La Sindrome di Stendhal
Dario Argento (born 1940) has been one of the masters of Italian horror films since the 1970s, in the purest lineage of Mario Bava and Riccardo Freda. He shot The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal) in 1996, when he moved back to Italy after working in the United States for ten years.
Anna Manni (Asia Argento), a young inspector in the Roman anti-rape brigade, winds up in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence on the trail of a serial killer. 'Stendhal Syndrome' strikes her and she blends into the works of art, such as Bruegel's Fall of Icarus, which come to life. When she leaves the museum, the man she was looking for assaults her. The double shock triggers her schizophrenia, and she becomes the serial killer she was tracking down, acting like the victim and the victimiser, and playing the roles of a man and a woman.
Anna's multiple facets materialise in particular in physical changes. Her long-hair Madonna looks before she is raped become short-haired, pulled-back and masculine after it. Then, when she assimilates the blond murderer she was looking for, she dons a long blonde wig and morphs into a femme fatale. Anna's intrinsic personality blurs into oblivion because of art and for art's sake.
Opinions about this film varied but it promptly caused a stir. It encapsulates Argento's singular thoughts on the arts and their influences. The main character and the works of art interpenetrate. The special effects that bring the paintings to life to Ennio Morricone's music in the background are haunting. Artistic quotations abound on the screen and in the symbols – up until the last scene when all the characters are in positions distinctly reminiscent of a Pietà.
