Girls on Film: Suspiria & Shivers

Girls on Film 

Films in Focus: Shivers & Suspiria

(For a brief summaries of these films click here)

I must admit, I did have a problem with seeing some of the things that happened to the women in Shivers. Owing to the subject matter (the release of people's sexual inhibitions via venereal parasites) there was always going to be a sexually aggressive element to the film and although we know this is due to the assailants being out of control, it is still difficult to watch. However, in the closing act of the film the previously abused women were infected with the parasite and I began to feel differently about what I'd seen. When the men had their sexual inhibitions released they became neanderthal and brainless; when the women were infected it was more like a liberation. There are, to my mind, three notable women in the film who all start as secondary characters. Taking the character of Nurse Forsythe as an example; she begins as a perfectly average girlfriend to the one of the male leads. She shows affection when he wants, makes him dinner and does what he tells her - the whole humble female shebang. When infected, however, she becomes powerful and sexual as well as seemingly becoming the leader of the infected masses. The other two main females have a similar character arc.

Suspiria is interesting in terms of female interaction simply because it is almost devoid of males. There are three men in the film: one is blind, one is mute and the other is gay - Argento says this was because he wanted none of the men to interfere with the female interaction (probably not the most P.C. of statements but he said it not me!). His first major film, Bird with the Crystal Plumage, was unusual in that it featured a powerful and punishing female and because of this, a trend developed in subsequent Italian horror and mystery films. I suppose this popularity coupled with his own love of exploring female interaction meant that by the time he got to Suspiria, Argento could go ahead and have a film of females. And I must say, Suspiria is like looking at a kaleidoscope of the female psyche - personified, exaggerated, then bounced off one another. Most interestingly for me was the portrayal of old women. The Principal of the dance school is played by a sixty seven year old Joan Bennet - and she looks fabulous. Similarly, all the other older women are portrayed as strong or powerful - not always positively powerful admittedly but still, there isn't a fuddy-duddy pensioner in sight. 

What does this mean? Well, men are obsessed with women for one. Cronenberg seems to discuss men's fear of women's sexuality (which is also discussed in a film which is said to have taken some inspiration from Shivers: Alien). He also seems to be fairly self deprecating towards male sexuality - I would be interested to know how men feel about this. Argento does not seem so much afraid of female sexuality as enthralled by it. His work has followed a pattern of strong women and in an interview he said the large majority of his audience is women; this would suggest that while awful things do happen to women, the female members of the audience appreciate that its because he is trying to explore every facet of female reaction and not just glorify violence against women. I know this is how I felt. 

My feelings towards Cronenberg, on the other hand, are a little different. There were times when I felt he was excessive and made me feel uncomfortable, however the final act made me consider that this may have been intentional. He seems to want to show that subversive and perverse sexual behaviour is bred of repressed minds and in order to really hammer that through to the audience he exposes us to the very behaviour he would seem to be condemning. While I felt unsure at first, I came to realise there was intention behind it; so whereas I may not have appreciated it at the time - I understand it, and his intentions.

Even if someone has solid artistic intentions, is there a line that can be crossed? 

I would say, no.

Would you?

Suspiria & Shivers: Body Horror as a Device

"For me all art is subversive in someway … it's inevitable, then, that if you consider yourself a serious artist that you are going to bother people."

- David Cronenberg

I have long been fascinated with the use of gore and body horror in film. It's a device, like any other, but does its excessive nature actually stop people from appreciating the meaning behind it and what is that meaning? As I am most interested in the thoughts of people who either know little about or dislike the subject, so as to ensure I don't alienate people with nerdery, I am going to consider two films I have only just seen: Shivers and Suspiria. 

*SPOILERS!!*

Brief Summaries

Suspiria (1977, Dir. Dario Argento)

My Score: 9/10

A young American ballet dancer, Suzy, comes to a European ballet academy to train - her arrival coincides with some strange events culminating in the mysterious death of another student. Bizarre occurrences and noises continue and as her suspicion heightens there are more sudden deaths. Suzy works out that, while the staff say they leave the school during they night, their footsteps tell a different story. 

Shivers (1975, Dir. David Cronenberg)

My Score: 7/10

Set on a luxury island near Montreal, the onsite doctors have been experimenting with the use of parasites to take over from failing organs. It is discovered that one of the doctors has been secretly breeding a parasite to free people of their inhibitions. His test subject is unable to handle the sudden release and becomes wild and promiscuous - infecting several others. With the parasite taking hold, a cast of characters attempt to combat the hysteria while not loosing themselves to it as well. 

