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Staring: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Gastone Moschin, Enzo Tarascio, Fosco Giachetti
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
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Product Details
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
Brand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
EAN: 0097360812145
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Label: Paramount
Manufacturer: Paramount
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Paramount
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2006-12-05
Running Time: 107
Studio: Paramount
Theatrical Release Date: 1970-10-22

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Editorial Review
Description
This story opens in 1938 in Rome, where Marcello has just taken a job working for Mussollini and is courting a beautiful young woman who will make him even more of a conformist. Marcello is going to Paris on his honeymoon and his bosses have an assignment for him there. Look up an old professor who fled Italy when the fascists came into power. At the border of Italy and France, where Marcello and his bride have to change trains, his bosses give him a gun with a silencer. In a flashback to 1917, we learn why sex and violence are linked in Marcello's mind.

Amazon.com
With The Conformist, Bernardo Bertolucci delivered one of his signature masterworks and joined the ranks of world-class directors. Based on the acclaimed novel by Alberto Moravia (who greatly admired Bertolucci's adaptation), this milestone of cinematic style concerns one of Bertolucci's dominant themes--the duality of sexual and political conflict--in telling the story of Marcello (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a 30-year-old Italian haunted by the memory of a sexually traumatic childhood experience. As an adult with repressed homosexual desires, Marcello wants nothing more than to conform to the upper-crust expectations of Italian society, so he marries the dim-witted, petit-bourgeois Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli), and willfully joins the Italian Fascist movement, traveling from Rome to Paris with an assignment to assassinate his former academic mentor, Prof. Quadri (Enzo Tarascio). As he grows attracted to Quadri's bisexual wife Anna (Dominique Sanda), who is in turn attracted to Giulia, Marcello's path of duplicity parallels that of Mussolini's inevitable downfall. He's on an irreversible course of self-destruction, on which his troubled past and morally corrupted present will collide in a soul-crushing heap of personal contradictions.

While the psychosexual aspects of Bertolucci's Oscar®-nominated screenplay remain dramatically compelling, The Conformist is now better known as a dazzling stylistic breakthrough, with sweeping camera moves, oblique angles, and innovative editing brilliantly applied to Bertolucci's rich themes of internalized conflict. In close collaboration with master cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, Bertolucci crafted one of the greatest films of the 1970s, offered here with its richly relevant "Dance of the Blind" scene fully intact. This five-minute scene was cut from the original American release, then restored for the film's 1994 re-release. It's a welcome enhancement of the film's suspenseful historical context, which is fully explored in three bonus featurettes in which Bertolucci and Storaro discuss the story, production, and innovative style of The Conformist in fascinating detail. For serious collectors of important films, The Conformist is absolutely essential. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Simply one of the best film ever made, 2009-01-13
I cannot do much to elaborate on the fine prior reviews here, except to say that Georges Delerue's spare score is integral and haunting.

It may be cinematographer Storaro's crowning achievement as a lense-man, Dominique Sanda's best outing, the classiest incorporation of Art Nouveau and Deco into a film, and, moreover, might be Bertolucci's most cohesive, unified work. It's simply, forgive an abused word, stunning on every darned level.

Speaks directly to the psyche., 2009-03-24
I came to my first viewing of The Conformist totally without preparation, having read no reviews nor even a synopsis. The only conditioning I had was a negative bias generated by the cover picture of a man in a business suit pointing a gun, as it suggested a theme about organized crime - a genre in which I have little interest. For those who like to be surprised and awestruck by imagery that delivers much more than expected, I recommend coming to this film without a lot of research, but its probably too late if you're reading Amazon reviews. At any rate, it was only a few minutes into this film that I began to feel that thrill of having stumbled onto something that likely represents the acme of a particular kind of artistic effort. If you prefer your movies to have a straightforward sequence of plot and action, with a dialog that's understandable in terms of everyday conversation and related to what is obvious and visible, I can almost guarantee you won't like this film. But, if you are susceptible to striking and symbolic visual imagery, and aren't put off by the flashback mode of storytelling, there's a good chance you will find it to be very worthwhile. This is a film which conveys the idea that most of the real story of individuals, or at least relatively complex ones, is hidden below surface appearances. To give expression to this hidden dimension, Bertolucci pulled out all stops and concocted a visual extravaganza which not only delights our sense of color and pattern, but which subtly bypasses the checkpoints of our rational mind and links directly to the subconscious. Certainly I base this on my own reaction and can not guarantee that it will convey such feelings to all, but I can attest to the fact that I felt strong emotional responses being evoked by quite a number of specific scenes or episodes. Other than to say that the movie explores the idea that behavior in both individuals and societies can mirror these hidden psychological factors which I mentioned, I won't say any more about the plot. Beside that, I would only add that there are sexual scenes that some might regard as being quite explicit. While I am not in favor of gratuitous sex to hold a viewer's interest, I don't think that was the intent here at all, and was not personally bothered by this. After watching the film, it would be of benefit to watch the interviews of Bertolucci and his art director, who discuss the concepts they were trying to bring to life in The Conformist. Rather than give a synopsis, I have tried, in general terms, to indicate if this film might have appeal for you. Hope this helps.

