just in a kind of magic comprehension. “I decided to intensively utilize primary colors — blue, green and red — to identify the normal flow of life, and then apply a complementary color, mainly yellow, to contaminate them,” continues Tovoli. “A [horror] film brings to the surface some of the ancestral fears that we hide deep inside us, and Suspiria would not have had the same cathartic function if I had utilized the fullness and consolatory sweetness of the full color spectrum. To immediately make Suspiria a total abstraction from what we call ‘everyday reality,’ I used the usually reassuring primary colors only in their purest essence, making them immediately, surprisingly violent and provocative. This brings the audience into the world of Suspiria.” But the brightly hued artifice also has a certain distancing effect on the viewer. “You say to yourself, ‘This will never happen to me because I have never seen such intense colors in my life,’” says Tovoli. “This makes you feel reassured and, at the same time, strangely attracted to proceed deeper and deeper into this colorful journey.”



The film’s opening shots quickly transport the audience, as Suzy makes her way through the Munich airport on her way to the ballet academy. “With colors forbidden in reality, the Munich airport becomes Suspiria airport,” says Tovoli. “Then, the first close-ups of her in a cab, as it’s raining furiously outside, express perfectly the dynamics of the full color palette I sought for the rest of the film — the pulsating, mixing and alternating primary and complementary colors.” Like Disney’s Snow White, to whom Harper bears more than a passing resemblance, Suzy is soon lost in a strange world of magic and witchcraft.



“I was deeply inspired by Jessica’s interesting face, by its volumes and proportions, and her beautifully expressive eyes,” Tovoli says of his star. “After I prepared the light and she arrived on the set, she was immediately shining so brilliantly that I was astonished every time, as was Argento. Of course, I tried to light her laterally as much as possible, with almost no light in the axis of the camera, to add a sense of perspective to her face. On other films, I had registered the fact that the lens loves some faces, but in Jessica’s case, the relationship was really phenomenal.”



The theatrical, expressionistic approach Argento and Tovoli sought for Suspiria was unusual for the time, especially for a contemporary film. “It was surprising for a great part of our crew, who had never met a cinematographer who wanted to put the strongest possible lights so close to the actors through colored-velvet screens,” says Tovoli. “But it was very new for me as well. I had never lit a film like this before. For many years at the beginning of my career, I prayed only for the most natural light possible.”



Tovoli recalls a pledge that he and fellow future ASC member Nestor Alméndros made while they were attending the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome. “We promised over two glasses of good Tuscan red wine to never abandon the marvelous religion of real light,” he says. “I respected that oath for maybe a decade, but then I started to be quite bored. Alméndros, who was much more serious about this kind of thing than I, continued in the same direction with the most enviable success. Meanwhile, I started to study the work of the black-and-white cinematographers working at Cinecittà in Rome, in Hollywood and elsewhere. I searched to reconstruct their unbelievable lighting and complex technique; I watched the films over and over to learn how they achieved such great artistic results.” Among his favorites were Italian cinematographers Anchise Brizzi, Arturo Gallea, Ubaldo Arata, Carlo Montuori, Massimo Terzano, Otello Martelli, Aldo Tonti and, later, Aldo Graziati and Gianni Di Venanzo. “Working in black-and-white with Antonioni, Di Venanzo brought a substantial change to the technique, utilizing many small diffused lights for interiors instead of bigger Fresnel units,” Tovoli notes.

Argento and Tovoli stage Jessica Harper.

The cinematographer was initially reluctant to sign onto Suspiria “because I was conscious of my lack of experience and, more importantly, my lack of real passion for that kind of film,” he explains. “I’ve never accepted a job just to take a job. Also, even in the most insignificant film, I always searched to find some significance. That, of course, was not at all the case with Suspiria. But fortunately, Argento insisted I join him, and I still do not know why.



“I chose my camera crew very carefully,” he continues. “I brought in Idelmo Simonelli, one of the best camera operators, a true star. When he said, ‘This is by far the best take,’ it was by far the best take! I also brought the best first camera assistant, Peppino Tinelli; the best grip, Mario Moreschini; and the best gaffer, Alberto Altibrandi, whose nickname was ‘Gnaccheretta’ [Castanet].”

With only a few weeks of prep, Tovoli began camera and lighting tests in earnest. “After my first conversation with Argento, I vaguely imagined how to technically achieve this radical departure from my previous lighting style, but also, I needed to know if I had truly abandoned naturalism,” he says. “On The Passenger, I searched to force the strength of the real light, often overexposing, bringing the negative near the shoulder of the sensitometric curve to burn up some of the detail. In a way, this is what I did on Suspiria as well, but at a much higher level, ‘overexposing’ through the intensity of a specific color in a specific shot, with the negative [Eastman 5254] carefully exposed at the center of the curve. I utilized this technique on every shot in the film. I was always telling the production designer and scenic painter, ‘More red! More blue!’ I made the same recommendation to my very patient gaffer, Alberto, and, like a good friend, he asked me, ‘Are you sure? There is already a lot of green. It’s becoming quite disturbing!’ And to my inalterably happy face he asked, ‘Are you searching to be fired?’”