Popular reviews

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  Review by Will Sloan ★★★★★ 2

  The moving story of a young Pete Buttigieg's struggle to cut ties with his Marxist father. Vittorio Storaro's stunning cinematography introduces many of the visual ideas he would perfect a half-century later in Rifkin's Festival.

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★★

  Too-good-to-be-true first time viewing. The Conformist is a quiet character study like Le Samourai but with the content reversed: Marcello is desperate to be as cool as Jef, and in his desperation he constantly reveals how uncool he actually is. His frantic belief in the big Other belies his lack of belief in himself. Through this psychological drama, the film aligns fascism with a kind of impotence and repressed sexuality. The cinematography is also all-time great status (primarily shot composition and color palette, but also the DP's mysterious ability to shoot as if his massive film camera were a weightless nothing he can manipulate as he pleases). I would have immediately rewatched it if not for a prior engagement to see Rebecca on the big screen; but there's always tomorrow.

  Italian Cinema | The Rewatch List

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  Review by CJ Probst ★★★★★ 12

  Now this is what a beautiful film looks like. As I have been slightly underwhelmed by some of the early cinema I watched for Film School Dropouts, I got from The Conformist that irresistible, nostalgic magnetic pull that I had been seeking because it was so beautiful I just wanted to jump through the screen. Whether it is the period Italian fashions, the old cars or the chic interiors enhanced by some otherworldly cinematography, the entire film felt like a cool breeze flowing in on a warm day or that perfectly brisk weather that comes immediately before a rain. So refreshing and invigorating.

  It’s a socio-political noir by the Italian master Bernardo Bertolucci and follows Dottore, a young employee of…

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  Review by reibureibu ★★★★½ 11

  You can have everything – money, status, looks and class – and still have nothing really. All these things are important, certainly, and many would kill just for a taste of them, but a humanity these do not make and a fulfilling life they do not necessarily lead.

  The Conformist is a cold, distant, empty film full of vacuous objects and vacuous people – in some ways, there is no distinction between the two. Here is a world full of wealth signifiers gorgeously lacing the film with all its splendor, yet there's never a warm beating heart underneath, no discernible soul underneath these facades.

  Marcello is the perspective which we see all these things, a man born and bred into…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 1

  you're wasting away in a stale, decadent mansion or barely subsisting in a brutal insane asylum. so you're fucked either way.

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  Review by Deckk ★★ 8

  Few things are as frustrating as loving all the technical aspects (and even more than just that) of a film, and still not enjoying it. That’s exactly what happened here. The Conformist follows Marcello Clerici, an Italian fascist flunky, as he inadequately tries to assassinate his anti-fascist former professor by order of his employer the Organization for Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism.

  In terms of cinematography and its colour palette, The Conformist is an exquisite picture; both elements establish the film’s geographical location and time period almost better than any exposition does. The viewer watches The Conformist from the perspective of its titular sycophant, which director Bernardo Bertolucci capitalises on by inflating or deflating the relative grandeur of the worldly…

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 4

  As a collectivist, I am very much for belonging. I am a big fan of community spirit and of togetherness. The distinction between my personal brand of collectivism and fascism, or one of many, is in the difference between conformity and acceptance. I look out on the diversity of the world, and I think how amazing it all is. I want everyone to see their differences, accept them, and appreciate them in others. In fascism, conformity is the rule. They see differences out there, and they want to quash them. They want to dress in uniform, metaphorically and often literally speaking, and destroy that which doesn't fit.

  There are collectivists, communists, socialists, who hew closer to conformity than acceptance, in…

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  Review by Branson Reese 1

  Man this camera was impish. Zooming in on people's faces to highlight completely unremarkable lines or expressions, zooming out to reveal that we've been in hideous cavernous rooms the entire scene, jumping around in time mid-scene, wandering away from the protagonist to focus on some kids running around instead. Deeply disrespectful of the cowardly fascist scum even in his own movie. Biggest laugh for me was when he was in confessional confessing to murdering a pedophile during his adolescence and the camera zooms out to reveal his fiancé sitting two feet away smiling and waving. She just hadn't been listening to him.

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  Review by sakana1 ★★★★★ 45

  The Conformist could not have been less like what I expected, and I loved every second of it. Bernardo Bertolucci's control of tone here is perhaps the best I've ever seen, and Jean-Louis Trintignant (an actor I typically dislike quite a lot, no less) is jaw-droppingly great in the lead role. I have never in my life so deeply enjoyed watching a movie about one of humanity's darkest chapters, and our grimmest personal impulses, and the way that joy is snatched away the moment Marcello Clerici's pathetic, convenient fascism becomes personal — to us — is magnificent.

  It's strange to feel so elated about such a tragic, hopeless film, and perhaps I'm alone in my delight, but the depth of…

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  Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★

  "Do you know who Madame Butterfly is?"

  Psychologically and politically one of the richest and most complicated films the whole of 1970's cinema had to offer. Its shadow hangs over the entirety of New Hollywood, and I'm uncertain if they had ever come close to matching it.

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  Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★★½ 1

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  84/100

  A literary adaptation that absolutely should not work, since everything of importance happens inside the protagonist's head. Unlike, say, Tom Ripley (whom he otherwise resembles in several key respects; for one in particular, see below), Clerici has no personal goal that fuels actions we can readily interpret, and Trintignant shrewdly keeps a vacuum seal on his performance, giving nothing away even at the film's most operatic moment*. Only the title and a few brief conversations, e.g. Clerici dutifully going to confession, offer a window into the man's warped soul. Yet we're overpowered by a terrible clarity rooted in one gobsmacking image after another. Bertolucci does what a filmmaker should (but so few do): He makes the book his own,…

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  Review by Slig001 ★★★★½

  The Conformist is Bernardo Bertolucci's takedown of political ideology through its central character. Marcello Clerici is a lost soul in 1930's Italy, buying into fascism through a lust for conformity and an attempt to escape from the perceived shortcomings of his life. The film highlights the absurdity of ideology without belief, normality through conformity. People following dictats for the wrong reasons - money or the comfort of conformity, and ultimately going nowhere as the overarching ideology evolves, while the dichotomy between the individual and the state is retained. Making reality like shadows on the wall of Plato's cave. What's the point of any of this really without personal fulfillment? There is no joy in conforming to a system you don't…