The Conformist
Short description
Set in Italy and France during the 1930s, The Conformist centres on Marcello Clerici, a philosophy lecturer who marries a carefree young woman named Giulia while carrying the weight of a violent episode from his adolescence. Eager to appear ordinary and to belong, he attaches himself to the fascist movement and is drawn into its secret police. His superiors give him a task that turns his honeymoon in Paris into a cover: he is to get close to Professor Quadri, his former teacher, who has fled Italy and become an anti-fascist dissident, so that the assassination can be arranged.
Bernardo Bertolucci directed and wrote the screenplay, adapting Alberto Moravia's novel. It is the first title in the chronological list of his feature films, made before Last Tango in Paris, 1900 and The Last Emperor, and produced by Maurizio Lodi-Fè. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Marcello, with Stefania Sandrelli as Giulia, Gastone Moschin as Manganiello, Dominique Sanda as Anna Quadri and Enzo Tarascio as Professor Quadri. The production was a German, Italian and French co-production, and the film runs 108 minutes.
The film holds a critics' rating of 8.9 out of 10 from 60 reviews, while on TMDB it has 7.6 out of 10 from 786 votes, a narrower gap between professional and audience response than is common.
What's left behind the scenes
- Initially, the film's editing was handled, as usual, by Roberto Perpignani, and he edited the film linearly, i.e., chronologically in order. Soon, however, some of the film's storylines were edited by Franco Arcalli (1929-1978), and he did so by alternating the past with the present, thereby changing the film's structure. The result made such an impression on Bertolucci that he entrusted the editing of the entire film to Arcalli, and subsequently worked only with him.
- When the protagonist asks the operator to connect him with Professor Quadri, he gives a phone number that once belonged to Bernardo Bertolucci’s (1941-2018) idol, Jean-Luc Godard. When Quadri answers, the protagonist recalls one of the lectures in which Quadri said: “The time for reflection is over. The time for action has come.” These words open Godard’s 1960 film, *Le Petit Soldat* (The Little Soldier).
- The hospital where the protagonist’s father is staying is Teatro Libera, or “Free Theatre,” on the outskirts of Rome. This massive Art Nouveau building of white marble has also been featured in other films and television programs.
- On his way to Quadri, the protagonist utters the phrase in Latin “Animula, vagula, blandula, hospes comesque corporis,” or “Little soul, wandering and tender, guest and companion of the body.” This is the first line of an epitaph attributed to the ancient Roman emperor Hadrian (76-138).
- Bernardo Bertolucci was introduced to the novel of the same name (1947) by Alberto Moravia (1907-1990), which later served as the literary basis for the film, by his then-girlfriend, Maria Paola Maino. He liked how she described the book, but he himself was busy working on *The Spider’s Strategy* (1970) and hadn’t read the novel at the time he pitched the idea of an adaptation to Luigi Luraschi (1905-2002) of Paramount Pictures. Bertolucci was so convincing that Luraschi agreed to sponsor the filming and then handle the film’s distribution. Just a month later, Bertolucci was busy reading the novel and simultaneously writing the screenplay for the future film.
- Before casting Dominique Sanda as Anna Quadri, Bernardo Bertolucci offered the role to Brigitte Bardot.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
