Synopsis

Once a promising intellectual, newlywed Marcello (Jean-Louis Trintignant) rises through the ranks of Fascist Italy’s administration. Marcello prepares to settle into a comfortable middle-class existence – but not before he is dispatched to Paris to eliminate Luca Quadri, his former professor now turned dissident. Complicating matters is the professor’s beautiful wife, as Marcello reckons with not only a possible double assassination, but the crumbling of a normalcy he has long craved.

Bertolucci’s breakthrough classic reimagines Alberto Moravia’s 1950 neo-realist novel, scrutinizing Italy in the grip of institutionalized fascism. Where Moravia’s novel lacks in dialogue, Bertolucci makes up with expressionism. Interior torments are recreated as visual clashes, be it rich colours against chiaroscuro settings, or art deco sets undercutting the geometry of totalitarian architecture. Also making a mark is maverick cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, whose choreography of light and shadow here is emblematic of his psychological approach to colour.

While fascism’s ruthless order is the object of Bertolucci’s cross-examination, the individual does not go unspared. More than a seminal text of Italy’s contemporary memory, The Conformist is the everyman made powerful and powerless by the political machine – a character study that could very well belong anywhere in the present.

Movie Trailer