A visually stunning case study in the psychology of conformism and fascism. A masterful example of political modernism with the brilliant Jean-Louis Trintignant portraying a man who renounces his desires and beliefs to submit to a new political movement.
Italy, 1938. Marcello Clerici is a bureaucrat, cultivated and intellectual but largely dehumanized by an intense need to be 'normal' and to belong to whatever is the current dominant socio-political group. He accepts an assignment from Benito Mussolini's secret police to assassinate his former mentor, living in exile in Paris. In Trintignant's characterization, Clerici is willing to sacrifice his values in the interests of building a supposedly "normal life."
"/.../ The Conformist /.../ seems to be my easiest film, but actually it is the most difficult because it is the simplest one. One enters it on a first level of "reading" that was missing from Before the Revolution: that film had many other levels but there did not exist a first level of reading. In The Conformist, there is such a first level, so everybody enters it easily. /.../." (Bernardo Bertolucci)