The Conformist (1970)

The only film by Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci that I had seen before this one was The Last Emperor, 1987's Academy Award winner for Best Picture. Well now I know that I really need to see more Bertolucci movies because he's hit the two that I've seen out of the park. The Conformist is based on the 1951 novel of the same name by Alberto Moravia whose work has provided the source material for other notable foreign films like Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (1963) and Vittorio De Sica's Two Women (1960). So The Conformist is a very literary work and one I must surely see again because its so rich and textured you wouldn't be able to pick up on everything in it in one viewing, for days after I saw the picture I was making new connections in my mind about various scenes and themes in the movie.

The bulk of the story is set in 1938 and concerns Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) an operative of the fascist government in Italy who is assigned, while on his honeymoon in Paris with his much younger wife (Stefania Sandrelli), to murder his old college professor and mentor Enzo Tarascio, who in exile has been publishing things Mussolini's government doesn't much care for. This sets up Clerici's main internal conflict, he is a conformist, always willing to go along with the prevailing winds in order to survive and prosper, but he also has a deep love and respect for his old professor who has shown an ability to standard for principal that Clerici envies though can never quite muster himself. This of course is just the main story, there are number of sub plots and digressions, all of which are interesting. Perhaps the most intriguing of these however is Clerici's ultimately complicated relationship with his best friend Italo (Jose Quaglio) who quite fascinatingly is a blind man who write propaganda for the Italian government. This is an ambiguous yet powerful film which doesn't spell everything out for you, and features a deeply flawed protagonist who even a week after viewing the film I'm not sure how I feel about. Be aware it has some sexual content but I highly recommend. ****