WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Jugu Abraham If you have not had the chance to read Alberto Moravia's book of the same name, the Bertollucci adaptation would seem to be a magnificent work. If you have read the book, the film will appear pedestrian.Notwithstanding Storraro's cinematography and the delightful performances of the lead players, the film misses out on the all important prologue and epilogue of the book. The views on religion are arguably more of Bertollucci than of Moravia. What is left is an action oriented slice of the book, ignoring the psychology and sociology offered by Moravia.I am convinced the importance given to the film is misplaced by viewers who have never bothered to read the book and compare the two works.

PimpinAinttEasy Dear Bernardo Bertolluci, The Conformist was a very pretty film. The lighting, sets, locales and costumes are simply gorgeous. There are also some great directorial flourishes. Like use of oblique camera angles. And the scene where the leaves are flying.The plot was also very engaging. The lead character was someone that I could relate to. Because I finally conformed and got married nearly a year ago. I'm also someone who has conservative thoughts. And I am often conflicted between my feelings of kindness and nationalism. In that sense, it is a universal story of a man who is caught in the currents of history and decides to go with the flow.Trintignant's performance was too subtle. His performance/character ought to have been more animated. I felt like the technical side of the film overshadowed the plot and the film's themes. Gastone Moschin who played Fanucci in Godfather 2 plays a very sinister role as the lead character's driver. Dominique Sanda is a great piece of ass.Best Regards, Pimpin. (8/10)

JoeKulik Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist (1970) is a film where the primary storyline is fatally flawed. 1) The protagonist, the civilian Clerici, is apparently the one who first approached the Fascist secret police with the plan to covertly infiltrate the group around the exiled dissident, Prof Quadri, so why did the secret police add a higher profile this simple plan by assigning a secret agent "babysitter", Manganiello, to the mission? A "babysitter", who was not very "low profile" at all in his clumsy and obvious attempts to tail Clerici around Paris. 2) Once the secret police decide, even before Clerici's arrival in Paris, that it is better just kill Quadri rather than to have Clerici infiltrate his group, then why use a volunteer civilian agent like Clerici at all, as opposed to a professional hit-man agent like Manganiello? 3) The actual scene where Prof Quadri and his wife are murdered is just a big unexplainable "hole" in this storyline altogether. a) Where did these other secret agents come from? Their presence in Paris comes out of nowhere in the storyline. b) How did these extra agents know about Prof Quadri's trip to his mountain resort? There is no evidence in the story of any prior contact with Clerici or Manganiello with this group. c) How did the car with the agent that blocked the road perfectly coincide on that long road with the location where the other agents were hiding in the woods? d) Why were so many agents needed to kill a college professor and his wife? e) Why did the agents inefficiently kill Qruadi by stabbing him multiple times with a knife when one gun shot would've done the trick? f) How could trained agents have allowed Quadri's wife to escape into the woods, thereby requiring an unnecessary chase after her? g) Why hide this band of agents in the woods at all, when they all could've been in the car that blocked the road? h) If this group of agents were the ones to kill Quadri and his wife, then why were Clerici and Manganiello even there, other than as bystanders? 4) The sudden change of plans to just assassinate Quadri, rather than to use Clerici as a mole to elicit information from him, and the subsequent assassination of Quadri without the involvement of Clerici whatsoever, makes the protagonist of this film virtually a nonentity, a superfluous character, to the main thrust of the storyline, namely, the Fascist secret police in Italy dealing with the exiled dissident Prof Quadri in Paris. This basic failure of the storyline makes the otherwise elaborate production of this film quite superfluous. This film has great cinematography, elaborate sets, intriguing symbolism, and effective innovative nonlinear editing all for NOTHING, in my opinion, because it was all just WASTED on a poorly thought out main storyline. All the fancy packaging doesn't compensate for a lousy gift, and that's what the viewer gets with this film. That this film received any awards at all, much less an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, again confirms for me the irrelevance of film awards altogether. However much the poorly thought out storyline of this film conforms to the novel from which it is adapted is meaningless to me, because every film, whether a literary adaptation or not, must stand on its own merits and this film clearly does not.

d_m_s Really didn't like this film.Obviously it is highly respected however for me it was one of those typical foreign art(ish) movies. That means it is slow, pretentious and full of allegory, metaphor and satire.While there is nothing inherently wrong with that, it does make for slow and dull viewing. It's the kind of film that would be good dissected in a film class but is no fun otherwise.You can imagine the kind of people who enjoy this are pompous art lecturers who snigger at the satire, less because it is funny and more because they get egotistical gratification out of sniggering not at the film but at the people who 'don't get it'.