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Il Conformista (1970)
(aka The Conformist)

A review by Damian Cannon.
Copyright © Movie Reviews UK 2000
Sometimes you wonder just what a director is thinking when they allow their creation to birth in a maelstrom of images. Don't they realise that, for an audience, this is both the hardest few minutes of the film and the best time to grab their attention? Often, if you don't manage to gain your bearings early on then you spend the rest of the film feeling like you've gatecrashed a stranger's wedding. There are, though, directors who prefer a minimum of distracting exposition; Bernardo Bertolucci is one of these people. He has The Conformist begin confusingly, splicing slices from several different acts on top of one another, before it sifts itself out into a more orderly narrative.

If you manage to get over this hurdle then, sooner or later, it becomes apparent that Marcello (Jean-Louis Trintignant) is the protagonist. At first sight he comes across as a bureaucrat, a man who dresses in a suit because everyone he wants to impress dresses that way. By trying so diligently to lose himself in the crowd, Marcello appears weak-willed, a blank canvas that can only be inked by another. Yet, as The Conformist continues, a different aspect emerges; Marcello is a pragmatist. He wants to give the impression of being a 'comrade' without committing body and soul to whatever cause is uppermost (in terms of personal prospects). Hence pre-war Italy makes Marcello a fascist.

To achieve external normality, Marcello first makes use of his friendship with blind Italo (José Quaglio); all he wants are a few delicate string pulls. Success leads to a meeting with Il colonello (Fosco Giachetti) and induction into the secret police. What Marcello doesn't count on is being sent on a mission, particularly one that employs his honeymoon as cover. It's not a big problem though; Marcello only selected lovely, whimsical Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli) to be a kind of cover herself! In Paris the mission involves assassination, the killing of Professor Quadri (Enzo Tarascio), an old teacher. Marcello is reluctant to act even when encouraged by associate Manganiello (Gastone Moschin).

In bringing this core struggle to life, Trintignant scurries around like a beetle; his tightly buttoned overcoat a protective shell. Much of the time Trintignant looks haunted, as though Marcello is second-guessing what might be expected of him and wondering where his choices are leading. Only rarely does Trintignant allow Marcello to be himself (in the rare scenes where pre- and post-Fascist experience overlap). This is a performance notable by its repression, in contrast to the rest of the cast. Their characters are content to inhabit themselves without concern, unbothered by external validation. The role of Anna Quadri (Dominique Sanda) is a fine example; she flirts with man and woman alike, dances as if possessed and loves her husband passionately.

What allows The Conformist its moody atmosphere, however, is the uniquely inspired photography of Vittorio Storaro. His eye for colour, and combinations of the same, imbues the story with a tonal subtext; adjacent to the script yet somehow an indivisible component. Throughout sunlight filters through apertures, sometimes dissolving symbolic shadows by the application of realisation (dawning comprehension), elsewhere layering the actors in dappled motifs of rippling beauty. To experience the sensuality of Marcello and Giulia's semi-erotic apartment grappling (bathed in bars of light) is to grasp how much Storaro contributes to The Conformist.

This indubitably isn't an easy film (does Bertolucci do easy?) but neither is it wilfully obscure; merely deliberately so. Without explicitly stating the tenets of Marcello's life (taking the path of least resistance, repression of innermost drives, childhood revulsion) The Conformist visually conveys his innermost feelings. The beauty of this approach is that we get to see thoughts of which even Marcello is unaware; a very god-like position. Combined with Bertolucci's love of symbolism (both subtle and blunt), plus Storaro's tinted frames and canted angles, the result is a movie that reaches beyond its textual limitations.

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