stendhal

THE FLICK: Director Dario Argento’s body of work is not unlike that of horror-rockabilly icons The Cramps, who’ve been performing minor variations of the same song since 1982. If you own one Cramps album, you essentially own them all. Ditto for Argento’s films, which, more often that not, revolve around the witness to some horrific crime who spends the entire movie trying to recall one crucial piece of evidence before falling victim to a black-gloved killer. After 1970’s The Bird With The Crystal Plumage, it would be easy to write Argento off as a one-shot auteur (which defies the very definition of the word), but like The Cramps, there is a certain genius in the minute variations; as if the creators are perfecting their craft, chipping away at a masterpiece that is as yet unfinished. The Stendhal Syndrome is not that masterpiece. But it is the director’s most mature and professional work in the modern era (I’m talking anything post-Opera), anchored by a challenging performance from his own daughter, Asia Argento, as a police-woman stalked by a serial rapist who finds her personality swallowed up by an overload of classical art, emotional angst and sexual identity. The title refers to a mental state in which one is “emotionally overcome” when confronted by dramatic works on art. In Argento’s film, this occurs in the opening sequence, a dialogue free 10-minute mini-movie in which Asia’s character, Detective Anna Manni (film students: pay attention, that last name is significant!), is overwhelmed during a museum tour. The shock leaves her in a state of amnesia, during which she is confronted by the very suspect she was searching for, a brutal rapist/murderer, who takes advantage of Anna’s fragile condition but leaves her alive. Playing a sick game of cat and mouse, the rapist targets Anna for yet another attack and the resulting confrontation leaves them both irreparably damaged. Lifting a great deal from Hitchcock’s Vertigo, including the aggressively downbeat ending and a hypnotically beautiful score from Ennio Morricone, Argento forgoes his usual connect-the-dots Giallo structure for a more character driven story. It still makes very little sense narratively, but the theme rises above his usual shortcomings, with enough visual flourishes to satisfy the gorehounds who keep him in business. For the first time in an Argento film the violence is not fetishized, but rather presented in all its raw brutality. The rape sequences are ugly and uncomfortable – moral judgments of a father directing his own daughter’s rape scene notwithstanding – elevating Stendhal above the horror-fantasy universe of Argento’s previous work and confronting the bitter truth that death is a dirty, painful and most decidedly non-Technicolor affair. That doesn’t mean that Stendhal is the director’s best effort, just the latest variation on a common theme. If given the choice, many fans (including myself) would probably prefer to sit down with something less heavy and more stylistically enjoyable. But mapping Argento’s growth as a filmmaker is just as much fun as listening to “Goo Goo Muck” for the 200th time. THE FEATURES: Replacing the rather unimpressive Troma DVD from a few years back, this 2-Disc Special Edition courtesy of Blue Underground should be the final say on Stendhal unless it miraculously makes the move to HD. The transfer is predictably perfect and the sound mix offers a variety of audiophile options (6.1 DTS, DD, and the standard surround tracks) with both the English and Italian dubbed tracks. All the extras besides the theatrical trailer are contained on disc two, broken up into a variety of 20-minute interviews. Argento covers the most ground about Stendhal specifically, including his inspiration for the film, working with his daughter and where the film ranks in his oeuvre. However, other technicians and experts give their two-cents as well, including Graziella Magherini (the journalist whose article on the obscure medical syndrome inspired Argento), Sergio Stivaletti (FX guru who pioneered the CGI work used in the film...the first of its kind in Italy) and production designer Antonello Geleng. But it’s assistant director Luigi Cozzi, a longtime Argento collaborator, who dishes the most dirt about much sought after Argento projects like Four Flies on Grey Velvet and Five Days in Milan. BU’s release of The Stendhal Syndrome is yet another beautiful piece of the puzzle in Argento’s jigsaw of a career.