The Conformist

 

The BFI are hosting a European Film Noir season at the moment, the centrepiece of which is an extended run and new print of ‘The Conformist‘, Bernardo Bertolucci’s influential 1970’s Italian thriller. I’ve heard the film referred to as ‘The Velvet Underground of film’ in that whilst it was not a big hit at the box office or with audiences, it influenced dozens of aspiring film-makers to take the plunge with their own movies in much the same way that the Velvets kick-started and influenced many great bands. The film went down a storm with the 70’s Hollywood Brats, Coppola even hired Vittorio Storaro as his camera man on ‘Apocalypse Now’ on the strength of ‘The Conformist’. So, what’s it like on the big screen?

 

In a murky late 1930’s Italy we are introduced to Clerici, an aspiring fascist who has a desperate need to be accepted, to conform. He marries not for love or lust, but merely because it is the ‘done’ thing and lets him blend into veneer of respectable society. As the film begins he is despatched to Paris to assassinate his former teacher, a communist whose academic damnation of the fascist movement is becoming problematic. Using his honeymoon to cloak his murderous intent, we soon learn that Clerici’s troubles stem from an unfortunate sexual incident in his youth, an experience that still haunts the adult Clerici and dictates his psychological failings and political corruption.

 

I have seen the film a couple of times on video and admired the look and style of the film, if not the plot and story. Seeing it on the big screen has not changed my views, I can see why it was so influential but it just doesn’t grab me in any emotional way.  It’s like ‘Citizen Kane‘ a film whose technical achievements are immense, a true turning point in the development of film, but you don’t in any way feel anything for Kane, you don’t have any emotional investment that you have in the protagonists and heroes in films like ‘Vertigo’, ‘The 400 Blows’, ‘Bicycle Thieves’, ‘A Matter of Life and Death’, well, I could go on. Nevertheless, the design and photography is stunning and it is quite a bleak character portrait with no comfort, no consolation.

It does have one of those almost cliched 60/70’s art house cinema moments – Clerici is confronted by a female character who has guessed at the true nature of his mission and she yells at him, calling him ‘A worm, a traitor, a Judas’. She then turns quiet, strips naked to the waist, walks toward him and whispers ‘Kiss me’. I mean, what the fuck? What’s all that about? I mean, unless Bertolucci’s trying to say something about women being mental or he’s….ah…actually I think we’ve just cracked that one.