Watch trailer for The Conformist
Watch trailer
The Conformist
Opens on April 7
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci Run Time: 111 min. Release Year: 1971 Language: Italian
Starring: Dominique Sanda, Enzo Tarascio, Gastone Moschin, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli
In Mussolini’s Italy, repressed Jean-Louis Trintignant (RIP), trying to purge memories of a youthful, homosexual episode — and murder — joins the Fascists in a desperate attempt to fit in. As the reluctant Judas motors to his personal Gethsemane (the assassination of his leftist mentor), he flashes back to a dance party for the blind; an insane asylum in a stadium; and wife Stefania Sandrelli and lover Dominique Sanda dancing the tango in a working class hall. But those are only a few of this political thriller’s anthology pieces, others including Trintignant’s honeymoon coupling with Sandrelli in a train compartment as the sun sets outside their window; a bimbo lolling on the desk of a fascist functionary, glimpsed in the recesses of his cavernous office; a murder victim’s hands leaving bloody streaks on a limousine parked in a wintry forest.
Bernardo Bertolucci’s masterpiece, adapted from the Alberto Moravia novel, boasts an authentic Art Deco look created by production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, a score by the great Georges Delerue and breathtaking color cinematography by Vittorio Storaro.
“The unsettling blend of images and ideas in this movie cannot satisfactorily be disentangled or decoded, and it’s the very strangeness of Bertolucci’s masterpiece that has made it so influential in cinema history.” ~ Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com