Sunday, October 14, 2012

2012 Film Challenge #13: The Conformist


Just up above there is the ticket stub from the first time I saw The Conformist. I was curious about it because I had seen some clips from it in the documentary Visions of Light and was struck by its visual style. After it was over I remember walking out of the theater almost in a daze. I could hardly talk, so taken was I with what I had seen; I didn't want to lose the moment—I had stepped through the looking glass, and I wasn't quite ready to come back.


The film was written and directed by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1970, based on a 1951 novel by Alberto Moravia, but the story itself begins in 1938, just a year before the start of the second World War. Young, handsome Italian civil servant Marcello Clerici has offered his services to the secret police organized by Mussolini, and he has traveled to Paris to spy on an exiled fellow countryman—his former college professor, in fact. The opening scene shows him receiving a telephone call that sets a plan in motion, and he meets his accomplice downstairs to begin his mission.

As he is driven towards some mysterious destiny, Marcello begins to think back on what led him to this turning point, and as viewers we are shown a series of flashbacks of the events leading up to that current day. We see his friendship with the blind Italo, staunch Fascist party member; we see him with his new bride, Giulia, beautiful and empty-headed; we see his strange attraction to the sensual wife of the professor, who in turn has a strange attraction to Giulia; and we see his association with the sinister Manganiello, who may be his flunky or who may be his master.

However, the more we learn about Marcello, the less things seem to make sense; he is an intelligent man of no strong convictions, and yet he chooses to embrace the most conventional and even repressive elements of society. Why? Why is he doing what he's doing?


The story that unfolds is both a tense tale of political intrigue and a fascinating character study. What is most remarkable about The Conformist, however, is its stunning cinematography, as created by the famed Vittorio Storaro, who would later shoot such films as Apocalypse Now and Reds. The film embraces a kind of visual hyperrealism where color and movement are an integral part of the story being told; Italy is drab and angular, almost prison-like, while the freedom of Paris is a bouquet of color upon a field of glacial blue. As we approach the climax, everything drains away and we are left with the blank nothingness of ice and frozen time. There is a dazzling, self-assured artifice to the film, but one that does not distance the viewer from the story but rather draws him deeper into it, illuminating the characters' thoughts and situations with light and shadow.


How did it hold up? Very well. I did realize, however, that the character of Anna, the professor's wife, has never quite made sense to me. Is she attracted to Marcello, or just afraid of him? Or is she a libertine who is ready to sleep with just about anyone? Much might have been explained in the scene where she and Marcello are first alone together, but there is a strange jump cut that elides the time between his advances and her exit. At times actress Dominique Sanda seems to be just as confused as we are.

Regardless, I would strongly recommend The Conformist to anyone who enjoys movies that are stylish and out of the ordinary. There really is nothing else quite like it, and beyond that it has something to say to all of us as we navigate the push and pull between society and our inner selves. The Conformist is a story of freedom and repression, of how we try to limit those around us, and how we limit ourselves.

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