Despite the sound of alarms ringing out in repeated doomsday-is-nigh articles, physical media is not dead. This is especially true for horror, where numerous boutique distributors regularly save, restore, and release titles from the well-loved to the obscure jam-packed with features, commentaries, and the like. Conversely, however, in this cybertastic day of streaming and platforms and I come from The Internet and I want content for free, plenty of home video releases (for lack of a better all-encompassing term) are all but bare-bones.
Side note: don't get me started on the lame-ass Blu-ray that Carol got or we will be her all day, all night, and into next week.
While there are plenty of folks who don't care a lick nor a whit for supplemental materials, there are also plenty of...well, "cinephiles" sounds too snooty, but let's go with it...who want to hear and see making ofs and criticisms and more. When our favorite movies get subpar releases, we're left hoping for some magical future time when rights are sold or the film in question is miraculously added to the Criterion Collection. Such is the case with me and my life partner Suspiria. Simply put, there is not enough for my tastes on the Blu-ray. There is not enough on the German Ultimate Edition, which mostly comes with physical gewgaws. I desperately want a commentary track. I want a big fat feature-length making of documentary. And today's post highlights a major reason why.
Spoiler alert: I've been working on a piece about the female artists whose work is heavily referenced throughout the film. This brought me back to Suspiria's first teaser trailer, because it contains several shots that were excised from the final product after Amazon Studios was sued by the Ana Mendieta estate, who alleged that the film drew too heavily upon her work. (The case was settled out of court; I'll be talking more about all of this in that future post.)
Well. It had been a hot minute since I'd watched that teaser. I don't think I'd seen it, in fact, since before the film came out. That ~2 minutes was enough to get me dying to see the movie, and I didn't want to be spoiled by anything else. I was instantly...dare I say...hooked. Watching it today, however, I was shocked–SHOCKED!–by this very brief sequence:
Now sure, trailers feature scenes that don't end up in theaters all the time. That's why we need healthy home releases, dangit–we need director's cuts and deleted scenes! And LAWD I want this one.
Is that Susie on the floor? It certainly looks like her leotard.
Sara's costume and robe seem to put this right before she entered the Mutterhaus. In fact, it'd be right around the scene where Susie gets her hair cut–you know, following that brief moment where we see again how far the two dancers have drifted from each other. Sara makes a move toward Susie, likely to warn her one final time about the Matrons...but Balfour purposefully steps between them. Sara leaves, and without a word, Susie watches her go. It's a point of no return for both of them.
Whether it's a newly-coiffed Susie or a less-fortunate dancer, though, I got my eyeballs right up on it because whoa, is that blood on her right hand? And then: what the actual fuck is with her left hand??
I thought maybe it was a weird frame, a blurry artifact from screencapping at the wrong moment, but nope. That horrifying chicken claw is just how her hand looks.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Guess I'll be waiting for the Criterion edition in the hopes that includes answers. Can I sue Amazon Studios for putting out such a skimpy Blu-ray package?
*ETA: check the comments for some answers!
7 comments:
ah, glad you noticed it wasn't in the film! this scene is in the screenplay and comes directly after sara runs away from susie getting her hair cut, the girl on the floor is Caroline frantically crying, she screams that
"Parts of me --are just falling off.Tomorrow I might not even be able to talk at all, or dance, or even remember who I am!"
sarah tells her that she has some sort of condition and that she should be brought to the hospital, and caroline tells her that not only has she never had seizures before that week, but that
"I didn’t go to a hospital. Blanc brought a doctor to me."
unlike in the movie, in the screenplay caroline doesnt just have one seizure after the dance rehearsal, but also while she is in the company's washing machine room as they discuss susie's dancing abilities.
"Sonia glances behind her and sees Caroline is on the floor a-gain, seizing even harder this time."
SPEAKING OF DELETED SCENES in susie's dream we can see blanc and susie dancing for a split second and in the behind the scenes video ("making of suspiria") we see susie wearing sarah's pink night coat thingy as she visits blanc at blanc's room's desk, this is all that the dream and "making of" show but they are deleted scenes from the screenplay where late one night susie visit's blanc's study. blanc asks her
"Do you want to talk or dance?"
susie's response
"Dance."
after that blanc takes susie to her own little dancing room connected to her own (the same one you took note of on your post about the international suspiria posters)
this is actually in the screenplay where the jumps scene happens, though susie has already gained her jumps from caroline, she doesnt need practice, this also where susie tells her she want's to be the company's hands
and while i would trade a chest vagina to see this whole scene, i do really love the jumps scene we have in the end, i know luca is very happy with the final cut of the film but like, it wouldnt KILL him to just show the othersss
I thought it might be Caroline! And I def need to re-read the script, although for these posts I'm trying to stick to the film itself / what's onscreen so things don't get muddled. I'm surprised they filmed that scene and I'd still love to see it (and all the rest). The film is *so* different than the script that's floating around; I'd love to hear about the process and how we got the finished product but OH DANG I guess that would require SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
And I love the "Higher!" jumps scene just the way it is, personally, for it is basically a sex scene
Man, I am nowhere as into this movie as you are, Stacie, but just watching the trailer makes me think I need to drop some money on a projector so I can watch it big all the time.
(It's still probably my favorite of 2018, which for me, was one of the best year's for movies in the last few years.)
As for all the references to female artists - do you think the witch's formation in the Sabbath is supposed to be a reference to Judy Chicago's The Dinner Table? I mean, in the original script it is ACTUALLY a triangular table where they drink wine and eat viscera as preparation for the ritual. Considering all the female body iconography in this movie + the fact that it's the 70s, I'm getting such Suspiria vibes everytime I think about The Dinner Table.
@Yago – absolutely! I'm mentioning her kind of a generally because I'm just going with what's on-screen vs the og script...but even so she's definitely a huge influence on a lot of the film.
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