CONFORMIST, THE (Conformista, Il)
Dennis Schwartz
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Bernardo Bertolucci's ("The Spider's Strategem") fifth feature is
his breakthrough film and passport to international acclaim. It's
based on the novel by Alberto Moravia. Bertolucci examines the
relationship between sex and politics in this period piece about
fascism in Mussolini's Italy of 1938.
Jean-Louis Trintignant plays the professorial Marcello Clerici; he's
a conformist who strives only for normality and volunteers to become
a collaborator with the secret police. His superior, referred to as
the Colonel, assigns him a mission to set up the political
assassination of his former leftist philosopher college professor,
Quadri (Enzo Tarascio), who is living in exile in Paris. The
professor has become the leader of an anti-fascist group and he
cannot be penetrated except by someone who knows him. The film veers
back and forth between the troubled Marcello's present state, as
he's on his honeymoon with his obnoxious petty bourgeois wife Giulia
(Stefania Sandrelli) and at the same time lusting after the
professor's hot young wife Ana (Dominique Sanda), and flashbacks to
his past such as his haunting homosexual experience as a child with
his chauffeur Lino. The psychological trappings from Moravia's novel
are all but stripped away, except for the traumatic childhood scene
where Marcello believes he murdered his predatory chauffeur. What we
get is a confused film noir-like protagonist who is willing to sell
himself out to the state because they are the ruling party and could
give him sanctuary in their bosom. The search for a normal life is
what motivates the grim Marcello through his muddled state of mind,
as he takes us on an historical and personal journey into a dark
time.
The visuals by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro are stunning and
include: a car ride through the snowy Italian and French forests,
where the bloody assassination of Quadri and his wife is messily
accomplished; a visit to see Marcello's incarcerated dad in a
sterile white marbled insane asylum (suggesting an Oedipal
conflict); a Paris dance hall scene where Giulia is seduced by the
radicalized ballet teacher Ana to dance together; a visit to his
mom's rundown estate (showing a hatred he has for his mom's
decadence and morphine addiction); and the walk under the Rome
bridge at the brink of the Fascist downfall, where Marcello walks
hand-in-hand with the fascist propagandist blind poet Italo, the one
who introduced him to the Colonel, and gets jolted back to the
realization that there's no such thing as normality.
The most beastly words are spoken by the special agent assigned to
help Marcello in the political assassination, who laments after
Marcello doesn't have enough nerve to kill Ana: "I can't stand
cowards, homosexuals and Jews. They all should be eliminated when
born."
The Conformist is told in a flowery style, one where Bertolucci
conveys his thoughts mainly through mood (a brooding Marcello) and
visuals (those monumental fascist architecture structures and those
workplaces of authority that contain labyrinths of towering
corridors that make visitors seem insignificant). Trintignant gives
a mesmerizing performance as someone wrestling with his inner
demons, someone who has slid into a dark abyss and has miserably
spent a lifetime of searching to find only emptiness.
REVIEWED ON 7/30/2005 GRADE: A
From Ozus'
World Movie Reviews
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