Trivia for
La sindrome di Stendhal (1996) More at IMDbPro »

• Stendhal Syndrome is a real syndrome, first diagnosed in Florence, Italy in 1982. Named after the French writer Stendhal AKA Marie-Henri Beyle who reportedly experienced like symptoms in 1817.
  
  
• This was reportedly the first feature film made in Italy to use CGI.
  
  
• Die-hard Dario Argento fan Bridget Fonda was to have played the main role.
  
  
• Director Dario Argento tried at first to get Bridget Fonda and then Jennifer Jason Leigh to play the role of Anna. He eventually cast his own daughter, Asia Argento, in the role.
  
  
• This would be the last fiction feature film for acclaimed director of photography Giuseppe Rotunno. The following year he shot a documentary on Marcello Mastroianni before retiring.
  
  
• The painting that Anna literally steps into is a Rembrant painting of 17th Century policemen entitled 'Night Watch'. The painting that causes Anna to faint in the museum is by Brueghel, it's called Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.
  
  
• According to experts some 80% of people suffer from stendhal syndrome to lesser and greater degrees.
  
  
• Director Dario Argento said he experienced stendhal syndrome as a child. While touring Athens with his parents young Dario was climbing the steps of the Parthenon when he was over come by a trance that caused him to become lost from his parents for hours. The experience was so strong that Argento never forgot it and immediately thought of it when he came across Magherini's book, which would become the basis of the film.
  
  
• Thomas Kretschmann was cast as Alfredo Grossi because Dario Argento had seen him working with star Asia Argento on the set of La reine Margot (1994). Argento was impressed enough by Kretschmann that he would later think of him for the role.
  
  
• Ennio Morricone's eerie music score for the film follows the same tune played either forward or backward!
  
  
• The footage of Anna underwater after fainting in the gallery was actually shot in the sea - not a swimming pool. The huge grouper fish that Anna kisses was a remote model that was being pulled through the waters by cables attached to a small float on the oceans surface. Mere moments after wrapping the underwater shoot, the fish stopped working.
  
  
• At one point the film was set to be made in American with Daryl Hannah cast as Anna Manni. The plans fell through and the production was moved to Italy.
  
  
• Graffiti artists were brought in to cover the underground lair of Alfredo with graffiti. In one night the group created over a hundred square feet of graffiti-covered walls on the location.
  
  

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