Overrated, pretentious, and (most damningly) dull, 2010-01-18
The Bottom Line:

It cannot be denied that Bertolucci knows his way around a camera, but this mash up of fascism and sexuality never manages to be interesting or engaging; I went into this film expecting something near a classic and instead found a movie that threatened to put me to sleep.

2.5/4

Tepid suspense at best in this simple morality tale, 2009-04-22
The story does begin in an engaging fashion with a distorted timeline and brillant cinematography. However, the overall malaise and idle philosophising of the story soon drag it down. Yes, it is a condemnation of fascism (how novel), but there is little riveting in the story, and the interal operations of the secret police are clownish as well. Not overly convincing or emotionally involving as the characters are shallow and little developed. Pass.

Early Bertolucci, 2008-11-09
This is a movie that could be made in any era due to its timeless theme. Fascist Italy, however, is a perfect setting for "The Conformist" where as in all totalitarian states conformity is required, not an option. Jean-Louis Trintignant is perfectly cast as Marcello Clerici, a fascist assassin sent to Paris on a covert mission. Trintignant's slight figure, his humorless, unsmiling demeanor, and his consciously formal dress, including a hat that he cannot do without, project him as the perfect wannabe conformist.

Based upon a traumatic childhood experience Clerici not only has a need to conform he is impelled to take conformity to its extreme; assassinating non-conformists. His confession before his marriage is a brilliant scene and Trintignant's interaction with the confessor priest reveals the heart of his motivation and his sense of self.

His target is a former professor he admired as a student, Professor Quadri. The professor has left Italy for Paris due to his anti-fascist views and is viewed as dangerous by a mysterious arm of the fascist government. The scene where he discusses Plato's cave with the professor is worth the price of admission in itself.

Two beautiful women in his life represent the extremes that pull at his conformist soul as he proceeds toward the intended assassination. Stefania Sandrelli, as his wife Giula, represents the carefree, sensual, emotional part of his life. Dominique Sanda, as the professor's wife, Anna, represents sensuality of a different type. She appeals to his intellect as well as his sense of real love.

When Anna is formally introduced to Clerici as the professor's wife Clerici is stunned and aroused. Trintignant manages to convey both emotions with one look, the sign of a truly great actor. He has seen her in very different circumstances earlier in the movie. Anna provides the tension and inner conflict for Clerici which leaves the assassination of the professor in doubt.

Sanda is quite believable as a woman who could have that effect on a man in real life. One need not suspend a sense of disbelief to be convinced. Without her presence there would be no doubt about the assassination for Clerici. That tension and doubt results in a climactic scene that is stunning.

Bertolucci, in this 1970 release, is already displaying his trademark genius for visual beauty. Even scenes which are ugly are shot in an extraordinary cinema graphic style. His use of light, switching from black and white to color depending on the scene, shows real genius at work. The same cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro, who later collaborated with him on "The Last Emperor," was also a young man at the time of release. The "Special Features" where the two discuss their innovations in the use of color and light is almost as fascinating as the movie.

The "Special Features" also present very interesting insights into the artistic process in film and the dynamism of plot development. The only negative in this movie is that the flashback technique is overused to the point of confusion. All the other elements of the movie, though, show the promise of a great director at an early age.

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