A message from the British Film Institute:
THE CONFORMIST by Bernardo Bertolucci
Opens Friday 29 February
"Bertolucci's audacious mixture of politics, philosophy and Freud"
Dazed & Confused
"A sumptuous, emotionally charged experience"
Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
"A visual masterpiece" ****
Empire
A powerful psychological thriller and riveting exploration of Italy's
Fascist past, The Conformist (Cert 15) is one of the most breathtakingly
stylish films ever made and one of the most influential, paving the way for
the likes of Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Paul Schrader.
Adapted from a novel by Alberto Moravia, Bertolucci's masterpiece centres
on Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a repressed young man
desperate to appear normal to the outside world, who joins the Fascists as
an undercover agent and undertakes to assassinate his former professor.
The emotionally expressive lighting of cinematographer Vittorio Storaro has
attracted much comment and acclaim. Storaro - who would go on to win
Academy Awards for Apocalypse Now, Reds and The Last Emperor - describes
thus his approach to the scenes set in Fascist Rome: "I wanted to show
through light the idea of claustrophobia, of being caged. I used the idea
that light could never reach the shadows, so that there was a distinct
separation between the shadows and the light."
The re-release of The Conformist is the centrepiece of Twilight and
Treachery: The Postwar European Film
Noir<http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/taxonomy/term/128> at BFI Southbank,
from 29 February to 31 March.
For further information and venues visit
www.bfi.org.uk/conformist<http://www.bfi.org.uk/conformist>
Opens Friday 29 February at the following cinemas:
[http://www.bfi.org.uk/bulletins/images/common/logos/southbank.gif]<http://www.bfi.org.uk/southbank>
[http://www.bfi.org.uk/bulletins/images/common/logos/renoir.gif]
<http://www.curzoncinemas.com>
[http://www.bfi.org.uk/bulletins/images/common/logos/everyman_cinema_club.gif]
<http://www.everymancinema.com>
[http://www.bfi.org.uk/bulletins/images/common/logos/barbican.gif]
<http://www.barbican.org.uk>
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