Rediscovering
Written
on 12/6/08
Each month, I will be focusing on something within the film world that deserves to be rediscovered, whether it’s a film, actor/actress, or similar themed subjects, in an opinion form. This month we rediscover Dario Argento’s “The Stendhal Syndrome (1996)”.
With the release of his newest film, “Mother of Tears” and re-releases of his work from Anchor Bay, “Phenomena” and “Tenebre”, I’ve been in an Argento mood lately. Argento has always divided horror fans down the middle. Mainstream critics just don’t get his style or his work. But Argento continues to thrive in an Italian film market which is all but dead. How’s that? Argento has been quoted as saying that the success of horror films has been its downfall, but I believe Argento is such a name that he can always find money to finance a new film. It hasn’t always been easy as we lead into discussing “Stendhal Syndrome” but now with a new generation of fans as writers and producers, Argento continues to make exciting new work, as apparent with Oscar winner Adrian Brody in Argento’s latest film due out in 2009, “Giallo”.
Argento was coming off a double dose of sourness from a laborious production of one of his first American productions, “Trauma”, which was also so unsuccessful he was forced into financial trouble. He closed his production company ADC Co. and was forced to do a mad scramble to find a new project to help with some debt. Each idea after idea faltered, from the possibility of remaking his own directorial debut, “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage” to “Golem” a 1914 silent film, to trying his hand back on TV with an idea called “Six Crimes, Six Cities”. But much like how he got the idea to due 1985’s “Phenomena”, he was looking through a medical book when the idea of a woman suffering from the Stendhal Syndrome came to him.
The Stendhal Syndrome is a disease in which a person is so deeply affected by a beautiful work of art that it affects them physically, with a mental collapse. This had happened to Marie-Henri Beyle, a Parisian writer who is credited to pushing the novel to newer boundaries, paved the way for people like Charles Dickens to construct his dense narratives1. He was looking at a Michelangelo fresco painting during 1817 when this happened to him. For Argento, it had a narrative quality and was going to be the subject to his next film.
Anna (played by his daughter, the beautiful Asia Argento) got a hot tip about the whereabouts to where a serial killer she’s been pursuing, stumbles into the Florence Uffizi Art Gallery in Italy and stars hallucinating as she gazes into Brueghel’s “The Fall of Icarus”. Here’s where Argento masterfully begins this film, with a weird trippy assault of images and surrealism, where Anna is kissing rubber fish from the painting. These beautifully choreographed sequences (another with a Rembrandt painting) is carefully scored by the great, immortal Ennio Morricone, with typical shifting camera work-a stable in Argento’s bag of tricks-psychedelically transform us into this strange new world. The serial killer happens to notice this, Stendhal Syndrome, has happened to Anna, and then begins stalking and raping her, hoping she’s his personal redemptive Angel of Death.
Reviews came out mixed, but time has been kind to this picture as now it’s regarded as the best Argento picture in his modern age. Argento pictures have been divided into three sections for his body of work; his gialli stage (giallo means yellow in Italian, a term coin for murder mystery books at the time), his supernatural stage (which includes most of his best work-“Suspiria”, “Inferno”, “Tenebre”) and now his modern set, probably and arguable his most uneven work to date (the boring “Card Player”, the great “Jenifer”, the tame “Do You Like Hitchcock?” and the rousing “Mother of Tears”).
Further analyze of “Stendhal Syndrome” should reveal why this is his best modern film and whether a casual horror fan should enjoy.
The second part of the film starts some of what critics have called ‘half-baked’ or ‘marshmallow’ ideas of Freudian context. I disagree. In “Cat O’ Nine Tails” Argento explored the possibility of gender transgression with the film’s idea of an XYY chromosome. In “Stendhal Syndrome”, he takes it further by using Anna has his vessel for this idea.
When Anna receives the tip that the serial killer is in the art gallery she assumes it’s from a female, but in reality it’s Alfredo, the serial killer using a device to hide his voice. This is the start of three phases of gender transgression Anna encounters. The first is that she is a police detective, an occupation commonly held by men. Her boss’s name is even Manetti, referencing the ‘man’ aspect, but this early part of the picture focuses on Anna as a woman. Here, we have her mouth as the film’s constant reminder of her sexually. Barbara Creed, a psychologist, explains that children refer to the mouth as purely female and purely sexually.
Argento follows the path of some pills she takes shortly after the first hallucination she has, from the mouth in, as the camera tags behind the pills as they go down her throat to her belly. The vagina is also seen as a form of the mouth, according to Creed, as that is how Alfredo enters Anna. With a continuous reminder of the lips/vagina motif, look for Anna’s lips to bleed throughout the film.
