Conformist (The)
Gay | The Celluloid Closet | The Culture of Queers | New Queer Cinema: The Director's Cut | Drama | Teddy Award 1990 | 1970
Original Title
Il Conformista- Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
- Writer: Bernardo Bertolucci; Alberto Moravia
- Producer: Giovanni Bertolucci; Maurizio Lodi-Fè
CGiii Comment
This features, possibly, the most vile wife in the history of any motion picture - she would put you off marriage for life (any doubts, watch this).
The desire to be normal can, in itself, take you far from the path of normality - as Bertolucci so beautifully captures.
It is a fine, complex work - definitely influential...and, the highlight of Bertolucci's career.
Trailer...
The(ir) Blurb...
This story opens in 1938 in Rome, where Marcello has just taken a job working for Mussollini and is courting a beautiful young woman who will make him even more of a conformist. Marcello is going to Paris on his honeymoon and his bosses have an assignment for him there. Look up an old professor who fled Italy when the fascists came into power. At the border of Italy and France, where Marcello and his bride have to change trains, his bosses give him a gun with a silencer. In a flashback to 1917, we learn why sex and violence are linked in Marcello's mind.
Cast & Characters
Jean-Louis Trintignant as Marcello Clerici;
Stefania Sandrelli as Giulia;
Gastone Moschin as Manganiello;
Enzo Tarascio as Professor Quadri;
Fosco Giachetti as Il colonnello;
Jose Quaglio as Italo;
Dominique Sanda as Anna Quadri;
Pierre Clementi as Lino;
Yvonne Sanson as Madre di Giulia;
Milly as Madre di Marcello;
Giuseppe Addobbati as Padre di Marcello;
Christian Aligny as Raoul;
Carlo Gaddi as Hired Killer;
Umberto Silvestri as Hired Killer;
Furio Pellerani as Hired Killer