American Cinematographer - February 2010 - 72

◗ Terror in Technicolor 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?’” Part of Tovoli’s approach was to make extensive use of frames of brightly colored velour and tissue paper set in front of Arcs positioned very close to the performers. “I wanted to create light that would simulate the color coming from pots of paint thrown very respectfully on the actors’ faces, recalling Jackson Pollock’s fundamental gesture of splashing pure color on the canvas. In my imagination, our canvas was our actors’ faces. Soon, someone calmly explained to me that this was not possible for multiple reasons, and I was forced to find an alternative method of lighting the actors’ faces and, to an extent, the backgrounds, with the strongest possible light as close to the subject as possible. While shooting, our actors were very often reasonably worried they might be burned!” Tovoli also employed mirrors to change the quality of the light. “The stratagem of the mirrors could double the distance between our light sources and the scene,” he explains, noting that he was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci’s use of mirrors in his work. “If I have to choose one impressive reference, why not go directly to the best? It’s always better to tap in at the highest level! I utilized mirrors not to destroy enemy ships, as Archimedes did in the war between Siracusa and Rome, but to destroy with a violent shaft of hypercolored light a universally ‘elegant’ or ‘refined’ image. This was driven by my desire to always go beyond what would be conventionally accepted. The aesthetic concept on Suspiria — and Argento will forgive me if I pretend to speak for him — was never to subtract, but to add.” After a mysterious infestation is discovered in the girls’ dorm, the students are moved to makeshift quarters in a dance studio, which takes on a sinister look as Suzy and Sara (Stefania Casini) share their fears. To heighten such dramatic contrasts in color, Tovoli (bottom photo, lighting the scene) employed Technicolor IB printing to control his hues. 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 72 February 2010 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 American Cinematographer

American Cinematographer - February 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 2010