The Stendhal Syndrome

Director: Dario Argento

1996 / 120min / 4K DCP

In her second of a total of six partnerings with her horror maestro father, Asia Argento plays a detective who, on the trail of a serial rapist and murderer in Florence, discovers herself to be subject to the titular condition, a kind of paralysis when in the presence of artistic masterpieces—a weakness that her prey will use to his advantage. A throwback giallo with all the knotty plotting, psychological torment, and distorted nightmare logic that fans of the genre treasure, as well as, curiously enough, the only film to be granted permission to shoot inside the Uffizi Gallery. (Contrary to the film’s depiction, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus hangs in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels.)

DCP courtesy of Cinecittà Studios