Bernardo Bertolucci has a difficult posterity. Even the obituaries at his disappearance last year included more or less veiled criticism of his voyeurism in ‘Last Tango in Paris‘ or ‘The Dreamers‘ or its sliding into the extreme-oriental commerciality of ‘The Last Emperor‘ and ‘Little Buddha‘ . I believe that the grumblers should be sent to his early works, to ‘1900‘ and especially to this special film “Il conformista” (“The Conformist”) in order to appreciate the emotional impact, the political commitment, and the cinematic aesthetics of a director who did not avoid scandals, but who deserved the glory that he enjoyed during his lifetime, which he still may recover in the history of Italian and world cinema.
In 1963, a few years before “Il conformista” was made, Hanna Arendt published her book ‘The Banality of Evil’. Inspired by the trial of Adolph Eichmann, Arendt theorized about the role of dull and mediocre personalities, ready to any compromise, which in the conditions of a totalitarian dictatorship can become the instruments of evil, accomplices and participants in the most odious crimes. It is very possible for Bertolucci to have known and read Hanna Arendt’s book, because ‘”Il conformista” deals exactly with this subject, asking the question of the significance and even the possibility of ‘normality’ in an abnormal world, and having as main hero an Italian intellectual who lives under the trauma of a childhood sexual assault and aspires to become a normal and normative citizen of the world in which he lives – the period of Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship. Based upon a novel by Alberto Moravia, the film describes a hero who is a victim of his own nightmares, of his desire to ascend socially combined with cowardliness and the betrayal of the ideals of his youth. In order to climb the social scale and to integrate into a world built in appearance for the pure and the powerful, he adapts his own personality through murder and complicity to the crimes committed by the fascist regime in suppressing the opposition. His treason works at all levels: intellectual, religious, emotional, familial. Marcello Clerici (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant already at the peak of a long career from which he never seems to have descended) will adapt his social path and try to establish a family that meets the social standards,. When he meets a woman who may give him a chance of rehabilitation, he is unable to accomplish with his own hands the murder mission he was trusted with, but also unable to save her. The end of the film suggests a betrayal of his betrayal. Adaptability changes color, and chameleonism will only change direction, depending on the requests of the new regime.This is the powerful political message of the movie and of the book that inspired him and it successfully passes the screen.
Many of Bertolucci‘s films are exuberant visual performances, and “Il conformista“is no exception. We are absorbed in the world of 1938, but the image and the sets do not try to create a faithful reconstruction of the era, but rather a hyperbola of the hero’s experiences. The city’s scenery in Rome and Paris and the interiors of bourgeois suites or luxury hotels envelop spectators in the decadent atmosphere of a world on the edge of the abyss. Monumental decorations with crushing dimensions and the architectural style of the fascist Brutalism highlight the megalomania and the oppressive character of the dictatorship. The colors and the alternates of clear and foggy (as in the scene of automobile chase) are adapted to the carnal feelings or the indifference and the inability to act of the hero. The manner in which the action told and style of editing give a look of cinematic modernity. At no moment did I have the feeling that I see a movie made almost half a century ago. After all, cinematographic masterpieces are ageless.