The Anna as a man stage, the first gender transition, begins when after the brutalization from the raping and her killing of Alfredo. She starts dressing more masculine, with baggier clothes, a new shorter hair style, and even a few times her voice deepens as if to mimic Alfredo. Anna although still feels as if Alfredo is inside of her. This references the rape and the gender role confusion she’s experiencing. This is also the second part of a castration motif, used as subtext throughout the course of the picture. The first part is Alfredo’s. He reaffirms that he has the penis as he cuts her lips (remember the lips are a metaphor for female and vagina). This is also referencing a Freudian subject of castration in his essay about Medusa. Medusa’s severed head represents castration, with the snakes as the source of men’s fear of castration; a form of the myth of vagina dentate (a subject of the new horror film “Teeth”). On the flip side, Anna fear of castration comes from the Oedipus complex; discovering that boy’s has penises and she might have already lost hers.
Continuing Anna has a man theme, as she comes home we learn she was raised by men, her brothers. Her mom has died or left. The roles have truly reversed as she now takes the role as a man, as she too rapes. Her man status continues during the killing of Alfredo when she uses a gun to kill him. The bullets are a metaphor for the penis as they penetrate his neck.
The third and final stage of Anna’s gender transgression is her role as a transsexual. By the end of the film, she has recovered from the rape and the Stendhal Syndrome, dresses up differently, wears a wig, and now dates someone new. The new boyfriend is named Marie, a rather feminine name for a man, don’t you think? Also during this stage of the film, the cinematography changes, now casting long shadows and positioning light to create mood, much like the 1940s film, know now as noir. If that’s to be true, then Anna is now a femme fatale; a sexual yet phallic woman (she has a gun in her purse). The film also continues the mouth imagery. Anna paints objects with huge open mouths, the killer shoots women in the mouths during climaxing, a character that continues to lick her lips, even dialogue referencing the mouth.
This all makes for one of Argento’s more provocative and interesting works. Amongst his body of work, themes are continued like all good directors, he continues to explore ideas through his films, with his signature style and genre, the giallo. For non-Argento fans, I think “The Stendhal Syndrome” offers up unique imagery, a compelling rape/revenge narrative, and a good performance by Asia. The film holds up a decade or so later and should be rightfully rediscovered as a solid horror film.
Next month, we’ll rediscover the films of Christina Lindberg!
With the release of his newest film, “Mother of Tears” and re-releases of his work from Anchor Bay, “Phenomena” and “Tenebre”, I’ve been in an Argento mood lately. Argento has always divided horror fans down the middle. Mainstream critics just don’t get his style or his work. But Argento continues to thrive in an Italian film market which is all but dead. How’s that? Argento has been quoted as saying that the success of horror films has been its downfall, but I believe Argento is such a name that he can always find money to finance a new film. It hasn’t always been easy as we lead into discussing “Stendhal Syndrome” but now with a new generation of fans as writers and producers, Argento continues to make exciting new work, as apparent with Oscar winner Adrian Brody in Argento’s latest film due out in 2009, “Giallo”.
Argento was coming off a double dose of sourness from a laborious production of one of his first American productions, “Trauma”, which was also so unsuccessful he was forced into financial trouble. He closed his production company ADC Co. and was forced to do a mad scramble to find a new project to help with some debt. Each idea after idea faltered, from the possibility of remaking his own directorial debut, “The Bird with the Crystal Plumage” to “Golem” a 1914 silent film, to trying his hand back on TV with an idea called “Six Crimes, Six Cities”. But much like how he got the idea to due 1985’s “Phenomena”, he was looking through a medical book when the idea of a woman suffering from the Stendhal Syndrome came to him.
The Stendhal Syndrome is a disease in which a person is so deeply affected by a beautiful work of art that it affects them physically, with a mental collapse. This had happened to Marie-Henri Beyle, a Parisian writer who is credited to pushing the novel to newer boundaries, paved the way for people like Charles Dickens to construct his dense narratives1. He was looking at a Michelangelo fresco painting during 1817 when this happened to him. For Argento, it had a narrative quality and was going to be the subject to his next film.
Anna (played by his daughter, the beautiful Asia Argento) got a hot tip about the whereabouts to where a serial killer she’s been pursuing, stumbles into the Florence Uffizi Art Gallery in Italy and stars hallucinating as she gazes into Brueghel’s “The Fall of Icarus”. Here’s where Argento masterfully begins this film, with a weird trippy assault of images and surrealism, where Anna is kissing rubber fish from the painting. These beautifully choreographed sequences (another with a Rembrandt painting) is carefully scored by the great, immortal Ennio Morricone, with typical shifting camera work-a stable in Argento’s bag of tricks-psychedelically transform us into this strange new world. The serial killer happens to notice this, Stendhal Syndrome, has happened to Anna, and then begins stalking and raping her, hoping she’s his personal redemptive Angel of Death.
