----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > As a fan of Jean-Louis Trintignant, largely as a result of my enthusiasm for > "My Night at Maud's," And what about his piece de resistance: *Un Homme et une Femme/A Man and a Woman* (1966), Lelouch. The film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes--that was before the French gave awards to Tarantino. I also recommend Trintignant's latest film: *Rouge/Red* (1994?), Kieslowski. I just rented and viewed for the first time "The > Conformist" (1970; Bernardo Bertolucci) A dubbed copy, I bet. *The Conformist* was recently rereleased in 35 mm, a restored print. I don't know if it made it past New York, though. I recommend an excellent article by Millicent Marcus: "Bertolucci's *The Conformist: A Morals Charge" in her *ITalian Film in the Light of Neorealism* (1986). Also, Philip Kolker's book on Bertolucci [*Bernardo Bertolucci*] (1985). It analyzes the film in great details and you would find many answers to your questions there. in which he plays an Italian whose > cowardice and lack of commitment are gradually revealed in what I take to be > the basic point of the plot. I was impressed by the style of the film, as > anyone would be, but perplexed by the plot and characterization, which > perhaps is not an unusual state to be left in after viewing one of > Bertolucci's films. *The Conformist* is particularly intricate in terms of plot. I recommend more than one viewing. On top of that, the film assumes knowledge of the historical background of the fil and builds the story/plot on that knowledge. Typical of many Italian films but maybe a touch difficult for an audience who is not well acquainted with Italian politics. And I am *not* assuming that you are not. For example, the scene in the recording studio when Marcello goes to visit his friend Italo to let him know that he got engaged to Giulia has that song "Chi e' piu Felice di Me" sung by the three women. That was an actual reference to a song very popular in the Thirties in Italy. And the man who mimicks the sound of the bird, in the same scene was heard every day on the Italian radio well into the Seventies. Who cares? Well, the film does. How is such information going to affect the reading of the film? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Same thing as the Godard intertext. Kolker explains it very effectively. Bertolucci spoke in Florence in 1989 at a retrospective of all his films and he said that *The Conformist* marks the beginning of a cinema of harmony--aways from the masochism of his early Godard influenced days which culminated with *Partner* in 1968, the film that he claims made him suffer the most. OK, I am gonna stop here before I turn this posting into a dissertation. Is the Dominique Sanda character in fact supposed to have been the > prostitute he once kissed but did not make love to? Yes, she plays two characters. Are we to assume that > she is not particularly committd to her husband (the professor) but just > taking advantage of the good life in Paris? Definitely not! She and her husband have an open relationship-- a mutual understanding of the kind of life style they want to lead. I think this is an interesting commentary on the kind of life style dictated by Fascism in Italy at the time. Remember, they are anti-Fascists in exile in Paris. Gloria Monti