THE CONFORMIST

Italy 1970 - DCP - 113 minutes, in Italian and French with English subtitles

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci

Screenplay: Bernardo Bertolucci, based on the novel by Alberto Moravia

Producers: Maurizio Lodi-Fè

Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Dominique Sanda, Stefania Sandrelli, Gastone Moschin, Enzo Tarascio

Print Courtesy: Kino Lorber

“One of the most visually ravishing films of all time... It remains as startling and revolutionary as it was upon original release”— Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture. “It’s a triumph of feeling and style—lyrical, flowing, velvety style, so operatic that you come away with sequences in your head like arias”—Pauline Kael, The New Yorker. From Bernardo Bertolucci comes a film by a director who went on to Oscar recognition with his epic The Last Emperor and more great masterpieces, including his even more amazing politically-based epic 1900. But The Conformist remains unmatched—simply among the greatest films ever made, and an unparalleled treat to see in this new 4K restoration. In Mussolini’s Italy, Jean-Louis Trintignant’s repressed haut bourgeois Marcello Clerici, trying to purge memories of a youthful, homosexual episode (and murder), joins the Fascists in a desperate attempt to fit in. As the reluctant Judas motors to his personal Gethsemane, he flashes back to a dance party for the blind; an insane asylum in a stadium; and wife Stefania Sandrelli dancing the tango in a working-class hall with his lover Dominique Sanda (MIFF’s Lifetime Achievement Award Honoree in 2018). Bertolucci’s masterpiece of a political thriller, adapted from the Alberto Moravia novel, boasts an authentic look created by production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, a score by the great Georges Delerue and eyepopping color cinematography by Vittorio Storaro. —KE Sponsored by John and Judy Bielecki