Drama
Italian (Il conformista)
1970 · Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci · 108 min
Rome, 1938. Marcello Clerici wants nothing more than to be ordinary, and he joins Mussolini's secret police as the surest way to belong. A honeymoon in Paris becomes a assignment tied to his former professor, now an exile. A political thriller told through memory, shadow and extraordinary colour.
Why it matters in cinema history
A defining film of the Italian political cinema of c. 1970 and a high-water mark of European auteur filmmaking, it bridges the French New Wave's formal freedom and the lush, operatic style of 1970s art cinema.
Watch with intention
Watch it as a film where every image, from the light to the architecture, expresses what its hero is hiding from himself.
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