Occultism in Suspiria: pt. I
Jacopo Mariani featured in Suspiria (1977) as minor character Albert, director Madame Blanc’s nephew. Mariani was also used by Argento in 1975's Profondo Rosso as a young Carlo. Albert is first seen in Suspiria when Suzy first enters the Tanz Academie. Sitting in a corner reading a magazine, Albert is introduced by Madame Blanc to Suzy before exiting off screen. We later see Albert in the hallway leading to the yellow ballet room, accompanying the cook and presumably assisting in whatever witchcraft takes place–smiling for the only time in the film when Suzy is struck by the spell.
Off screen, the audience learns from a furious Mrs. Tanner that Albert has been bitten by the blind piano player’s dog, saying, “he took a piece out of Albert’s arm.” This is used by Tanner and the coven as reason to murder the piano player. We see Albert a final time in the coven’s lair, helping during some sort of ritual when Madame Blanc attempts to hex Suzy. As the spell presumably backfires, it is Albert that suddenly turns and whispers something to Pavlo, prompting the butler to investigate the hallway.
After Helena’s death, Suzy stumbles back into the hallway to glimpse Blanc, Tanner, and Pavlo dying–Albert is mysteriously absent. This could be to avoid showing a child’s death; Ostensibly, Argento’s original idea was the feature a cast of children but changed the script after producer Salvatore Argento (Dario’s father) believed such a film would be banned. Notably, Argento would show child deaths in 1985's Phenomena.
Diogenes of Sinope, a Greek philosopher, would famously argue that dogs are thought to know instinctively who is friend and who is foe; this quality of dogs detecting the supernatural is a frequent addition to European folklore and literature (as in Christabel (1797) and Carmilla (1872)).
The name Albert is Germanic in origin, composed of adal “noble” and beraht “bright” and is one of the few names mentioned in the film that is not directly religious or biblical in nature. Additionally, bright white light is always associated with witchcraft. Though it’s obvious that Albert is a member of the coven, the seeing eye dog’s attack on him insinuates a darker possibility: Albert is actually a puppet of Helena Markos. After her presumed death, the Albert persona would allow her to directly interact with the outside world without exposing her. Following this interpretation, Albert’s mysterious disappearance reveals an illusory nature as one of Helena’s machinations.
One other possibility is that Albert is the vessel for one of the demons from which Helena presumably draws her power–most likely Satanachia, able to subjugate all women and girls to his will, or Nebiros, who, “speaketh with a hoarse voice” and “maketh a man amiable and cunning in all arts.”.
[See more analysis here, including the rest of my Suspiria series.]
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