The Conformist (film)

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See also The Conformist for the novel.

The Conformist
Image:292730.1020.A.jpg Theatrical Poster
Directed by	Bernardo Bertolucci
Produced by	Giovanni Bertolucci Maurizio Lodi-Fe
Written by	Bernardo Bertolucci Story: Alberto Moravia
Starring	Jean-Louis Trintignant Stefania Sandrelli
Music by	Georges Delerue
Cinematography	Vittorio Storaro
Editing by	Franco Arcalli
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	October 22, 1970 (USA and Italy)
Running time	107 minutes (Edited) 111 minutes (Director's Cut)
Country	Italy France West Germany
Language	Italian
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Conformist (Italian: Il conformista) (1970) is a political film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. The screenplay was written by Bertolucci based on the 1951 novel of the same name written by Alberto Moravia. The film features Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, among others.^[1]

The picture was a co-production of Italian, French, and West German film companies.

The drama serves as an analysis of the Fascist mentality which explores a sexual motivation. Marcello Clerici is an Italian coward who spends his life accommodating others and joins the Italian Fascist party as a way of disappearing into the crowd so that he can "belong." Bertolucci makes use of the 1930s art and decor associated with the Fascist mentality and era: the middle-class drawing rooms and the huge halls of the ruling elite.^[2]

1 Plot
2 Background
- 2.1 Filming locations
3 Cast
4 Distribution
5 Critical reception
6 Awards
7 Footnotes
8 External links

[edit] Plot

The movie opens with Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) in Paris finalizing preparations to assassinate his former college professor, Luca Quadri (Enzo Tarascio).

Through a series of flashbacks we see him discussing his plans to marry with a blind friend, his somewhat awkward attempts to join the secret police, his visit to his morphine-addicted mother at the family's decaying villa and to his unhinged father at an insane asylum.

In one of these flashbacks we see him as a boy during World War I, who finds himself isolated from society by his family's wealth. He has it better than the other children because he is regularly chauffeured to school. Still, he is mistreated by his schoolmates and suffers a seduction attempt by the chauffeur Lino (Pierre Clémenti) whom he apparently kills in self-defense.

Another features a heated discussion over whether it is necessary to go to confession in order to get married. He reluctantly agrees, and it is there that he admits to having committed many sins, including the single homosexual experience with Lino, killing him, premarital sex and not having confessed for 15 years or so. The priest is shocked but warns him how important it is to confess.

As a man in fascist Italy, he finds himself a cog in a great machine that keeps Italy going. Although he has gotten married, and gets to go to Paris for his honeymoon, he is also ordered to secure the assassination of his old friend and teacher, now an exile living in France.

The duty to follow orders becomes more urgent now that his teacher is a famed opponent to the fascist movement in 1930s Italy. When his superior officer Manganiello (Gastone Moschin) hands him a gun to make sure the job gets done, Marcello replies that he does not want to carry a gun but does not explain why. The conflict between marital love and political duty is made more pronounced here because it is a conflict between his duty to the woman he has married, a lower-middle class woman, his own cultural background, and party loyalty, which is responsible for his salary, his sabbaticals, and his paychecks.

Since he was having a hard time pulling off the assassination at a big party that was thrown, more operatives are brought in from Italy to get the job done. This leads to a meandering auto drive through some snowy mountain peaks, with Marcello in a car closely trailing the professor's.

As he looks on, the operatives lure the professor from his stopped car and gang-stab him to death in a scene alluding to the murder of Julius Caesar. In an even more traumatic scene, the professor's wife Anna - whom Marcello has developed sexual feelings for - is chased through the woods and finally shot.

If there are any deep-seated feelings of guilt or remorse for killing the man who tried to rape him when he was a teenager, a surprise ending turns everything around, and gives the viewer reason to reflect; Marcello recognizes a person that he encounters in 1943 during the fall of the fascist dictatorship as Lino and loudly accuses him of the assassination of Professor Quadri.

