New Trailer for 4K Restoration of Bertolucci’s Classic ‘The Conformist’
by Alex Billington
December 8, 2022
Source: YouTube
Kino Lorber has unveiled a brand new 4K restoration trailer for the classic 1970 Italian Fascism film The Conformist, made by iconic director Bernardo Bertolucci. The film originally opened 51 years ago in US theaters, after screening at the New York Film Festival. Set during Mussolini’s Italy in the 1930s, the film follows a weak-willed Italian man that becomes a fascist flunky and travels abroad to Paris to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a Leftist political dissident. The film stars Jean-Louis Trintignant, with Stefania Sandrelli, Gastone Moschin, Dominique Sanda, Pierre Clémenti. Restored in 4K by Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Minerva Pictures, entirely overseen by the Fondazione Bernardo Bertolucci, at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, from the original camera negative. Critics have raved about how it is “a dazzling movie” with “the most striking and baroque images you’re ever likely to see,” featuring impressive Art Deco production design. As always, these beloved classics have never looked better properly restored in pristine 4K, and if you can catch this on the big screen near you – do not miss that opportunity.
Here’s the new 4K restoration trailer (+ poster) for Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist, from YouTube:
“Transports you into a world of pure style… Intriguing as it is as the reconstruction of one vexed historical movement – the late 30s – it is even more evocative of another, the late 60s and the early 70s, when cinema seemed to be entering a period of decadence that was also a second youth.’” –A.O. Scott of The New York Times
In Mussolini’s Italy, actor Jean-Louis Trintignant stars as the repressed Marcello Clerici, who tries to purge memories of a youthful, homosexual episode–and murder–joins the Fascists in a desperate attempt to fit in. As the reluctant Judas motors to his personal Gethsemane (the assassination of his leftist mentor), he flashes back to a dance party for the blind; an insane asylum in a stadium; and wife Stefania Sandrelli and lover Dominique Sanda dancing the tango in a working class hall. But those are only a few of this political thriller’s anthology pieces, others including Trintignant’s honeymoon coupling with Sandrelli in a train compartment as the sun sets outside the window; a bimbo lolling on the desk of a fascist functionary, glimpsed in the recesses of his cavernous office; a murder victim’s hands leaving bloody streaks on a limousine parked in a wintry forest. Bernardo Bertolucci’s masterpiece, adapted from the Alberto Moravia novel, boasts an authentic Art Deco look created by production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti, a score by the great Georges Delerue, and breathtaking color cinematography by maestro Vittorio Storaro.
The Conformist, also known as Il Conformista in Italian, is written & directed by legendary Italian master filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, his fourth feature film at the time, made just two years before he would go on to direct Last Tango in Paris. It’s based on the Italian novel of the same name written by Alberto Moravia. The film originally premiered at the 1970 Berlin Film Festival, before also playing at the 8th New York Film Festival later that year, playing in US theaters in early 1971. The 4K restoration of The Conformist opens in select US theaters (starting at Film Forum in NYC) on January 6th, 2023. For info visit KL’s site.
