Watch The Conformist

A political drama by acclaimed Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci. With its non-linear structure and many dream like and symbolic scenes, The Conformist is considered a masterpiece of expressionist Italian cinema. Told in a series of flashbacks the film follows the life of Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a member of the secret police in Mussolini's fascist Italy during the turbulent 1930s. We see the evolution of the man from an isolated and confused youth in whose mind desire and violence have become intertwined, and his desperate desire to conform and appear normal. In the present Marcello is assigned to assassinate Luca Quadri (Enzo Tarascio), an exiled anti-fascist professor living in Paris. Marcello plans to fulfill his mission while traveling on his honeymoon with his new bride Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli,) but things get complicated when he meets the his target's beautiful wife Anna (Dominique Sanda). Based on the 1951 novel of the same title by Alberto Moravia, with a screenplay also by Bertolucci.