The Conformist is very stylish in the way that fashion advertising or New Romantic music videos are stylish. It's self-consciously stylish. Dominique Sanda walks along a corridor and strikes a scornful pose in the doorway of a room like someone parading on the catwalk. Jean-Louis Trintignant walks along the pavement in front of an art deco building as the camera tracks with him in a wintry twilight. At the corner he stops, turns, gestures. A vintage car rolls up. So chic. The acting is stylish. It has that operatic largeness that we get in Visconti's later films. You can see the actors' performances from the balcony. At first all this attention to style is beguiling. There is a strange scene in an insane asylum filmed in the EUR complex. It looks oppressive and futuristic and dream-like, like a scene from 8 ½, but it becomes apparent that all this attention to style has no meaning. It is style for styles sake. At the end of one scene a shot is stitched on of autumnal leaves blown ominously along. What could it mean? Is it the "Wind of Change"? No, it's just leaves whisked about for visual pleasure. Who are we to scorn visual pleasures you may say, but the problem is that, at its worst, the visual pleasures begin to lead the action. The viewer begins to sense that a beautiful image was visualised and then a scene written to incorporate it. The characters' motivation is apparently to complete compositions or visual effects. Unfortunately for the viewer The Conformist is not content with stylish shallowness and tries to achieve depth or insight with what turns out to be a Freudian kitsch. There is a veritable cesspool of confusing childhood sexual experiences giving rise to bizarre adult behaviours. Fascism itself is some kind of psycho-sexual fantasy. It's all so very chic and depraved. Sadly we don't so much witness character development as a bunch of ids bumping against each other. It makes for tiresome viewing and tells us nothing about the psychology of Fascism or anything else that might give the film purpose. The Conformist looks good, sometimes thrillingly so, but it is weighed down by its rather dated psycho-sexual approach to character. The story suffers worst of all, being completely squeezed out by these other dominant elements.

***It has spoilers, but EThompsonUMD ("An unforgettable masterpiece. Finally available on DVD!!!!!!", EThompsonUMD from Massachusetts, 25 February 2005) has a nice review. I also like the comments by italtrav ("Brilliant film making", italtrav from NYC, 23 June 2004). Another fine review is from junkielee ("Masterpiece!!", junkielee from Cairo, Egypt, 7 November 2013).*** The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci), a return to Benito Mussolini's Italy, is profound, one of the great cinematic achievements of the last century. Filled with ideas, oozing with style, relevant to societies (like the US today) on the verge of total collapse and richly satisfying, Bernardo Bertolucci's eye-opener invites passionate discussion on its meaning.Set during the rise and fall of Mussolini, "The Conformist" follows a young Italian man Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant, who is actually French), who aspires to become a made-man with the Fascists. To get in, Marcello must enable the assassination of his former philosophy professor, now a prominent democracy-activist. The narrative is non-linear, and we soon realize that Marcello is repressed. He has strong homosexual tendencies. He is particularly haunted by a major incident in his childhood; i.e., thirteen-year-old Marcello has his first sexual encounter with a man and it leads to a violent conclusion. As an adult Marcello is determined to be regarded as normal, so he marries the extremely pretty and sensual Giulia ( Stefania Sandrelli), even though he hates her lack of intellectual depth. When the couple are honeymooning, he makes arrangements to meet up with Professor Quadri (Enzo Tarascio). He is instantly floored by Quadri's beautiful, bisexual wife, Anna (Dominique Sanda). Although Marcello quickly makes a pass with her, it seems he is more attracted by her liberation. As Marcello, Giulia, the Professor and Anna become more intimately acquainted with each other the more the very awake Anna reveals herself as the most compelling character of all. Will Marcello go through with it? Visually it looks amazing. The combination of Bertolucci and famed cinematographer Vittorio Storaro is dazzling. Bertolucci really chooses color well. Storaro is the master of under-exposure. The combination of Bertolucci's imagery and Storaro's cinematography creates a sense that you are watching living history unfold.Another reviewer points out that Bertolucci is deviating from the Alberto Moravia novel which has an omniscient perspective. Instead, Bertolucci focuses on the troubled, unreliable Marcello for point of view. There are many examples where Bertolucci suggests a peculiar mindset. For example, Marcello has a thug beat up his drug-addicted Mother's chauffeur and lover. Curiously, the man taking the beating does not resist. (In other words, victims are not really being victimized.) When Marcello meets his father in a sanitarium, it appears like the father's agitation is being directed in opposition to Marcello's obvious connection with the Fascists. (That is, resisting the Fascists is a crazy thing to do.) When Marcello is announcing his intention to marry Giulia to be perceived as normal, he is in a nightclub with singers performing in the background. (So the distracted audience fails to notice Marcel is repressed or strange in any way.) However, perhaps the most visually identifying moment for Marcello follows a very erotic dance between Anna and Giulia in a nightclub. Their dancing arouses all the other patrons. Eventually all the patrons are dancing in one large circle clockwise around Marcello. At the center of the storm, Marcello is turning counter-clockwise, refusing to be pulled in with the senseless pleasure experienced by those around him. Shortly after the circle dance Marcello commits his perfidy. So, he wasn't a conformist after all. His move towards Fascism wasn't out of cowardice; he had the courage to resist the rest. He never deceived anyone; the others were not paying attention.An interesting theme is Plato's Allegory of the Cave. This was the subject of Marcel's graduate thesis. The scene with Marcello discussing it in Professor Quadri's office, with the two bathed in shadow, directly comments on it. Plato's allegory is also relevant to the late betrayal of the blind Fascist radio announcer. Just as Plato's narrator suddenly perceives reality after a lifetime of staring at shadows, so too does the blind propagandist learn the awful truth about a perceived comrade he has never seen."The Conformist" works on so many levels that it should be seen whenever possible. Here's a closing thought for those who think that joining a Secret Police is so damn cool: There exists someone like Anna in every life that makes attachment with strangers worthwhile.

