10 / 10
The Conformist is Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1970 Italian political thriller and a film of extraordinary visual accomplishment. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Marcello Clerici, an Italian fascist functionary in the 1930s assigned to assassinate his former philosophy professor in Paris. Stefania Sandrelli plays his wife Giulia. Dominique Sanda plays Anna, the professor’s wife who becomes the central romantic complication. Bertolucci wrote the screenplay, adapting it from Alberto Moravia’s 1951 novel. Mars Film produced the film, and it was released in Italy in 1970.
The cinematography by Vittorio Storaro is widely considered among the principal achievements in the history of color film.
Few films are as beautiful as The Conformist, and that beauty is exactly what makes it so chilling to me. Every frame looks composed for a gallery wall, and the man at the center of all that gorgeous geometry is hollow. I can’t find a thing I’d change, and that’s what a 10 means on my scale.
The film works as political thriller and as study in psychological accommodation to authoritarian conditions. The work refuses the heroic anti-fascist tone that postwar Italian cinema typically deployed. Marcello isn’t a resistance hero or a clear villain. The character is a man who has accommodated himself to fascism through psychological compromises that the film traces across multiple temporal layers. The structural design uses non-linear narrative to develop the character’s accumulated compromises across his entire life.
The work is a foundational text for political cinema that engages with psychological accommodation instead of with overt political action.
The Storaro Cinematography
Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography on The Conformist is widely considered among the principal achievements in the history of color film, and I’d put it at the top of that list. He built a separate palette for each layer of the story. The 1930s flashbacks run cool, the Paris sequences warm up and suggest emotional possibility, and the fascist functionary scenes sit in deep saturated reds and golds that recall Mussolini-era propaganda. Those reds and golds are gorgeous and sinister at once, and I can’t take my eyes off them.
The cinematography also works through particular compositional choices that develop the wider political argument. The frequent use of architectural geometry, dramatic shadows, and theatrical staging produces visual fascism that the audience reads alongside the depicted political content. The compositions reference both Italian fascist architectural aesthetics and broader modernist architectural ambitions that the period blurred. Cinematography can develop political argument through visual choices that work alongside the explicit narrative content.
For Writers
Visual or formal choices can develop political argument alongside explicit narrative content. The Conformist’s cinematography develops fascist aesthetics through visual choices that work alongside the depicted narrative. This applies to fiction. Consider whether your work’s formal choices support its political content or work independently of it. The strongest political fiction often integrates formal and narrative argument instead of treating them as separable. The integration requires careful preparation but produces work that works at multiple levels.
The Trintignant Performance
Jean-Louis Trintignant’s performance as Marcello Clerici is among the great central performances in political cinema.
The character works through controlled affect that the actor establishes from the opening sequences. Marcello speaks little. The character observes more than he engages. The actor builds the character’s interior through accumulated particular behaviors instead of through dramatic display. The performance refuses the obvious moral tone that the role’s narrative function could have invited.
Trintignant never lets Marcello look like a believer. He plays a weak man who chose accommodation as protection against facing his own damage, and he builds that through small accumulated details so the audience reads it as a psychological choice. That’s what disturbs me. A zealot I could dismiss, and this man is ordinary enough to be anybody.
For Writers
Political fiction can engage with psychological accommodation more effectively than with explicit ideological positions. The Conformist depicts fascism through Marcello’s psychological weakness instead of through ideological conviction. This applies to fiction. Consider whether your political work engages with psychological mechanisms or with stated ideological positions. The psychological approach produces deeper engagement and broader applicability. The stated ideological approach produces immediate political clarity but may limit the work’s lasting engagement.
The Non-Linear Structure
The film’s structural design uses non-linear narrative to develop Marcello’s psychological history across multiple temporal layers.
The present action follows Marcello’s drive to assassinate his former professor. The flashbacks develop his childhood trauma, his early adult sexual encounter, his engagement to Giulia, and his recruitment into the fascist intelligence service. The temporal layers are parallel investigations of the same character instead of as sequential biographical development.
The non-linear structure lets the film build its argument through accumulated situations. The audience meets Marcello at several life stages at once, tracing his accommodation backward through particular incidents and forward through their consequences.
I think the structure shows Bertolucci’s real nerve. He trusts us to hold all those layers at once, and I much prefer that to a tidy biography told in order.
For Writers
Non-linear structure can develop psychological argument that linear narrative can’t support. The Conformist uses temporal layers to develop Marcello’s psychological history through parallel investigations instead of through sequential biography. This applies to fiction. Consider whether your work’s psychological content benefits from non-linear treatment. Non-linear structure requires preparation that allows audiences to track temporal positions without explicit signaling. Linear structure is easier to manage but limits the psychological argument the work can develop.
Craft Note
Bertolucci’s collaboration with Storaro across multiple films allowed the development of visual vocabulary particular to the director’s political interests. The use of color as political indicator, the particular compositional choices, and the relationship between camera movement and dramatic content all benefit from sustained collaboration between director and cinematographer. The Conformist represents one of the principal achievements of this partnership. The lesson applies to creative collaboration broadly. Director-cinematographer partnerships that develop across multiple projects produce work whose visual coherence depends on the accumulated working relationship instead of on isolated production decisions.
The investment in long-term partnerships pays off in work that one-off collaborations can’t match.
Does The Conformist still hold up?
It’s visually extraordinary and among the strongest political thrillers of any period. The Storaro cinematography is widely considered among the principal achievements in the history of color film. The Trintignant performance develops political fiction through psychological accommodation instead of through ideological conviction. The non-linear structure supports psychological argument that linear narrative couldn’t develop.
The 10 is for a film I can’t fault. Storaro’s color, Trintignant’s hollow man and Bertolucci’s broken timeline all serve the same argument about how ordinary weakness makes fascism possible, and that argument disturbs me more than any villain in a war movie. Anyone who cares about Italian cinema, political thrillers or cinematography should see it, and I’d put it on again tomorrow.
