Streaming The Conformist (1970) Online
Monday, July 14, 2014 by stream
The Conformist (1970)iMDB Rating: 8.1Date Released : 22 October 1970
Genre : Drama
Stars : Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Gastone Moschin, Enzo Tarascio
Movie Quality : HDrip
Format : MKV
Size : 870 MB
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This story opens in 1938 in Rome, where Marcello has just taken a job working for Mussollini and is courting a beautiful young woman who will make him even more of a conformist. Marcello is going to Paris on his honeymoon and his bosses have an assignment for him there. Look up an old professor who fled Italy when the fascists came into power. At the border of Italy and France, where Marcello and his bride have to change trains, his bosses give him a gun with a silencer. In a flashback to 1917, we learn why sex and violence are linked in Marcello's mind.
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Review :
Visually stunning, otherwise clumsy with some nasty politics.
I literally signed up because, on first watching this film, I was shocked by the apparent reverence in which it is held. Yes, it is certainly a visually stunning film -one of the most beautiful films I have seen in some time in fact. However there seems little else to recommend it. The main character is a "conformist". How do we know this? Well, because he literally TELLS US in the first couple of minutes. He certainly does not act like it ...and this is pretty much what you can expect for all of the themes explored in the film -every unconvincing and unsubtle point will be rammed home ham-handedly. Certainly there is no convincing portrayal of the anxiety which drives the desire to conform, and the relationship between this anxiety and fascism -something which would have been a very worthy subject matter. On the contrary the protagonists behavior is on the contrary quite odd rather than conformist. A real missed opportunity here. Characterization, in so far as it exists, is crude and didactic (this goes for all characters, not just the protagonist). There are a number of weird themes, visual sequences and actions by characters throughout, which I can only assume is a crude attempt to qualify the film as "arty", as well as some utterly comical pseudo-intellectualism (bringing to mind something like "first year philosophy students at lunch in the quad"). I could go on in some detail, but hey, in the present case what's the point???
The film concludes with a rather nasty apologist message, the apparent "moral" of the film, equating fascism and anti-fascism as two sides of the same coin. This message is hammered home repeatedly and crudely in the final minutes so as to make sure we don't miss the point. Firstly, I got it the first time -the final scene (where the protagonist denounces two guys as fascists) was both unnecessary and awkwardly unsubtle. Secondly, I just don't buy it -fascism and anti-fascism are just not the same thing. All in all "Il Conformista" left a very bad taste in my mouth.
I'm not a liberal-arts type guy, and I know very little about Italian history, so maybe it's me that's just to dumb to "get it"? I don't think so, but I figure even if this was the case that would clearly make the film unsuccessful as a piece of communication. I reckon turn the subtitles off (or mute it if you speak Italian) and you could maybe just enjoy the visual spectacle .
5/10 with the subtitles off.
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