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(Its currently playing New YorksFilm Forum, and will soon travel around the country.)
Its also one of those period pieces that always seems to speak to an ever-changing present.
Marcello seeks to keep his emotions and desires at bay.
Even now, years later, Marcello doesnt seem to know how to feel about this event.
When he recounts it, we see horror, wistfulness, confusion, and rage dance across his face.
Thats the characters main problem, in many ways.
He seeks comfort in all things uniform.
so that we sometimes wind up inside a memory without immediately realizing it.
(I wrote a bit about that experiencehere.)
you could lose yourself in entire sequences, in their vibrant colors and deep shadows and intoxicating rhythms.
It was 1993, and he didnt mean it as praise but his fundamental analysis wasnt wrong.)
The Conformistconsistently works on both a narrative and a symbolic level.
It means six different things at six different points, slipping among meanings and moods.
And thebrutally violent climax(also famous) feels less like an outward attack than an inward one.
Now begins the time for action.
Bertolucci didnt have Godards penchant for parody or his preternatural self-awareness.
This was a betrayal of sorts.
Its why the American so-called movie brats loved him so much.
To achieve all this, he had to kill Godard.
That conflict in many ways powersThe Conformists uniquely unsettling mood.
