With the Oscars soon approaching, Jesse Kornbluth reviews a 1970’s Italian film about a man who finds he can boost his own life status at the cost of another man’s life.
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WEEKEND CLASSIC: The Oscars are weeks away, but aren’t you tired of this year’s crop of movies — and bored with all conversation about them? The man whose gift in life is that he can kill another man from a distance of a mile: can you identify with him? Have you ceased to care about an actor who’s an icon with a house in Malibu but who can’t live without a Broadway success in an adaptation of a Raymond Carver story? Are you sick of being the only one in your crowd who’d like to give that music teacher a taste of his own educational theory? Are you, in short, ready to watch one of the 25 great films of the 20th century, about a man in turbulent times who finds himself in a predicament that can boost his status at the cost of another man’s life? Yes, it’s in Italian. Yes, you may never have seen these actors before. But great directors have gone to school on this film for decades. There’s a reason.
What kind of man gets himself in such a pickle that — on his honeymoon — he’s given a gun and asked to kill a professor he’s always admired?
That’s the question presented at the beginning of “The Conformist,” as Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant) sits in a Paris hotel room, waiting for the call that will tell him it’s time to kill the professor. If you love movies, the answer — told in a series of flashbacks, and, on occasion, flashbacks within flashbacks — will make for one of the most rewarding cinematic experiences of your life.
Let’s get the praise out of the way right off. Bernardo Bertolucci — known to most moviegoers for his Oscar-winning “The Last Emperor” and his down-and-dirty “Last Tango in Paris” — made “The Conformist” at 29. It is a young man’s film, drenched in ambition. It is also Bertolucci’s greatest film. Indeed, it is one of the ten greatest films I’ve ever seen. [To buy the DVD or stream the video on Amazon, click here.]
Here’s the preview, with a ridiculous overdubbed English voiceover.
“The Conformist” is beautiful in the extreme. The cinematographer was the great Vittorio Storaro, and his color palette is so exquisite that Francis Ford Coppola watched this film over and over before making “The Godfather” — and then hired Storaro to shoot “Apocalypse Now.” The production designer was Ferdinando Scarfiotti, whose credits include “Death in Venice” and “Scarface.” And Georges Delerue, who did the scores for “Jules and Jim” and “Platoon,” composed the music.
Trintignant is one of the most familiar faces in French cinema; this is the performance of his life. But mostly, I want to praise Dominique Sanda, then just 22 years old and making only her third movie. She plays the professor’s wife, and she unfailingly strikes a remarkable balance — on one hand, she’s the loyal spouse, on another, she’s a bi-sexual flirt, and on yet a third, she’s the only character in the story who senses the tragedy that lies ahead.
The story is adapted from the novel by Alberto Moravia, one of Italy’s most seductive novelists. Sex is almost a character for Moravia, and it certainly is here — as the title suggests, Clerici’s greatest desire is to be normal, to be one of the faceless masses, to conform.
That’s not so easily done in Italy in 1936. Mussolini has brought down the Fascist boot; progressives have fled the country. So Clerici takes a rich, vapid wife. He makes his accommodation with the government. And with that — he thinks — he’s safe.
But there are no hiding places in life — and certainly not in a dictatorship of madmen. And then there is the question of the past: How do you acquire a “normal” life if you never had one before? As we flash back, we see that Clerici’s privileged childhood was anything but normal. His mother awoke at noon, looking for her first shot of the day. He was raised by nannies. And then there was the encounter with the chauffeur…
What Bertolucci is exploring here is the equation of politics with sex. In a film financed by an American studio, that equation would be explicit and vulgar. Here, every connection is made through imagery and suggestion. Your jaw will drop at scene after scene, but you’ll be on the edge of your seat during one in particular — an evening at a Parisian dance hall when Sanda dances with Clerici’s wife. It’s a breathtaking seduction, hotter in some ways than sex itself.
Why does Clerici freeze when he’s given a gun? Can he kill the professor? What happens to Sanda? And, jumping ahead, what does the Fascist’s defeat mean for Clerici? Bertolucci’s screenplay is brilliant on these key questions; you are always leaning in, thinking it through, putting the puzzle together. And, of course, you are invited to imagine — as we always do in great films — how would I handle this? What would I do if I were Clerici?
If you come to love “The Conformist”, consider also The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, also starring Dominique Sanda, made a year later and exploring some of the same themes. Or you could read Alberto Moravia’s novel. But be warned: This is that rare case — a movie so much better than the book that reading it is a disappointment.
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This article originally appeared on The Head Butler.
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Thank you for helping the world notice this under appreciated film. I’d just recently viewed this film again when I saw your article. And interestingly I’d compiled a list of praise to send to my friends from film school to encourage them to see it: “Storaro and Bertolucci have fashioned a visual masterpiece in The Conformist, with some of the best use of light and shadow ever in a motion picture. This isn’t just photography, it’s art — powerful, beautiful, and effective.” “One of the most visually dazzling, politically and psychologically intriguing and possibly greatest of all Italian films.” “No… Read more »