Body Horror

Firstly, it was exciting to see how different two horror films can get within only two years of each other. Shivers is like a time capsule of the 70s; Cronenberg reportedly drew on the realism in underground New York cinema when making this film. The characters are all conventional people living ordinary lives who have a parasitic catalyst thrown into their midst. Suspiria, on the other hand, is completely outlandish in almost all respects. The characters are exaggerated, the sets are mad, the lighting is invasive - but it works wonderfully and was a very exciting film for these reasons. 

It is difficult to say which is a better setting for body horror: realism encourages empathy whereas melodrama takes the viewer out of the story and possibly into a more speculative frame of mind. I think the differences between Suspiria and Shivers hark back to the discussion of Brechtian and Stanaslavski storytelling in an earlier film review. With regard to gore, I think a Brechtian style piece (i.e. Suspiria because the audience is constantly reminded it's a film) is able to display its intentions more clearly; however, I don't think one can value either style over the the other as it just comes down to personal taste. 

Right: let's get grisly. An ideal moment for comparison sprung out at me - not only was the violent act the same, it was even filmed in a similar way: a throat slitting in extreme close up. I have to say I was more repulsed by the one in Shivers, probably due to the realistic lighting and mundane setting. Although less disgusted by the shot in Suspiria, I felt a more heightened sense of fear because the lighting was so extreme and the music was so relentless and bizarre. It seemed to me that the melodrama in Suspiria made it an emotional experience whereas the realism in Shivers felt more like watching an autopsy. 

The differing use of blood was also of interest. While featuring some pretty horrific images of parasites and writhing innards, Cronenberg used blood relatively sparingly - I think this comes from trying to base the film in reality so masses of blood would have been out of place. Because of this, when blood was present it was all the more unsettling and it's presence increased towards the climax. Contrastingly, I think Suspiria may have hired the Hammer Horror effects team as the whole thing was awash with the most vibrant blood you've ever seen (funnily enough, the director Argento cited early John Ford and Disney animations as the inspiration for the lurid colours in Suspiria). I found that I became relatively desensitised to the blood as a result of this and it became more of an addition to the colour palette. Suspiria is red. Everything is red. RED. So the blood becomes one with that; for this reason I thought the film felt a lot more like an expressive painting than a narrative. Whereas I believe Cronenberg is trying to express an ideology, it felt like Argento's intention was purely to take us to an vivid emotional place - something he certainly achieves. Possibly this explains the differing use of blood: Cronenberg saves it for moments of significance to highlight his intentions, Argento uses is to keep the viewer in a heightened  state of emotion and fear. 

Two very different films, with very different intentions and yet these are expressed predominantly through the same device: body horror. I appreciate many people are immediately sceptical of any argument professing the intelligence behind any gore films but don't just listen to me: Shivers was funded by the Canadian Film Development Corporation, a government run organisation, and was also passed uncut by the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors) on its 1975 release. Argento has gone on the become a horror film legend and has influenced filmmakers even outside of the horror genre. 

Now, I will hold my hands up and admit that the barrage of mainstream, gory tripe being churned out at the moment is abominable; but those aren't the films I'm talking about. Any device used without a heart or intention falls flat. Personally, I feel just as cheated by a rom-com which is all goo and no heart as I do by a horror which is (albeit graphic and literal) goo and no heart. I appreciate that just as I will rarely be buzzing to watch a romance film, equally there are people who are never going to enjoy watching a gory film; but my intention is not to convert - only to hope people will understand the genre. The transient gore films of today only exist to capitalise on the masterpieces that have gone before it. And masterpieces they are.

Fancy getting intellectually gory?

- The Fly (1986, Dir. David Cronenberg)

- Inferno (1980, Dir. Dario Argento)

Fancy getting rip-roaringly gory?

- Braindead (1993, Dir. Peter Jackson)

- Evil Dead (1981, Dir. Sam Raimi) 

Art Exhibition!!

And finally, the reason for my sporadic posting can be revealed, I've been working towards an Art Exhibition!

