Reading, Watching 03.19

Books, Articles, Movies

This is a regular feature for paid subscribers, wherein I write a little bit about what I’ve been recently reading, watching, and/or listening to. I hope you enjoy!

A restoration of Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970) is playing at Film Forum until March 23rd. Jean-Louis Trintignant plays Marcello Clerici, a strange man desperate escape a troubled childhood and finally fit in. To do this, he joins the Fascist secret police and marries a woman named Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli) he refers to as a “petite bourgeoise” with clear contempt. He is tasked by the regime with assassinating his former philosophy professor, now living in Paris as an anti-fascist exile. Welcomed by his old teacher, he finds the professor’s young wife Anna (Dominique Sanda) irresistible and attempts to seduce her. And So begins this almost operatic saga of deception and betrayal of both self and others.

Obviously, the subject matter and period are very much up my alley, but also this must be one of the most visually sumptuous films ever made. Cinematographer Vittorio Storato’s sensational color palette put him in high demand in Hollywood and is still widely imitated today. Art director Ferdinando Scarfiotti’s reconstruction of Fascist era design and architecture makes the film worth watching alone. The Conformist is also notable for its place in cinema history: its careful attention to mise-en-scène and mood and its focus on the dark side of the human condition profoundly influenced the upcoming directors of New Hollywood like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese.