THE CONFORMIST

"Bernardo Bertolucci said it was Trintignant’s ability to be “moving and sinister” that made him think of Jean-Louis for the part of Marcello, the repressed Fascist flunky caught up in history’s machinations and his own Freudian hang-ups. It’s impossible to imagine a more perfect match of a performer’s strength, a filmmaker’s sensibility and rich, complex material; that Film Forum is showing this towering achievement of ’70s cinema on a 35mm print only sweetens the deal. The opportunity to see The Conformist on the big screen is always a calendar-clearer."
– David Fear, Time Out New York

(1971, Bernardo Bertolucci) In Mussolini’s Italy, repressed haut bourgeois Trintignant tries to purge memories of a youthful, homosexual incident (and murder), joining the Fascists in a desperate attempt to fit in. Bertolucci’s masterpiece, adapted from the Alberto Moravia novel, boasts eye-popping color cinematography by Vittorio Storaro. Memorable sequence: wife Stefania Sandrelli and lover Dominque Sanda dancing the tango in a working class hall. 
Approx. 107 min.  35mm.

REVIEWS

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“It’s a triumph of feeling and style – lyrical, flowing, velvety style, so operatic that you come away with sequences in your head like arias.”
– Pauline Kael

“Carries with it a rejuvenating jolt of youthful creative energy, the memory of a time when movies were the most important art and their creative possibilities seemed endless.”
– Dave Kehr

“Voluptuously styled to a degree rarely seen in cinema, Bernardo Bertolucci's gorgeous 1970 political thriller, set in a noirish, Mussolini-era Europe, will always be a benchmark of high-art exquisiteness.”
– Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York

“All at once, The Conformist is a bludgeoning indictment of fascistic follow-the-leader and an orgasm of coolness, ravishing compositions, camera gymnastics, and atmospheric resonance—as if its decadent, twilit–art deco–noir style is itself a refutation of dictatorial social norms.”
– Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice

“Juggling past and present with the same bravura flourish as Welles in Citizen Kane, Bertolucci conjures a dazzling historical and personal perspective (the marbled insane asylum where his father is incarcerated; the classical vistas of Mussolini’s corridors of power, the dance hall where two women tease in an ambiguous tango; the forest road where the assassination runs horribly counter to expectation), demonstrating how the search for normality ends in the inevitable discovery that there is no such thing.”
– Tom Milne, Time Out (London)