The Conformist

Released two years after the upheavals of May ‘68, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist – based on the novel by Alberto Moravia – is finally getting a much-deserved re-release in a pristine new print. The film stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as Marcello, a young Italian who, on joining the fascist cause in the 1930s, is assigned to assassinate his former philosophy professor. Boasting crisp cinematography, bold set designs and an acute sense of period, Bertolucci’s film explores the impact of fascism through the distorted perspective of his protagonist, and adopts the characteristics of totalitarian filmmaking to expose the moral bankruptcy behind the fascist spectacles that flooded Italian cinema of the era. In so doing, he fashions one of the most referenced and extraordinary films in cinema history.

Mar Diestro-Dopido