The summary I wrote to accompany the pieces:

[Ir]Rational Fear
We are all wired for fear. We all still have the fight or flight instinct within us, and it needs an outlet: scary stories. Horror has evolved from centuries of fairytales and folklore, it's nothing new. But, how do we continue to scare ourselves and how does horror manage to maintain its relevance? 
While my photo collage explores peoples feelings on why horror is relevant (both on a personal and cultural level), my film piece explores the images and sounds from which horror is constructed.
One of the things I found most interesting is that I edited my film without any intention of scaring or creating a sense of tension yet most people have reported these feelings while watching it. It would seem that simply the expectation of fear is enough for us to project it onto what we're seeing or hearing. Love it or hate it - our brains switch on to fear in a heartbeat. Personally, I think its a healthy flexing of our primitive muscles. 
What were your expectations and what did you feel?

Here is the link to the Film Collage - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsyx_2kg_7c

The Photo Collage:

If you want to read the writing here is a link to a larger image - http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/866/img2603fw.jpg

The full show: 

A discussion about The Devils and my attempt at a critical essay . .

Long time no blog. Ironically, my art blog has been so sparse because I've been busy with an art course. You'd think that would increase blog activity!

I'm currently preparing for a final exhibition which I will be posting about closer to the time (although it feels far to close for comfort as it is). One of our final assignments on the course was to write and personal essay about an art subject that interests us: a handily focused and narrow brief eh?

Anyways, here is my essay in which I hope I didn't get too over excited and completely meander around the question.

Irrespective of my writing skills (which you are more than welcome to constructively criticise by the way), I do feel the subject of The Devils very interesting one regardless of your knowledge of horror or film.




P.S. I do not own any of the pictures. They are the property of Warner Bros.

The Devils: Artistic Expression in Film and its Censorship

By Stella Frangleton

The winner of Best Foreign Film at the Venice Film Festival while, at the same time, being banned in Italy: The Devils (1971) has been the subject of an ongoing battle between film critics and film censors since its release - gaining both acclaim and castigation. Having only been seen in its full version at film festivals, the fullest version available is more than evidently an artistic vision of a tragic historical event. Even as a fairly hardened and liberal film fan, I must admit I found The Devils a difficult watch; however, it was difficult with a purpose and intelligence. I did not feel the empty exploitation of a thrown together exploitation movie; I was being made to feel uncomfortable because the director, Ken Russell, was trying to express a vision – an alarming vision, yes, but not one without thought and relevance. Had Russell expressed this in a painting or gallery, would he have received a similar butchering of his piece? I believe The Devils was treated such because the images are not simply to disgust momentarily (a construct unfortunate many shocking films follow). They have been constructed masterfully both for visual and emotional impact. In essence, it has been treated badly because it is made so well; it is affecting. I intend to examine art in film being treated differently from other art forms: how and why.

The Devils is, I believe, Russell's strongest morality play. It focuses on the important differentiation that needs to be made between true faith and the use of faith as a manipulative tool (the possessions at Loudon, the real historical event on which the film is based, being a particularly sordid example of the latter). One of the reasons critics claimed the film was not art is due to the explicit nature of some scenes, some going as far to call the film perverted or sadistic. I find this a somewhat redundant criteria, especially when considering revered painters; how many disturbing and sensual paintings come to mind when considering the work of artists such as Goya and Courbet? The scene that remains cut even from the current release is the scene that typifies Russell's pivotal concept; it is known, starkly, as 'The Rape of Christ'. The scene sees the nuns - driven into a frenzy by political schemers in an attempt to incriminate the powerful Priest Grandier for possessing the nuns - tear down a life size icon of Christ and ravish the fragments in a nightmarish fervour. These intense images, however, are intercut with a scene of the Priest Grandier, a troubled man who we have seen grow in purity as he connects with his faith more throughout the film, reach a sort of catharsis as he calmly takes communion alone in the countryside. As the corrupt reach their climax of depravity, Grandier reaches the climax of his faith. Interestingly, the head of the Catholic Legion of Decency in America at the time of the films release (Father Gene Philips) did not find fault with the sequence. He described it as 'portraying blasphemy, but it is not blasphemous' and felt that the a scene from The Exorcist (1973), wherein a possessed girl masturbates with a crucifix, was more offensive as it did not appear to discuss the vast separation between acts such as these and true Catholicism, which Russell does.

