THE CONFORMIST Movie Review
Il Conformista
Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) wants so much to blend in with those around him that he's willing to suppress, sacrifice, and sublimate his own instincts and desires in order to be “normal.” Seeking this “normality” in Mussolini's Italy of the 1930s, Clerici marries a pretty, empty-headed girl (Stefania Sandrelli) to cover up any suspicion of his own homosexual impulses. Becoming an assassin for the Fascists, he promptly snares the assignment of murdering his liberal former professor. Though Clerici could be the evil twin brother of Woody Allen's “chameleon man,” Leonard Zelig, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist, based on the novel by Alberto Moravia, is more precisely concerned with the connection between sexual repression and political oppression (whereas Zelig just wanted to be liked). What's great about The Conformist, however, isn't the tired old saw about repressed homosexuals making the best Fascists; what makes it memorable is the glistening richness of its surface, which is so visually intoxicating that it's easy to overlook the less-than-profound thesis lurking underneath. Photographed by Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now) in deeply saturated colors and gliding camera movements, the film is constructed in a series of memorable visual tableaux, its operatic feel underscored by Georges Delerue's haunting musical score. One of the weirdest and most beautifully choreographed episodes is a party at which the Fascist guests—all but Clerici—are blind. The scene was cut from American prints after the New York engagement, and when this fan of the film wrote to the American distributor inquiring about the cut, the studio's then-VP of Distribution (now a very prominent show business journalist) fired back a vitriolic, enraged response, decrying “kids like you who know nothing” and assuring me that the cut was Bertolucci's idea. Nevertheless, the same studio in 1996 issued a restored “director's cut” of The Conformist with much fanfare; the “party of the blind” is in it, and I've heard of no complaints from the director. The film also stars Dominique Sanda and Pierre Clementi, and it was nominated in 1971 for the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award.
NEXT STOP… Before the Revolution, Lacombe, Lucien, Zelig
1971 (R) 108m/C IT FR GE Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda, Pierre Clementi, Gastone Moschin, Pasquale Fortunato; D: Bernardo Bertolucci; W: Bernardo Bertolucci; C: Vittorio Storaro; M: Georges Delerue. National Society of Film Critics Awards '71: Best Cinematography (Storaro), Best Director (Bertolucci); Nominations: Academy Awards '71: Best Adapted Screenplay. VHS, LV PAR