Luca Guadagnino’s favourite books of all time
There’s a deep physical sensuality that embodies the cinema work of Italian film director Luca Guadagnino, and his films are defined by some of the most sumptuous visual moments that the medium itself has been fortunate enough to exhibit throughout the 21st century, including A Bigger Splash and Suspiria.
After making his feature debut in 1999 with The Protagonists, he continued to work frequently with Tilda Swinton, as well as the likes of Dakota Johnson and Timothée Chalamet. Guadagnino’s films often vary in genre, but they are linked by that very distinctive visual prowess and an exploration of the more complex emotions.
Back in 2018, when Guadagnino was promoting Suspiria, he discussed some of his favourite books, specifically those that had a significant impact on his adaptation of the classic Dario Argento horror movie. Unsurprisingly, we find lots of themes in the director’s favourites that are indeed present in his excellent version of Suspiria.
“Sigmund Freud on the uncanny; historian Carlo Ginzburg on the history of the witches’ Sabbath; a 1977 interview with German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder; Il Dio delle donne (The God of Women) by philosopher Luisa Muraro, translated from the Italian; diarist Victor Klemperer’s notebook on the language of the Third Reich,” the director said.
Freud’s essay The Uncanny was first published in 1919 in the Imago journal that the famous father of psychoanalysis founded in Vienna. It focuses on the strange phenomenon of the uncanny, an experience through which humans confront their subconscious desires through an interaction with what seems familiar to them.
There’s an interview with the German cinema legend Rainer Werner Fassbinder with Norbert Sparrow given in 1977 that was first published in the American magazine Cineaste, while the German theme (after all, Suspiria is indeed set in the country) continues with Victor Klemperer’s The Language of the Third Reich.
The book, a study of the Nazi’s perversion of social language, draws from Klemperer’s diaries after he was expelled from the Technical University of Dresden for being Jewish. Guadagnino also named one of his characters after the journalist and professor.
Unsurprisingly, there’s also an investigation into the history of witchcraft by Carlo Ginzburg called Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath, while an examination on the impact of female mystics, Il Dio delle donne by Luisa Muraro, also makes an appearance.
“These writings were an important part of my personal upbringing,” Guadagnino noted. “For me, they represent a source of study and work and inspiration, but I think they speak for themselves.”
Luca Guadagnino’s favourite books:
- The Uncanny by Sigmund Freud
- I Let the Audience Feel and Think by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- The Language of the Third Reich by Victor Klemperer
- Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath by Carlo Ginzburg
- The Body and Language: Body Art and Like Stories by Lea Vergine
- Il Dio delle donne by Luisa Muraro
