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8
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2 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Guest
Review by Troy
Howarth |
Anna
Manni (Asia Argento) is a policewoman with the Anti-Rape team.
Assigned to hunt down a serial rapist at large in Florence,
Manni tracks him to the famous Uffizi Gallery. While there,
she experiences a strange, disorienting sensation while looking
at some paintings. She passes out and when she awakens, she
can no longer remember who she is or why she was in the museum
in the first place. The rapist, Alfredo Grossi (Thomas Kretschmann),
witnesses the spectacle and follows Anna back to her hotel room.
There, he brutally rapes and tortures the young woman before
escaping. Traumatized by the incident, her mind further muddied
by the episode at the museum — which her therapist (Paolo Bonacelli)
reveals as a psychological disorder known as the Stendhal Syndrome
— she continues her hunt for Grossi as her personality undergoes
a drastic change...
Italian horror maestro
Dario Argento, the son of producer Salvatore Argento and a Brazilian
fashion photographer, went from writing for Rome's Paese
Sera newspaper —
where he reviewed favorably the films of Sergio Leone and Mario
Bava —
to breaking into the film industry as a screenwriter; among
his earliest credits is a "co-story" credit on Leone's operatic
masterpiece Once
Upon A Time In The West (1968), to which it is said
that he contributed the bit where Jack Elam is pestered by a
fly. His debut as a director —
the giallo Bird With The
Crystal Plumage (1970) —
announced the arrival of a bold new talent in the genre. Unafraid
to explore —
even wallow in —
the links between eroticism and violent death, his films have
been the constant source of criticism, censorship, disdain and
a massive cult following ever since. After a steady streak of
commercial hits —
Tenebre outperformed Spielberg's E.T.
at the Italian box-office in 1982, as did Phenomena
opposite Indiana Jones And The Temple
Of Doom in 1984 —
the hugely popular director encountered his first commercial
setbacks in the late '80s/early '90s when he decided to relocate
to America in hopes of duplicating his homegrown popularity.
The resulting films —
a Poe portmaneau co-directed with George Romero called Two
Evil Eyes (1989), and a self-referential giallo titled Trauma
(1992) —
have been unfairly maligned,
but few of his loyal followers could argue with his wisdom in
returning to the creative freedom he had available in Italy.
Pre-publicity blitz for his "comeback film", The
Stendhal Syndrome, emphasized it as a return to form,
which is to say graphic, bloody horror as opposed to the restrained
mayhem of his two American films. What few expected, however,
was the bleak, sometimes ugly film he delivered. Embittered
by the censorship imposed upon him in the U.S., a defiant Argento
sought to outdo the colorful violence of his earlier films...
and if The Stendhal Syndrome spills
less buckets of the red stuff than Phenomena
or Tenebre, the tone of the film
is darker and more disturbing. While earlier Argento films derive
a certain sadistic glee in the plentiful murder sequences —
with the all-important 'money shot' coming across as artistic
and stylized instead of realistic —
Stendhal is anything but 'fun'.
The tone is closer to Roman Polanski's Repulsion
(1965) than anything else in the Italian auteur's oeuvre. The
violence is mean-spirited and unpleasant, not at all cartoonish.
In dealing with the sensitive topic of rape, however, Argento
sensibly avoids bad taste eroticism and presents the scenes
of sexual brutality without leering nudity and concentrating
more on the victim's anguished reactions than the pleasure of
the violator.
A typical potshot
taken against Argento's films is the accusation that his female
characters are little more than pretty pieces of meat invariably
sliced by a knife-wielding madman. Careful scrutiny of his filmography
reveals that Argento's most interesting characters actually
tend to be women; indeed, films like Suspiria
(1976), Phenomena and Opera
(1987) are decidedly female-dominated pieces. Perhaps reacting
to these criticisms, Argento gives the audience a singularly
complex protagonist in Anna Manni —
a capable, ambitious young policewoman who attempts to fight
her psychological demons and fails. Humorously, those critics
who chastised Argento's earlier films for being too simplistic
when it came to feminine characters reacted strongly against
Stendhal, too, feeling that Anna
was unsympathetic. How one can watch her brutalization at the
hands of Grossi and not feel for her pain seems inconceivable
to this reviewer, but then again, some viewers are simply never
satisfied.