Really didn't like this film.Obviously it is highly respected however for me it was one of those typical foreign art(ish) movies. That means it is slow, pretentious and full of allegory, metaphor and satire.While there is nothing inherently wrong with that, it does make for slow and dull viewing. It's the kind of film that would be good dissected in a film class but is no fun otherwise.You can imagine the kind of people who enjoy this are pompous art lecturers who snigger at the satire, less because it is funny and more because they get egotistical gratification out of sniggering not at the film but at the people who 'don't get it'.

What is it, where is it, how will it affect me? In a 1938 politically unstable Europe, a weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident. Il Conformista is a work of art that's as close to flawless as one can get. It's dapper, sophisticated, sexy, compelling and dearly cosmopolitan, whilst being metaphorical and gripping. And, moreover, for a subject matter than little of the audience will have any personal or sentimental connection with, it's deeply powerful and engrossing. Il Conformista paints the portrait of a bohemian, artistic and edging closer-to rapture Europe yet still highlights through intricate narrative, an in-depth character study of the weak willed, the distressed and the deluded a Europe that is on a political tether. In its parades and its dances, through its screams and its silence, Il Conformista is a masterpiece that connects the now and then, conflicting desires, oozing style and a confused culture in more colour, more grit and more eloquence than the proclaimed greats of yonder years ever managed to. The climactic ending is a highlight with an almost perpetual aftertaste, where the conformist himself (Jean-Louis Trintignant) undertakes the assassination of his former mentor in a misty, dimly lit wood, a setting to quench the thirst of Arthur Conan-Doyle, as the victim's wife, a former lover, screams bitterly. Our conformist relaxes, his hat shadowing his face, his eyes glinting with thoughts of a million facets pouring over them. Il Conformista is littered with endless examples of seductive cinematography, bold and inviting colour schemes, elaborate musical ventures and stylistically superior heights than anything I've ever seen. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, Il Conformista is a thriller, and it certainly is thrilling, to say the least. To an impatient viewer, Il Conformista has whole other arsenal dimension of scenes that focus on deceit, murder, ill-intention and metaphorical dissidence. To a historian, the way that the portrayed era's political climate is capitalised on and exploited for dramatic effect is staggeringly remarkable. And lastly, to an artist, Bertolucci's genius behind the camera and his steady, wise hand in directing the lighting is second to none.