Il conformista

If there is one word I can use to describe The Conformist, it would be “overrated”. For something considered by many to be one of the greatest movies of the 1970s, it is incredibly hard to see why this is so because I really do not know what it is that everyone likes about this movie.

From what I saw, ‘The Conformist’ seems to tell the story of a hitman, Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintgnant), who must assassinate someone whilst on his honeymoon with his wife, Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli). I’m going to have to be pardoned for giving a, somewhat, shallow plot description but I do not know how else to describe the plot of this movie because it is almost entirely incomprehensible. After watching The Conformist, I read that in a review it’s narrative is non-linear since the movie supposedly keeps jumping back-and-forth in time but if that is the case, then it is unclear as to when it does so. It was obvious in one scene but not in any other, which made the film came across as an incomprehensible mess.

If there is one thing about the movie I quite enjoyed, it is the cinematography. The beauty of it prevented me from giving up on experiencing the rest of the film’s impenetrable narrative. Then again, no matter how beautiful the cinematography is, it does not disguise the film’s confusing nature.

Signing off.

*****
France/Italy/West Germany

Bernardo Bertolucci's hypnotic, indelible study of a conflicted Mussolini collaborator, whose aggressive, self-suffocating efforts to blend in and remain inconspicuous repeatedly and inevitably get him mixed up in gaudily, conspicuously stylised setpieces. It's a tour de force in silky visuals (probably the pinnacle of colour cinematography) and wintry, intoxicating atmosphere.