The Conformist

Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist returns in a dazzling new restoration supervised by the director and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro! One of the enduring masterpieces of the 1970s, Bertolucci’s breakthrough film The Conformist is an elegant portrait of the death throes of Italian Fascism and a triumph of pure style. Adapted by Bertolucci (an Oscar-nominated screenplay) from Alberto Moravia’s 1951 novel, it chronicles the life of secret police functionary Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who is sent on a mission to assassinate his former teacher, Professor Quadri (Enzo Tarascio), a leftist activist in exile in Paris. Clerici uses his honeymoon with new wife Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli) as a cover for the job. But he soon becomes entranced by Quadri’s sensuous, haunted wife Anna (Dominique Sanda), and the Fascist tenets he once accepted without question begin to waver in his mind. Legendary cinematographer Storaro (Apocalypse now) and production designer Fernando Scarfiotti (Scarface, American Gigolo) make spectacular use of the Fascist-era brutalist architecture, its blandly symmetrical structures acting as another form of control. with a gorgeous score by Georges Delerue and incandescent performances by a star-studded cast, The Conformist is a towering accomplishment that for the past four decades has enraptured audiences and influenced filmmakers around the world.

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