2 / 12
Although the novel and film differ slightly in regards to the plot the same cinematic techniques are used.
I will firstly discuss the cinematic techniques used in the Bertoluccis film which has made the film all the more intriguing such as style, lighting, flash backs, camera angles……………………
3 / 12
Structure and the language of literature and cinema
Il Conformista is narrated in a flowery style, where Bertolucci expresses his most inner thoughts mostly through the means of mood and visuals
Like the tremendous fascist architecture constructions and the workplaces of authority that contain towering corridors that make visitors seem completely insignificant.
The cinematic technique that I particularly thought brought the film to life was Bertoluccis use of flashbacks. They add interest and deeper meaning to the film.
Flashbacks are prevalent until the conclusion that brings the future hurtling down on the central character.
The film is portrayed as a jigsaw puzzle where we as an audience have to piece to puzzle together to reveal its true message.
Moravia’s novel is simultaneously a political analysis of Fascist Italy and a psychological study of its protagonist, Marcello Clerici. It unfolds over three different phases in his life, each of which is overshadowed by the machinations of Fate.
Bertolucci’s beautifully filmed fable, recreating the costume and feeling of the time, alternatively engaging us in subtle variations of rich color and cool black-and-white, has transformed Moravia’s more polemic work into a rich tragic-comedy in which Marcello comes to be seen as a well-suited clown, a man both at home and completely at odds with the world in which lives.
Style
Bertolucci’s stylistic flamboyance—elaborate camera movements, strange baroque angles, luxuriant color effects, a profusion of ornate decor, the intricate play of light and shadow.
To complement this cinematography, there is the magnificently lush production design, created by Ferdinando Scarfiotti. The Fascist period in Italy was one of uniquely bold designs in terms of architecture, fashion and decor, and these modes are beautifully rendered: the beautiful costumes worn by Guilia and Anna, the lavish houses of the urban bourgeoisie, contrasting with the large, imposing, cold offices of the bureaucratic machine.
Setting, structure
Whereas Moravia’s novel relied on a purely linear mode of storytelling, beginning with Clerici’s childhood and going all the way to his demise during the fall of Mussolini’s government, Bertolucci begins his film closer to the end, with Clerici waiting in a hotel room in Paris for the phone call that will whisk him away to the Professor’s assassination. The past then begins to play out while Clerici rides in his car, chatting with his fascist bodyguard. Even the flashbacks themselves have flashbacks.
4 / 12
The film’s editing is amazing. It’s rather violent, just as the flashbacks that we witness are intrusions on Marcello’s psyche while trying to fulfill his orders. An early shot of the Eiffel Tower seems out of place until later, when Marcello and his wife find themselves there during Marcello’s psychological crisis. There are also lots of split screens – split by walls and room divisions, often while the characters are still conversing through the dividers. This pictures not only Marcello’s solitude, but his fragmented and conflicted state of mind. The crooked, diagonal shots (almost surreal in nature) also seem to indicate Marcello’s skewed view and non-conformism. Despite his efforts, he does not fit into the mold in which he has placed himself.
Flashbacks
Il conformista is a film that contains flashbacks within flashbacks until a final sequence that brings the future crashing down on its protagonist.
Presented in a kind of jigsaw puzzle fashion that pieces the story together in a series of flashbacks before working its way to a finale.
theme
Next theme in the novel is that of unrequited love or of desire that is not returned. All of the main characters, Marcello, Lino, Giulia, Quadri and Lina love someone who does not return their love. Marcello briefly falls madly in love with Lina who is a lesbian who despises him. Lina in turn is desperately in love with Giulia who only has eyes for her husband, who does not really love her. The inability of the characters to love the one who loves them is played out partly through a disparity in personality and political belief, and partly through differing sexuality. No one in the novel experiences love both in the giving and the receiving.
Characters
Marcello Clerici, Professor Quadri, Anna Quadri, Italo, Manganiello, Lino, Giulia in the movie
In the novel – Marcello Clerici, Prof Quadri, Lina, Lino, Giulia, Manganiello
Adjectives
Without a shadow of a doubt adjectives are utilised frequently thoughout “Il Conformista”
Yet I personally feel that adjectives were used more so in Moravia’s novel as opposed to Bertolucci’s film.
Hence I feel the reason for this is because novels are usually more descriptive in their nature. There is more time to describe and explore a plot in further detail than a two hour long film.
