The Conformist

Marcello Clerici works for the secret police in fascist Italy and is sent to Paris to kill a professor who was once his teacher. He has no politics; all he wants is to appear normal, and that is the whole subject. Bernardo Bertolucci, adapting Alberto Moravia's 1951 novel, removed several explanatory scenes and deliberately left the narrative fragmented and psychologically loose. What people talk about is Vittorio Storaro's photography. The thirties aesthetic, the colour and the fluid camera launched his international career and directly shaped the New Hollywood generation. Coppola made that explicit: the scene of leaves blowing here fed a similar moment in The Godfather Part II, and he cast Gastone Moschin on the strength of his work in this film. The American release was cut by five minutes, losing among other things a sequence with a group of blind people dancing. Those scenes were restored for the 1996 reissue. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 98 percent and Metacritic at 100. Who it is for: anyone who wants to understand how a film image gets built. Every frame here works as a lesson. Who it is not for: viewers wanting linear narrative. Time keeps breaking and the character's psychology is never spelled out.