Il Conformista

An Italian film that explores a broad range of issues pertaining to Italian society, including the Catholic Church, the family unit, the relationship between husbands and wives, and the interaction of the individual and the state. Much of the film takes place in Rome, whose historical position as the center of a global empire is sometimes alluded to in the street scenes, where the action takes place against the backdrop of classical marble sculptures from antiquity, or beneath the arches of the Colosseum. On other occasions, the setting is provided by the massive modernist buildings built during Mussolini’s regime, which is the period of the film’s setting. The impersonal grandeur of these civic buildings and their orederly massiveness contrasts with the human scale of the characters, which perhaps is to allude to the fact that in this totalitarian regime, individuality is suppressed in favour of “the collective”.

The events of the plot are related in a series of flashbacks interspersed with updates from the unifying plot line. On one occasion we are presented with what amounts to a flashback within a flashback. A sense of dynamism pervades several scenes, where multiple agents are depicted following their own, occasionally independent, trajectories. A case in point occurs early in the film, when we see a car and a train both moving towards us, the car driving on a road below the raised railtrack. Later, in the appartment of the main protagonist, Clerici’s, fiancee, the appartment’s floor plan and camera position are such that we simultaneously see a room where two characters are engaged in conversation, as well as the corridor outside, where the fiancee’s mother hovers. Some scenes are reminiscent of the works of Nanni Moretti, both in composition, theme, and tone, and perhaps suggest Bertolucci’s influence on Moretti. I’m speaking here of those scenes in the radio station, where three women are singing and dancing as part of a broadcast while two characters (Clerici and the blind Italo) have a key conversation in which Clerici discusses his wishes to “be normal” while Italo, amused, notes that others want to “be different”.

In the course of events, Clerici demonstrates an amazingly callous approach to his marriage, as he tries to seduce other women and uses his honeymoon as a cover for political undercover assassination effort in Paris. This extraordinary egocentricism and a general sense of dissolution makes it difficult to sympathise with any character and engage with the story as anything other than a quasi-allegorical piece about fascist Italy. Partly due to its allegorical content, the plot may occasionally falter for those who would prefer the film to stand as a story in its own right. All this being said, we do sense that we understand the filmmakers’ intentions, and the idea that Clerici is a conformist because he will do “anything” (as evidenced by his honeymoon activities, and of his denunciation of his friend) in his efforts to be “normal”.

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