The film begins with a shot of the heroine, Anna Manni, walking through the crowded, urban streets of Florence. As she passes the oncoming pedestrians, the spectator adopts her perspective through a number of point-of-view shots. This subjective standpoint captures a variety of images of overarching sculptures, that are shot from a low-angle as to indicate their forceful imposition onto the physical and psychological radius of Anna's fragile being. Within this seemingly uneventful shot, Dario Argento strategically devised an ambience of iniquity and instability. He enables the observer to temporarily adapt the mind-frame of the heroine, in order to familiarize him/her with this world of aversion, and to eradicate the spectator from his/her comfort zone.

This sequence concludes with an establishing shot of Anna's destination. She has arrived at the "Gallery Degli Uffizi," which will become the central setting within the narrative and progressively acquire a more symbolic role. As Anna roams through the glamorous halls of this cultural landmark, she becomes enveloped by the beauty and the apparent bewitchment of the large, classical art that graces the walls of this elusive space. She then begins to demonstrate a number of bizarre symptoms of a mental instability, which we later discover to be a psychosomatic illness by the name of the Stendhal Syndrome. It is a documented disorder of the mind that leads to dizziness, disorientation, and hallucination - sometimes triggered by excessive exposure to art. This insinuation within the plot demonstrates an unprecedented approach to the fictive material of the horror genre. By including a combination of psychological and artistic dimensions (the Stendhal Syndrome) and focusing on a more abstruse subject, Argento and Ferrini broaden the horizons of horror films.

The gallery is significant not only for its perpetuation of Anna's instability but it also serves as a setting for the initial point of contact between Anna and the serial killer, whom she has been entrusted to capture through her position as a criminal detective. In attempting to locate the murderer, Anna forgets her purse at the gallery during an intense hallucination spurt. This symbolizes her loss of a referential standpoint along with this material object. As Anna disconcertedly stumbles out of the gallery, the unidentified murderer casually returns the misplaced purse, thus enabling the heroine to temporarily regain composure. This notion emphasizes his congruency with her mental illness - he is her sickness and the sickness is her murderer. She is able to regain her sanity only after the repossession of the purse (a symbol of her identity). It is critical that the person who delivers this object is the one whom she entered the gallery to capture, as it implies Anna’s subordination in the presence of evil. These multi-layers of symbolism indicate that Argento and Ferrini respect their viewers and do not underestimate his/her intelligence as most filmmakers of the horror genre. On the contrary, they challenge the spectator to an intellectual game of "cat and mouse."

The subsequent convergence of the two characters role has been emotionally ambiguous to the spectator due to her dualistic identity as both the "law-occurs within the shot sequence of Anna's sadistic rape by the ruthless serial killer. He graphically cuts her lip before indulging in this domination act - a ritualistic initiation through which he physically and emotionally penetrates the target with his apparatus of masculinity - thus marking the first turning point in the narrative arch. Hitherto, Anna's enforces" and the "mentally unstable prey"; she is officially stigmatized as the "victim" upon the completion of the scene. Despite the assumed physical capability and psychological training that comes with being a police detective, Anna is presented as the epitome of traditional "femininity." For most of the film, sheer presence of the murderer renders her incapable to defend herself on the most basic level. An attentive spectator begins to question whether extreme helplessness is logical for the portrayal of an alleged policewoman; however, Ferrini and Argento invert our expectations by including a scene where Anna pretends to sleep and outsmarts the killer by unexpectedly attacking as he hovers over her.

The most horrific aspect of the film lays less in its timed shocks or gory depiction of blood and murder but more with its thematic undercurrents. Dario Argento demonstrates acuteness for psychological character development as he illustrates the progressive deterioration of Anna’s identity and her eventual embodiment of the very qualities from which she was attempting to escape and conceal. This conundrum culminates in her eventual demise. She changes her physical appearance by rejecting all signs of femininity and embracing a less "appealing" aesthetic. It begins when Anna cuts her hair and replaces her woman’s clothes for that of the man’s, after the emotional turmoil of the rape. Furthermore, the transformation of her character is echoed throughout her physical mannerisms, which assume an aggressive and highly impulsive form. Upon the termination of the serial killer, Anna appears to become temporarily liberated from the chains of his control; but the spirit of the murderer can never parish because he permeates in her very essence. Conclusively, as it fully consumes the brink of her existence Anna assumes the role of the serial killer herself. This implies universality of psychosis and antagonism within each human being, which is the most horrific thought of all.

Being able to identify the most vulnerable currents of the human psyche in order to distinguish the "scary" from the "mundane" is what makes this film by Dario Argento a cinematic masterpiece of the horror genre. "The Stendhal Syndrome" is unique within its filmic category in its unparalleled dimension of psychological interplay and its unconventional inclusion of other artic forms, such as painting, within the canvas of its plot. The film’s depiction of the progressive disintegration of Anna’s sanity signals to a cognitive response within the spectator that subconsciously poses the question of whether this could happen to us. Cinematically triggering "the personal" through the composition of "the fictive" encompasses Argento’s mastery of his craft. (no secondary sources have been used in the process of writing this paper)