Reviews came out mixed, but time has been kind to this picture as now it’s regarded as the best Argento picture in his modern age. Argento pictures have been divided into three sections for his body of work; his gialli stage (giallo means yellow in Italian, a term coin for murder mystery books at the time), his supernatural stage (which includes most of his best work-“Suspiria”, “Inferno”, “Tenebre”) and now his modern set, probably and arguable his most uneven work to date (the boring “Card Player”, the great “Jenifer”, the tame “Do You Like Hitchcock?” and the rousing “Mother of Tears”).
Further analyze of “Stendhal Syndrome” should reveal why this is his best modern film and whether a casual horror fan should enjoy.
The second part of the film starts some of what critics have called ‘half-baked’ or ‘marshmallow’ ideas of Freudian context. I disagree. In “Cat O’ Nine Tails” Argento explored the possibility of gender transgression with the film’s idea of an XYY chromosome. In “Stendhal Syndrome”, he takes it further by using Anna has his vessel for this idea.
When Anna receives the tip that the serial killer is in the art gallery she assumes it’s from a female, but in reality it’s Alfredo, the serial killer using a device to hide his voice. This is the start of three phases of gender transgression Anna encounters. The first is that she is a police detective, an occupation commonly held by men. Her boss’s name is even Manetti, referencing the ‘man’ aspect, but this early part of the picture focuses on Anna as a woman. Here, we have her mouth as the film’s constant reminder of her sexually. Barbara Creed, a psychologist, explains that children refer to the mouth as purely female and purely sexually.
Argento follows the path of some pills she takes shortly after the first hallucination she has, from the mouth in, as the camera tags behind the pills as they go down her throat to her belly. The vagina is also seen as a form of the mouth, according to Creed, as that is how Alfredo enters Anna. With a continuous reminder of the lips/vagina motif, look for Anna’s lips to bleed throughout the film.
The Anna as a man stage, the first gender transition, begins when after the brutalization from the raping and her killing of Alfredo. She starts dressing more masculine, with baggier clothes, a new shorter hair style, and even a few times her voice deepens as if to mimic Alfredo. Anna although still feels as if Alfredo is inside of her. This references the rape and the gender role confusion she’s experiencing. This is also the second part of a castration motif, used as subtext throughout the course of the picture. The first part is Alfredo’s. He reaffirms that he has the penis as he cuts her lips (remember the lips are a metaphor for female and vagina). This is also referencing a Freudian subject of castration in his essay about Medusa. Medusa’s severed head represents castration, with the snakes as the source of men’s fear of castration; a form of the myth of vagina dentate (a subject of the new horror film “Teeth”). On the flip side, Anna fear of castration comes from the Oedipus complex; discovering that boy’s has penises and she might have already lost hers.
Continuing Anna has a man theme, as she comes home we learn she was raised by men, her brothers. Her mom has died or left. The roles have truly reversed as she now takes the role as a man, as she too rapes. Her man status continues during the killing of Alfredo when she uses a gun to kill him. The bullets are a metaphor for the penis as they penetrate his neck.
The third and final stage of Anna’s gender transgression is her role as a transsexual. By the end of the film, she has recovered from the rape and the Stendhal Syndrome, dresses up differently, wears a wig, and now dates someone new. The new boyfriend is named Marie, a rather feminine name for a man, don’t you think? Also during this stage of the film, the cinematography changes, now casting long shadows and positioning light to create mood, much like the 1940s film, know now as noir. If that’s to be true, then Anna is now a femme fatale; a sexual yet phallic woman (she has a gun in her purse). The film also continues the mouth imagery. Anna paints objects with huge open mouths, the killer shoots women in the mouths during climaxing, a character that continues to lick her lips, even dialogue referencing the mouth.
This all makes for one of Argento’s more provocative and interesting works. Amongst his body of work, themes are continued like all good directors, he continues to explore ideas through his films, with his signature style and genre, the giallo. For non-Argento fans, I think “The Stendhal Syndrome” offers up unique imagery, a compelling rape/revenge narrative, and a good performance by Asia. The film holds up a decade or so later and should be rightfully rediscovered as a solid horror film.
Next month, we’ll rediscover the films of Christina Lindberg!