[edit] Background

The film is a case study in the psychology of fascism: Marcello Clerici is a bureaucratic man deformed by a dysfunctional middle class family and a childhood sexual trauma. He accepts an assignment from Mussolini's secret police to assassinate his former mentor, living in exile in Paris. In Trintignant's characterization, you can see Alberto Moravia's portrait of a man willing to sacrifice his values in the interests of building a so-called "normal life."^[3]

According to the documentary Visions of Light the film is widely praised as a visual masterpiece. It was photographed by Vittorio Storaro, who used rich colors, authentic wardrobe of the 1930s, and a series of unusual camera angles and fluid camera movement. According to film critic and author Robin Buss, the cinematography suggests Clerici's inability to conform with "normal" reality: the reality of the time is "abnormal."^[4] Also, Bertolucci's cinematic style synthesizes expressionism and "fascist" film aesthetics. Its style can be compared with classic German films of the thirties, such as in Leni Riefenstahl's The Triumph of the Will and Fritz Lang's Metropolis.^[5]

The drama was influential to other filmmakers: the image of blowing leaves in The Conformist, for example, influenced a very similar scene in The Godfather, Part II by Francis Ford Coppola (1974).^[6]

[edit] Filming locations

The filming locations included: Gare d'Orsay and Paris, France; Sant' Angelo Bridge and the Colosseum, both in Rome.^[7]

[edit] Cast

Jean-Louis Trintignant as Marcello Clerici
Stefania Sandrelli as Giulia
Gastone Moschin as Manganiello
Enzo Tarascio as Professor Quadri
Fosco Giachetti as Il colonnello
José Quaglio as Italo
Dominique Sanda as Anna Quadri
Pierre Clémenti as Lino
Yvonne Sanson as Madre di Giulia
Giuseppe Addobbati as Padre di Marcello
Christian Aligny as Raoul
Carlo Gaddi as Hired Killer
Umberto Silvestri as Hired Killer
Furio Pellerani as Hired Killer

[edit] Distribution

The film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in June 1970. It opened on a wide release in Italy and the United States on October 22, 1970. The first American release of the film was trimmed by five minutes compared to the Italian release. They were restored in the 1996 reissue.^[8]

The film was released in the United States on DVD by Paramount Home Entertainment on December 5, 2006. The DVD includes: the original theatrical version; The Rise of The Conformist: The Story, the Cast featurette; Shadow and Light: Filming The Conformist featurette; The Conformist: Breaking New Ground featurette.

[edit] Critical reception

Vincent Canby, film critic for The New York Times, liked Bernardo Bertolucci's screenplay and his directorial effort, and wrote, "Bernardo Bertolucci...has at last made a very middle-class, almost conventional movie that turns out to be one of the elegant surprises of the current New York Film Festival...It is also apparent in Bertolucci's cinematic style, which is so rich, poetic, and baroque that it is simply incapable of meaning only what it says...The movie is perfectly cast, from Trintignant and on down, including Pierre Clementi, who appears briefly as the wicked young man who makes a play for the young Marcello. The Conformist is flawed, perhaps, but those very flaws may make it Bertolucci's first commercially popular film, at least in Europe where there always seems to be a market for intelligent, upper middle-class decadence."^[9]

Recently, critic James Berardinelli wrote a review and heralded the film's look. He wrote, "Storaro and Bertolucci have fashioned a visual masterpiece in The Conformist, with some of the best use of light and shadow ever in a motion picture. This isn't just photography, it's art -- powerful, beautiful, and effective. There's a scene in the woods, with sunlight streaming between trees, that's breathtaking to behold -- and all the more stunning because of the brutal events that take place before this background."^[10]

Currently, the film has a 100% "Fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes, based on thirty reviews.^[11]

[edit] Awards

Wins

Berlin Film Festival: Interfilm Award - Recommendation and Journalists' Special Award, Bernardo Bertolucci; 1970.
David di Donatello Awards: David; Best Film, Maurizio Lodi-Fe; 1971.
National Society of Film Critics Awards: NSFC Award; Best Cinematography, Vittorio Storaro; Best Director, Bernardo Bertolucci; 1972.
Satellite Awards: Satellite Award: Best Classic DVD; 2006.

Nominations

Berlin Film Festival: Golden Berlin Bear, Bernardo Bertolucci; 1970.
Academy Awards: Oscar; Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, Bernardo Bertolucci; 1972.
Golden Globes: Golden Globe; Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film Italy; 1972.

[edit] Footnotes

^ The Conformist at the Internet Movie Database.
^ Buss, Robin. Italian Films, Il conformista, page 120. London: Anchor Press Ltd. ISBN 071345900 X.
^ Scott. A.O. The New York Times, film review, Arts Section, July 31 - Aug. 6, 2005.
^ Buss, Robin. Ibid.
^ Klein, Jessi. Vassar College Department of Italian, 1996.
^ Visions of Light at the Internet Movie Database.
^ The Conformist, IMDb, ibid.
^ Erickson, Hal. All Movie Guide web site.
^ Canby, Vincent. The New York Times, film review, September 19, 1970. Last accessed: December 22, 2007.
^ Berardinelli, James. Reel Views, film review, 1994.
^ The Conforminst at Rotten Tomatoes. Last accessed: December 23, 2007.