The Conformist

In celebration of The Loft Cinema’s Golden 50th Anniversary, Essential Cinema presents free screenings of some of The Loft’s most popular hits from years past!

In Mussolini’s Italy, repressed Jean-Louis Trintignant, trying to purge memories of a youthful, homosexual episode–and a 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 their window; a woman 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 Vittorio Storaro. (Dir. by Bernardo Bertolucci, 1970, Italy, in Italian with English subtitles, 111 mins, Rated R)