THE CONFORMIST
1970, 112’
Original Italian version
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Screenplay: Bernardo Bertolucci, Franco Arcalli
Cast: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda
Country: Italy, France, Germany
Distribution: Minerva Pictures and Raro Video Channel
Marcello Clerici lives with the secret burden of having killed, when he was just 11 years old, a pedophile who was abusing him. Two decades later, in 1938, he takes advantage of his honeymoon trip to Paris to carry out a delicate mission for the Fascist political police. The real purpose of his trip is to contact and then “eliminate” his former philosophy teacher, Professor Quadri, a known anti-Fascist who has taken refuge in France. After checking into a hotel, Marcello wangles an invitation to Quadri’s home with his new wife, Giulia. Anna, Quadri’s wife, offers to be Giulia’s guide to the city of Paris. Clerici, on the other hand, is dazzled by Anna’s extraordinary beauty and even suggests to her that they run away together to South America. We soon understand, however, that Anna has fallen for Giulia. The next day, among the many anguishes that Marcello suffers during the long car trip taking him to the place that has been chosen for the ambush to kill Quadri, it becomes inevitable that Anna too will have to be murdered, as she decided at the last moment to travel with her husband. Years later, on the evening of July 25, 1945, by chance Marcello sees the man that he always believed he had killed as a child, a moment that for him becomes the hour of reckoning.