Bertolucci's "Il conformista" is a gradually powerful film, with a lot to say about opportunism and, you guessed it, conformity. A man blending into the culture, adapting without any principle. Good performances and stylish cinematography.
Jean-Louis Trintignant gives an absorbing performance as the man who keeps up neutral appearances whilst stabbing supposed friends in the back in the name of personal and political expediency. As David Thomson says: 'His personality in The Conformist is the weakness of the obsessive fantasist, his face closed to guard his own private image of the world.' Italian society's corruption is mirrored in this individual, with Stefani Sandrelli's stylish Giulia an accomplice in her willing blindness to politics and the darker details of her husband's life. Giulia is all stylish surfaces - abstract dresses and flapper instincts - and is one with the lingering moral vacuity prevalent in the wider society.
There are subtly memorable moments and sequences, which persist in the memory like strains of opera; Bertolucci directs in a stately, but underplayed fashion - capturing a fine sense of colour and mise-en-scene within the frame. Slightly reminiscent of Antonioni, in this sense.
Overall, an absorbing portrait of a man who, in Tom Milne's terms is 'so anxious to live a normal life that he willingly becomes an anonymous tool of the state.' (Time Out Film Guide)
Jean-Louis Trintignant gives an absorbing performance as the man who keeps up neutral appearances whilst stabbing supposed friends in the back in the name of personal and political expediency. As David Thomson says: 'His personality in The Conformist is the weakness of the obsessive fantasist, his face closed to guard his own private image of the world.' Italian society's corruption is mirrored in this individual, with Stefani Sandrelli's stylish Giulia an accomplice in her willing blindness to politics and the darker details of her husband's life. Giulia is all stylish surfaces - abstract dresses and flapper instincts - and is one with the lingering moral vacuity prevalent in the wider society.
There are subtly memorable moments and sequences, which persist in the memory like strains of opera; Bertolucci directs in a stately, but underplayed fashion - capturing a fine sense of colour and mise-en-scene within the frame. Slightly reminiscent of Antonioni, in this sense.
Overall, an absorbing portrait of a man who, in Tom Milne's terms is 'so anxious to live a normal life that he willingly becomes an anonymous tool of the state.' (Time Out Film Guide)