Though it is now fashionable
to deride Argento's actress daughter Asia, she gives what I
would consider to be one of the strongest performances in his
filmography as the tormented Anna. It's a difficult role —
full of emotional peaks and ebbs, cool and distant one moment,
fiery and twitchy the next —
and the young actress never fails to convince. Alas, although
the film was shot in English, much of it was ultimately post-synched,
with the actress' throaty voice dubbed by a higher-pitched voice,
apparently to make her sound more "innocent". A lamentable
decision —
presumably not the director's
—
that damages the film considerably, although the rest of the
dubbing is serviceable. The supporting cast includes Thomas
Kretschmann as the psychotic Grossi, truly one of the most despicable
villains in Argento's filmography. Handsome and athletic in
build, Grossi is closer to the deranged protagonist of Ellis'
novel American Psycho than the unhinged psychopaths of
earlier Argento films. Outgoing, charming and attractive, he
could easily conquer virtually any woman on his own merits,
but the act of sex is meaningless to him without the "power"
of sadism and cruelty. Grossi is truly the epitome of senseless,
random sadism and Kretschmann's expert portrayal dominates the
first half of the film. Pasolini veteran Paolo Bonacelli (Salo)
is also fine as Anna's mysterious psychiatrist, while Marco
Leonardi (Once Upon A Time In Mexico,
2003) is sympathetic as Anna's bewildered ex-boyfriend.
Argento's propensity
for outlandish visuals is abundant in the film, and it's to
the film's advantage that he was able to secure the services
of Giuseppe Rotunno, who photographed a number of Fellini's
films, notably the ultra-gorgeous experiment that is Fellini
Satyricon (1968). Rotunno's warm visuals lend elegance
to Argento's athletic camerawork, though the director and cinematographer
were apparently at loggerheads during the shoot. Employing shots
that follow pills into a character's stomachs, the director's
powerful visual sense is really at its peak in the various 'hallucination'
scenes that occur when Anna is gripped by the titular (and very
real) disorder. Elsewhere, Argento keeps the visual pyrotechnics
under control as he chronicles Anna's gradually deteriorating
mental state. This is by far Argento's most somber and introspective
work, and the camerawork and lighting are essential to the effect.
Having scored Argento's
first three films, the great Ennio Morricone outdoes himself
with this film. From the haunting main melody to various jangly
suspense cues, it's possibly Morricone's finest score for a
giallo and is every bit as effective as the hard rock/heavy
metal music that dominated the director's soundtracks in years
prior.
Still reviled by many
fans as a misstep by their favorite director, The
Stendhal Syndrome's reputation will surely increase in
the ensuing years. It's certainly his most disturbing work to
date, not to mention his most mature.
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Alas,
Troma's DVD presentation of this terrific film falls way short
of being satisfactory. Rumor has it that Argento was approached
by Lloyd Kaufman (head of Troma), who assured him that the film
would receive a major release in America. None-too-wisely, Argento
took Kaufman at his word and was, to put it mildly, not very pleased
when the film went straight to video after sparse release in major
cities like Los Angeles and New York. At that point, Argento backed
out of recording an audio commentary for the DVD release and barred
Kaufman from having access to the original negative. The ultimate
result, quite simply, is a disgrace. Between obnoxious promos
for Troma films and products, which only serve to make the film
look cheap, the actual transfer doesn't help matters. Incorrectly
framed at under 1.66 (the film was hard-matted to 1.85), the image
is grainy, dark and drained of color. Bursts of red blood that
glowed crimson in Technicolor prints look like black mud on the
DVD. Print damage is negligible, but considering the film's age
this is to be expected. Though uncut, the visuals simply lose
their punch in this incarnation —
and visuals is truly where the director excells. In contrast to
Anchor Bay and Blue Underground's releases of other Argento films,
this disc is strictly amateur hour. Fortunately the audio is much
more servicable, doing justice to Morricone's score, but if you're
hoping for access to the superior Italian track... forget about
it. (This is Troma, after all.) Extras include an awkward interview
with Argento —
edited to make it appear that Kaufman is asking the questions
—
a much better hidden easter egg interview with the Maestro as
he talks to fans in Sweden (click on the razor blade to gain access)
and an assortment of, well, crap pertaining to Troma —
trailers, etc.
Together with Artisan's botched release of Sleepless
(2001), Troma's DVD of Stendhal represents
the lowest of the low with regards to Dario on DVD. Such a fine
film deserves much better than this. 11/21/03 |
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