Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1970 Oscar nominated masterpiece will close the 2015 Lavazza Italian Film Festival in truly visually intoxicating art deco style.
A political thriller set in Mussolini’s Italy, The Conformist is an incisive portrait of the self-loathing, repressed Marcello (Jean-Louis Trintignant) who is drawn to Fascism. Aching to fit in in 1938 Rome, he is despatched to Paris to murder his former, anti-fascist college professor. A furious energy is contained in the film’s truly unforgettable scenes: a wedding night on a train, Marcello’s wife Stefania Sandrelli and her lover Dominique Sanda dancing the tango, a limousine ambushed in a wintry forest. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro’s lens transforms every street and room into a catalytic baroqueness and decadence, resulting in a bludgeoning indictment and critique of politics and class.
This new release is the result of a new digital restoration from original source materials, supervised by Storaro himself and approved by Bertolucci.