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the audience applauded

Simply Perfect

Redundant and unnecessary.

Just perfect...

Being a big fan of Argento's(especially early work, like Suspiria) I just had to see this movie. As I have seen "The Card Player" before "The Stendhal's Syndrome", I was a bit concerned. It is in fact more intelligent and mature affair than previous Argento's movies. Anna Manni, the character played by his daughter Asia Argento(She also played in her father's Trauma), has more compassion than any other character in an Argento's movie, quite unlike the carelessly created cartoon-like characters of his other works. Also it is not as gore as for example Tenebrae.About technical parts. editing is done very nice(showing of 2 parallel actions happening in the same time and quick flashbacks). Also, like in all Giallo movies, color/lightning plays an important role in understanding of the movie itself. It's got flexible camera, especially in the beginning(when Anna walks through the museum). Unfortunately, it's got some bad effects and the dialogue is average, like in most Argento's movies.Won't spoil the ending, but the movie itself holds story nice and the ending is twisty, like in all Dario's movies.

After tracking down the "work print" cut to writer/directing auteur Dario Argento's underrated 1993 Giallo Trauma,I decided to search around online,for details about other Argento movies with different cuts.Taking a look at Amazon UK reviews,I was pleased to discover that an uncut edition of The Stendhal Syndrome had come out on DVD in the UK,which led to me getting ready to see another painting by Argento.The plot:Walking around an art gallery, Det. Anna Manni finds herself overcome with the emotions expressed in the paintings,which leads to Manni fainting in the gallery.After a fellow visitor to the gallery called Alfredo Grossi helps her to regain consciousness,Manni rushes back to her hotel.Trying to make sense in her bedroom of what has taken place,Manni is suddenly gripped by Grossi,who slams her on the bed.Taking a razor blade out of his mouth,Grossi rapes Manni,and leaves his own permanent mark,by cutting a scar across her cheeks.Surviving the attack,Manni discovers that her attacker is a suspected serial rapist, who has also started to murder his victims.Tracking down Grossi,Manni soon discover that the scar he left her runs deeper than it originally appeared.View on the film:Reuniting with composer Ennio Morricone, (who gives a spidery score,designed to sound exactly the same played backwards or forwards!)Dario Argento gives the film a blistering opening,with the titles motif of cut lips,blood and razor blades giving this Giallo a strong,rather peculiar Freudian cut.Being the first Italian film to use CGI effects,Argento and cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno largely use the effects to show Manni's psychological breakdown,with the stylish scenes of Manni melting into paintings giving the title a supernatural quality,whilst Argento's attempts to mix the eye- catching,ultra stylised practical effects-made murder scenes with CGI reveals a film maker who is a bit too excited with his new toy.Taking a unique approach to the screenplay,Argento and co-writer Franco Ferrini place the viewer on an insider perspective to the unfolding mystery,by making the amateur sleuth a victim of the rapist/killer,and also uncovering the unknown murderers identity within the first 10 minutes.Whilst Argento does strike a bold note by solving the mystery early on,the Giallo elements are never able to fully recover,due to their being no mystery or tension of finding the "unknown" for the film to build upon,which leads to the Giallo elements plodding along to the finish line.Keeping away from giving the Giallo any sense of sexual excitement,Argento shows the rape of Manni in a horrific, aggressive manner,with Argento focusing on Manni's face to show the full effect that the attack (s) have on her.Pushing the Giallo element's to the side for the final 60 minutes,the writer's attempt to roll out a warped Film Noir,with Manni being shown as a tragic dame,who is slowly losing her mind. Disappointingly ,the writers fail to build any psychological depth to Manni during the opening hour,which leads to Manni's gradual fall into copying the person who destroyed her,lacking the emotional impact that the film desires.Whilst she does show a real sense of fury in Manni's case to track down Grossi (played with a real viciousness by Thomas Kretschmann- who would reunite with Dario Argento for Dracula 3D) ,Asia Argento gives a stilted performance as Manni,with Asia Argento feeling completely detached to the emotionally fragile events that Manni is experiencing,which leads to this being a Giallo which won't cause any viewers to faint.

