The Conformist (1970)

          Every so often, a movie defeats me. In some cases, I’m unable to parse the mysteries of a film because the project is so obtuse that it exists outside anything I recognize as reality. (Here’s looking at you, Performance.) In other cases, however, I’m simply not sophisticated enough to receive the message the picture is sending. And so it goes with Bernardo Bertolucci’s political thriller The Conformist. On a textural level, I can say without hesitation that the film is exquisite. Working with frequent collaborator Vittorio Storaro, one of the true magicians of color cinematography, Bertolucci creates one memorable image after another. Using angles, color, framing, movement, production design, and special relationships with masterful precision, the filmmakers present 1930s and 1940s Europe as a living metaphor representing the spread of fascism.

          As the title character moves through his life before and during World War II, he tries to find a niche for himself inside the sleek surfaces of “normal” society, little suspecting that in the process of shaving off his “abnormal” edges, he is sacrificing his soul. Or something like that. You see, the problem is that I felt totally confused within the first five minutes of The Conformist, and never found any true connection with the movie beyond appreciating its beauty on a purely aesthetic level. Apparently, it takes a better man than me to decipher lines of dialogue like the following: “Yes, they would mistake for reality the shadow of reality.” Non capisco, il mio amico.

          Therefore, you might ask, why have I rated The Conformist highly, given my inability to penetrate its storyline? Well, in deference to the film’s reputation and to the unmistakable craftsmanship with which it was made, I’m comfortable heaping praise on what the movie might be—in other words, if The Conformist is half as dense and provocative and symbolic as I suspect, then it’s certainly among the most accomplished and challenging films of its era. Call it benefit of the doubt.

          Based on outside research more than pulling clues from the actual movie, I gather the storyline follows Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a social striver enlisted by a secretive organization to perform an assassination. On his way to the murder, Marcello flashes back through his life, recalling events that brought him to the current circumstances. He recalls a childhood encounter in which he was molested by an adult whom he then shot. He recalls the opportunistic nature of his marriage to a socially well-positioned woman. He recalls his friendship with a blind political activist. He recalls an affair with a married woman (played by the glamorous Dominique Sanda). And in one moment that I actually did understand while watching The Conformist, Marcello tries to confess his sins to a priest—as a condition of marriage—only to discover that the priest is more upset about Marcello having been with a man than about Marcello having committed murder. That particular scene, so chilly and incisive and sad, emboldens me to suggest that The Conformist contains worlds of meaning I was not able to grasp. Or maybe not. If nothing else, The Conformist is the world’s best cinematographer’s reel, because Storaro renders visual miracles during nearly every shot.

The Conformist: GROOVY

The Outside Man (1972)

          Although technically a French film (original title: Un homme est mort), the contemplative thriller The Outside Man was shot in America with most of the dialogue spoken in English, and several Hollywood stars appear in the cast, so it plays like a U.S. film with Gallic flair. The picture begins with French hit man Lucien Bellon (Jean-Louis Trintignant) arriving in L.A. to kill a mobster. Bellon performs his task efficiently, but then things get strange when it becomes apparent that an American assassin, Lenny (Roy Scheider), has been hired to whack Bellon. Instead of fleeing back to his homeland, Bellon lingers in California—realizing he’s been used as a pawn in a larger game, Bellon is determined to take out his enemies lest he remain a perpetual target.

          Since the French gave us the word ennui, and since that anguished state was the dominant flavor in so many ’70s movies about people searching for meaning in a turbulent world, it’s fitting that a French filmmaker came to America to make a crime picture as cynical as anything from William Friedkin or Walter Hill or Sam Peckinpah. Veteran director Jacques Deray shoots The Outside Man in a minimalistic style, positioning Bellon as a cold-blooded cipher who functions perfectly in an amoral universe so long as his criminal counterparts behave predictably—thus, when his lawless world is jostled, he’s as adrift as everyone else in the topsy-turvy ’70s, desperately grasping for the terra firma of a lost reality that will never return.

          If all of this sounds a bit lofty for a hit-man thriller, rest assured that Deray’s thematic implications live mostly in the film’s subtext, since The Outside Man comprises brisk, exciting scenes of Bellon avoiding danger and forming peculiar allegiances. The Gallic gunman’s main crony is a gangland moll named Nancy Robson (Ann-Margret), who provides information and shelter, although Deray accentuates Nancy’s initial reluctance to get pulled into Bellon’s crisis. The movie also features a witty subplot involving a single mother (Georgia Engel) whom Bellon abducts—on top of never demonstrating the hysterics one might expect from someone in her situation, she eventually becomes titillated by the proximity to death, a sly commentary on how starved for excitement “average Americans” can become.

          Deray guides his actors toward restrained work that speaks to his theme of people deadened by life’s repetitive rhythms, so the diverse cast feels unified. Trintignant is lethal in a gentlemanly sort of way, Ann-Margret is amiably jaded (and sizzling, thanks to her cleavage-baring dresses), Scheider is elegantly savage, and Engel is subtly funny. (Other featured players include Angie Dickinson, as the murdered gangster’s wife, and a very young Jackie Earle Haley, as the son of Engel’s character.) The Outside Man is saturated with dense ’70s texture, from the brooding funk/jazz score by Michel Legrand to the extensive location photography that captures early-’70s L.A. in all of its sun-baked seediness. This is crime cinema at its most nihilistic, but there’s also a surprising current of human connection running through the story.

The Outside Man: GROOVY