In 1938 fascist Italy a newly married man takes his bride on a honeymoon to Paris. He's the son of intellectuals, his father is in an insane asylum, while his bride is middle class bourgeois. The situation sums up his predicament, that he's a bit of a sensitive intellectual who is caught up in Mussolini's violent political culture with a pretty new bride who seems oblivious to it all. It appears he joins the Fascists to get ahead in society but his allegiance is put to the test after he's given the assignment to assassinate on of his ex- professors, a disaffected intellectual who moved to Paris to escape the fascists. Thus the honeymoon takes a turn to the ominous side. The story in Paris unfolds, leading to the event taking place on a snowy winter afternoon in a forest. His target and the target's wife suspected him all along but befriended him, with the ex-prof's wife even seducing him. Thus the title refers to those who lived under fascism without necessarily embracing it, merely going along with the current in order to try to succeed within a brutal system and not be arrested, with the system testing this individual's commitment to the cause. Mussolini is overthrown towards the end of the film, and the protagonist leaves his apartment to watch the regime's fall and try to switch over to the non-fascists who comb the streets looking for collaborators to execute. Bertolucci explores Italy's fascist past by portraying how it played out with a classic cowardly non- protagonist who fails to rise to the occasion.
Review of The Conformist