Firstly, I saw this on The Horror Channel and it was dubbed into 'American', which spoiled the authenticity of it all and cheapened it. I saw Argento's "Opera", which I loved and that was in its original Italian and was superb.Others have generally written lengthy reviews but I'm keeping it short, partly as I'm not really a fan of horror and not an expert on the subject. Therefore, I take as I find.I didn't mind the blood, or the body injury details but I did object to the sexual violence. Anybody who has any sense of human sensitivity would object too and whilst this is a part of the story, as it involves a serial rapist who then murders, watching it is near impossible. I don't know whether I'm saying Argento shouldn't have included those scenes, or not, but for me, they cloud the rest of the film and I find I cannot judge it fairly.I do like the creepiness that hovers around much of it, though the syndrome that causes Asia Argento debilitating hallucinations, with the works of art probably goes too far. I admire Argento's bold and vivid visuals as a whole, in both this and others of his I've seen - these are his major assets. However, the CSI type CGI'd visuals look out of place but of course we now compare them with CGI technology 15 years later.The film then moves into murder mystery zone rather than horror but I'm afraid that I'd lost concentration and interest by then. With the dodgy dubbing and stilted action it had lost its pace - and appeal. After the excellent 'Opera', this later Argento is disappointing, despite some interesting directorial flourishes.

There's a rapist on the loose in this movie, we've no idea why, we never find out why. It's not a whodunnit, it's not a procedural, just what on earth is it? It seems Dario simply wanted to play around filming his daughter in bizarre and perilous situations, hopefully with an admixture of paintings and objets d'art. It's a perverse film really, it's all daughter fixation, the other characters are paper thin, the rapist/killer more a force of nature. If you wanted to look at it as an experimental film, and focus more on what was going on behind the camera rather than in front, maybe you could get a lot out of it (Stendhal Syndrome would make a good double bill with Serge Bromberg's reconstruction of Henri-Georges Clouzot's unfinished movie Inferno, which is made from basically hours of screen test fixating on Romy Schneider). I confess that I think most people would get nothing out of this movie other than an aching ass. Viewed conventionally it's a ship full of holes, but if and once you realise you're OK with swimming down to Davy Jones' locker in conch apparel, it's quite the Epicurean experience.Some of the movie is in Rome, some Viterbo, some Florence. Dario obviously wanted to shoot museums in these three places, and so contrived the plot to do that, but without much craft at all. The plot really becomes downright damned weird and even includes psychic transference.I just love the start of Stendhal Syndrome, the Ennio Morricone soundtrack is quite creepy and we see Detective Anna Manni (Asia Argento) freaking out at the Uffizi, because of the power of the paintings, literally falling into Pieter Breughel's painting The Fall of Icarus. I love paintings so I really dig all of that, I spent a lot of time looking at Caravaggio's Medusa when I went to the Uffizi, when I was a kid the idea of Medusa's head used to scare the hell out of me. The Morricone motif overlayed for the Caravaggio is nightmarish. There's another great scene in a grafittoed grotto which mirrors the Uffizi stuff.I have to admit that getting to the end of this movie has been a little project of mine. For some reason I always fall asleep during Dario's more sprawling films. There's half an hour of fat to be trimmed off this one, and Four Flies on Grey Velvet I've totally given up on, four times asleep, even though the last attempt on the summit was at midday on a Sunday.And I have to be honest with you dear user (big on admissions today) I found the scene when Anna presses her boyfriend up against the wall and fondles him (and more) to be really very erotic.It's a god-damned mess, but I finally got through it. If you would welcome the thick-lipped kiss of oblivion for a moment, and aren't wound up too tight about production values, you could give this a go.