The Conformist @ VIFF Theatre

Initiated by:
• Aleesa

Details

Summary from the VIFF site: The son of a poet (Attilio Bertolucci), Bernardo Bertolucci became a poet of cinema. Influenced by his mentor Pier Paolo Pasolini and by the work of Jean-Luc Godard and the French new wave, he graduated from overtly political films to increasingly epic philosophical dramas which spanned the globe in terms of location and reach, including The Last Emperor, 1900, The Sheltering Sky and Little Buddha. He will be remembered for landmark Last Tango in Paris, but his most perfect film is The Conformist. Jean-Louis Trintignant is Marcello Clerici, Alberto Moravia’s existential anti-hero, a cipher pressed into a political assassination plot by Mussolini’s security apparatus. Traumatised by an event in his childhood, Clerici betrays everything he believes in to affect a kind of numbing appeasement with society. Stefania Sandrelli is his fiancée, “all bed and kitchen”, and Dominique Sanda is the wife of his former mentor and now target, Professor Quadri. In one memorable scene the two women tango in Paris. The film’s visual surface is nothing less than dazzling. Director of photography Vittorio Storaro would go on to shoot Apocalypse Now, as well as Bertolucci’s international epics The Last Emperor and The Sheltering Sky, but this is the film that made his reputation. Every frame is densely layered, the images a flickering portfolio of the dominant modes in early twentieth century art. The use of colour is a wonder in itself. New 4K Restoration https://viff.org/whats-on/the-conformist/ The film starts at 8:10pm. Meet us in the lobby around 7:45 to say hello. For those who are interested, we can grab coffee at the Blenz on Davie afterward.