The Conformist (1970)
(Il Conformista)
Country: IT/FR/GER
Technical: col 108m
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda, Pierre Clementi
Synopsis:
In the Italy of the 1930s an embarrassed son of socially disgraced parents attempts to rehabilitate himself by joining the fascist police and marrying a bourgeois girl, despite his latent homosexuality. Required to engineer the assassination of his anti-fascist ex-professor in Paris he falls in love with the wife but is too weak to save her.
Review:
Visually mesmerising recreation of a period showing how an entire country could lose its moral vision. Ironically, it is the flight from his past transgression that leads the anti-hero to embrace institutionalised evil, but also brings him into contact with his counterpart, the deeply ambiguous and non-conformist Anna, the self he is trying to deny. Trintignant is brilliant: impassive, playful and capturing in his body movements the posture of a political lackey. The director returned to this subject matter in his epic saga, 1900, but never again quite attained the combination of political acuity and sensual suggestion in The Conformist. Delerue's memorable score at times beautifully complements Bertolucci's camera as it pirouettes around his diversely motivated characters.
(Il Conformista)
Country: IT/FR/GER
Technical: col 108m
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda, Pierre Clementi
Synopsis:
In the Italy of the 1930s an embarrassed son of socially disgraced parents attempts to rehabilitate himself by joining the fascist police and marrying a bourgeois girl, despite his latent homosexuality. Required to engineer the assassination of his anti-fascist ex-professor in Paris he falls in love with the wife but is too weak to save her.
Review:
Visually mesmerising recreation of a period showing how an entire country could lose its moral vision. Ironically, it is the flight from his past transgression that leads the anti-hero to embrace institutionalised evil, but also brings him into contact with his counterpart, the deeply ambiguous and non-conformist Anna, the self he is trying to deny. Trintignant is brilliant: impassive, playful and capturing in his body movements the posture of a political lackey. The director returned to this subject matter in his epic saga, 1900, but never again quite attained the combination of political acuity and sensual suggestion in The Conformist. Delerue's memorable score at times beautifully complements Bertolucci's camera as it pirouettes around his diversely motivated characters.
(Il Conformista)
Country: IT/FR/GER
Technical: col 108m
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda, Pierre Clementi
Synopsis:
In the Italy of the 1930s an embarrassed son of socially disgraced parents attempts to rehabilitate himself by joining the fascist police and marrying a bourgeois girl, despite his latent homosexuality. Required to engineer the assassination of his anti-fascist ex-professor in Paris he falls in love with the wife but is too weak to save her.
Review:
Visually mesmerising recreation of a period showing how an entire country could lose its moral vision. Ironically, it is the flight from his past transgression that leads the anti-hero to embrace institutionalised evil, but also brings him into contact with his counterpart, the deeply ambiguous and non-conformist Anna, the self he is trying to deny. Trintignant is brilliant: impassive, playful and capturing in his body movements the posture of a political lackey. The director returned to this subject matter in his epic saga, 1900, but never again quite attained the combination of political acuity and sensual suggestion in The Conformist. Delerue's memorable score at times beautifully complements Bertolucci's camera as it pirouettes around his diversely motivated characters.