Other works have discussed the destructive marriage of church and state, notably Arthur Miller's 1952 play: The Crucible. Hysteria is a key aspect in both pieces – showing how the state can encourage it under the guise of religious piety, and how this leads to people acting on previously repressed feelings and grudges. Abigail is the main example of this in The Crucible; she uses the ensuing witch hunt to accuse the wife of the man she had had an affair with. Similarly, Jeanne Des Anges in The Devils goes so far with her denouncing of Grandier because she was attracted to him, something for which she received penance, and became resentful of him. Unlike The Devils, The Crucible did not get such a frosty reception from critics and authorities and I think this may not just be down to the more sexual content in The Devils. Miller was openly historically inaccurate; although he based it on a true event, as with The Devils, he made clear it was a work of fiction and had fitted the setting to his purpose. As The Devils was intended to be as accurate as it could be from the existing recordings it is much more gut-wrenching; there are vastly gorier and sexually overt films out there but they aren't as real or emotionally charged as Russell gets his to be. The work of Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion in particular, was brought to mind when considering images of charged emotion coupled with religious imagery such as in The Devils. Bacon described the image of the crucifixion as 'a magnificent armature on which you can hang all types of feeling and sensation' and he used his interpretations of it to express his disgust with man's inhumanity to man something; which I feel Russell was trying to express too. Both abandoned realistic imagery and made it bold and almost vulgar, I think, so the viewer couldn't ignore it. The Crucible may discuss similar issues to The Devils but it is not as determined to make the viewer feel the artists' revulsion at the atrocities they are citing.

Both Russell and Bacon were criticised for the alarming nature of their works however: Bacon's paintings were allowed to exist whereas Russell's film was not. What is the distinction between a traditional artist and an artist who works in film, that makes one viable for unsanctioned editing and the other not? I feel that film censors and critics either fear that people won't go into a film viewing it as art. Or, the censors are the people not viewing it as art and therefore miss the point. This seems all too true of the treatment of The Devils; Ken Penry, one of the BBFC censors at its time of release, even said 'We all took against the film . . . although we realised it was a very fine piece of filmmaking'. The tragic irony of this statement defines what is wrong with the continued suppression of The Devils full cut. Russell intended it as art; it has been received widely as such and yet the fear that some unsuspecting person will pick it off DVD shelf and feel compelled to write a strongly worded letter still overpowers the right to artistic freedom. I appreciate that what people's preconceptions of what they will view in a cinema probably aren't films like The Devils but to not be allowed to watch in our own homes is like trying to buy a painting but being refused of the grounds that we might not appreciate it 'correctly'.

The aspects of humanity portrayed in The Devils may be disturbing but they do exist – something I am trying to explore in my own work. Russell uses images to highlight aspects of human behaviour that he finds worthy of discussion: something I am trying to achieve in both photo and film media. Whereas, Russell's message is more focussed to state and religion – I would like mine to be more open ended. I want to know how viewers interpret the images painstakingly woven by people such as Russell. His context for The Devils is pleasingly ambiguous; while being able to be viewed as a period drama, the visuals allow it to attain a timeless dreamlike quality which I found interesting and have tried to incorporate into my own film piece. A strong enough sense of context to retain a connectivity throughout the piece but far removed enough to provoke deeper thought than simply threading the images together to create a story. I also agree strongly with Russell's belief in the strength and purity of humanity while being able to appreciate the baser aspects; I believe the more we embrace what is bad about ourselves the less energy we have to spend suppressing it and we can channel that energy into better things. I would like my exhibit to be one of exploration for the viewers; maybe they will love it, maybe it will repulse them. Either way, they will hopefully have explored a part of themselves which I believe is healthy to do so; as, I think, does Russell.

While I can appreciate why an alternative cinematic release may be sensible as a viewer is likely to be expecting entertainment, not challenging art, in a cinema I do not agree with suppressing the piece from public release. Any reason a censor may have for suppressing the film has to be linked to a fear of the public's misunderstanding (as there are far more explicit films available the 'inappropriate content' reasoning is redundant). However, any audience seeking out this film at an Art Cinema or on DVD is evidently not the audience censors are afraid of misunderstanding the film; therefore, the reasoning behind continuing suppression seems confused and irrelevant. The censorship of Russell's vision seems to stem from both censors' and critics' confusion as to whether film should be entertainment or art. I believe it is for the filmmaker to make this decision and their film should then be treated accordingly rather than artists having their work forced into being that which they never intended it to be.