5 / 12
Nothing in the novel is dealt with elliptically; names and precise descriptions are assigned to even the most inconsequential characters, and static, reflective passages succeed each other with predictable regularity.
Music
6 / 12
camera movements
It is easy to see why Bertolucis works are admired so much, through his clever use of cinematic techniques it would be difficult not to enjoy his work his use of camera movements are to be admired.
Throughout the duration of the film, each scene is utilises light and colour, texture and activity. He has cleverly made great use of camera angles which can be seen when his
camera drifts and sail through art deco sets which are immersed in hazy, nostalgic colours.
Coupled with Bertolucci’s canted angles, elaborate camera movements, and static compositions of notable balance The Conformist its visual novelty, which is probably the film’s most pronounced attribute. The mélange of colors at a party (ironically attended primarily by blind people) contrast with the starkness one associates with the Fascist regime. At times, the opposed hues of bold colors and industrial blandness will also unify in a single image, as when a somber cityscape at dusk is shot through by piercing yellow headlights. In the same way, the vast echo chambers that comprise the regime’s office buildings are barren, grey, sterile, and generally unadorned facilities. Certain domestic interiors, on the other hand, are a mergence of illumination, costume, and set design; Giulia’s black and white striped dress mirrors and blends with the horizontal shafts of sunlight coming in the partially open blinds, for example.
Perhaps the most painful moment of the movie occurs when Anna, perceiving her own danger, races from the car, hoping to be saved by the car following them, wherein Marcello sits. Marcello Clerici gazes icily at his doomed lover through the window of his locked car door before watching her flee through the Piedmontese woods to be murdered – a scene shot with hand-held camera in order to make the hit feel inept and squalid.
The scene where the Professor and his wife are murdered is full of rough, handheld camerawork and jump cuts.
“Some aspects of Bertolucci travelled less well. Some of his formal ideas were greedily consumed by American film-makers, while the radical politics and pointedly Brechtian alienation techniques were largely discarded. Thus the emotionally expressive colour scheme of The Conformist – principally evident in the honeymoon train-ride of Clerici and his blousy new bride, during which insanely unrealistic rear-projection and alternating blue and gold filters throw into doubt the dependability of Clerici’s perceptions – are partially replicated in the colour-scheme of the two sections – past and present – of The Godfather: Part II. Its flashback sections are shot in ridiculously warm and nostalgic golds and sepias (the consoling colours of infantile memory and adult self-delusion) while the late 1950s present-day
7 / 12
is rendered in icily comfortless blues and greys. Similarly, Taxi Driver’s heavy reliance on the perceptions of Travis Bickle, the least reliable narrator in 1970s cinema, is evoked using many powerful expressionist effects that Bertolucci had made his own – but, again, with no concomitant importation of his political radicalism.”
Here comes my favourite scene in the movie; the dancing scene. The Mise-en-scene here is just incredible.Look at how the group of people quickly form a queue of circles and walk out of the restaurant, then the camera turns around inside the restaurant, shooting those people outside the window,then stops at the guy Marcello is about to meet .Then the camera focused on the two characters with the background of the queue, as the people is about to come back,they stop talking and the queue enters the room and circles Marcello in the center,gives us a feeling that the protagonist is trapped.The choreography and camera movement of the whole scene is so perfectly designed and executed that this part of the plot moves so fluently.
You can find all kinds of visual brilliance throughout the film,besides all those mentioned above,I’m gonna give you more in set pieces.
The opening sequence,I love how the camera moves up and reveals the naked body of Marcello’s lover.
When we are enjoying the flirt scene in the office,the camera suddenly pulls back and shows how vast this place is.
In one scene the camera starts very low,almost tied with the ground,and than pulls up to shoot the leaves,you can easily find the copy in Coen Brother’s Miller’s Crossing and Kieslowski’s Three Colors Red,which also stars Jean-Louis Trintignant.
The visuals in this film is just too overwhelming to be unnoticed,the shot you mentioned,it not only blows the leaves away,but everyone who has seen it.
The finale of the film, set in a dark, dank prostitute-riddled corner of the Colosseum on the night of Il Duce’s fall, with distracting searchlights and other odd lighting effects, is a far cry from the cleanly lit, orderly spaces of the earlier scenes.