Bertolucci's The Conformist and 1900 coming to DVD 12/5 hooray!

i think dop storare 'supervised' the transfer.

psyched as fuck.

This tells me two things:

1) Your priorities are all screwed up
2) We are kindred spirits

It's turning into a banner season for DVDs, a lot of weird + wonderful things are popping up this year: Voice of the Beehive, Pandora's Box, Gojira, Clean Shaven, Let's Scare Jessica To Death, La Commune, Pusher Trilogy (cheap, $30), The Other, The Double Life Of Veronique, Satantango, Films of Kenneth Anger (finally).

You should probably stay away from Satantango, then.

I'm the same way, the 5-hour Scenes From A Marriage has been mocking me from my shelf for over a year. It's taken me 5 years to get 9/10ths of the way through The Decalogue.

i have an unseen copy of la commune too!!

Gimme The Spider's Strategem and Little Buddha any day.

Kael goes further: it's too in love with its fascist-homosexual overtones. But so what? It's a great film with troublesome fascist overtones. It's also Jean Louis-Trintignant's finest hour until his rotter judge in Red.

!

Way too 'troublesome' for me, I needed to gargle afterwards. Those faults are at the core of the movie, beneath the glitz and Dominique Sanda. I thought I remembered Kael making similar complaints.

I remember they showed 1900 some years ago on Channel 4, uncut, but in two parts. It was brilliant. I hope it is still brilliant when I get the DVD.

More like married substance and style. I don't like films that are merely cool surfaces, and I wouldn't count The Conformist among them. If you think Bertolucci is implying homosexuality causes fascism, well, that's a pretty simplistic read of a complex movie.

It's a character study of a person who loathes himself and wants to escape into anonymity. He's living in bad faith, he can't take responsibility for his own freedom - that's what makes him embrace fascism, not "the event" in his childhood (the outcome of which, it could be argued, was a result of his conformist tendencies, rather than the cause of them). Perhaps Bertolucci sows his own problems in the setup of the film, but I'm not seeing them? More details, pls.

If one of Foley's pages is unable to process his own emotions about the event and stuffs them into the darkest recess of his soul, then maybe he won't be a fascist but he'll sure as shit be a loose cannon on somebody's emotional/physical landscape. That's what The Conformist is getting at.

Kael goes further: it's too in love with its fascist-homosexual overtones.

I've never read Kael's review, but I thought she liked The Conformist? She mentions it favorably in her final interview, so it must've made some impact. Kael dismissed A Clockwork Orange because she couldn't read the film from the POV of an untrustworthy narrator, instead all she could do was chide Kubrick for getting off on ultraviolence and being on Alex's side - it's as if the first half of the film was so intense she couldn't intellectually process the second half. Similarly The Conformist is an anti-fascist film, so I'm not sure how "in love" with said overtones it is?

She loved the movie even though she doubted it was great art.

Kael dismissed A Clockwork Orange because she couldn't read the film from the POV of an untrustworthy narrator, instead all she could do was chide Kubrick for getting off on ultraviolence and being on Alex's side

Actually, she hated ACO because Kubrick's inability to create compellng (and well-acted) secondary characters placed Alec in a contextual vacuum; we have no choice BUT to sympathize with him. Kubrick overlooked the book's ambiguity.

"She loved the movie even though she doubted it was great art."

hell does this even mean? i like it. i like 'm. klein' too.

OTM - claims that The Conformist lacks substance, or that it hasn't withstood the test of time, seem off base at best.

I wouldn't nec endorse the "in love" with fascist-homosexual overtones ... I think Bertolucci just misjudged how it'd come off. Unless the source novel seems shallow in that regard too, I haven't read it.

How does it come off? I'm still not getting the connection between "fascist-homosexual overtones" (what does this mean, anyway?) and its supposed shallowness. Are you sure you're not thinking of Visconti's The Damned? ;-)

I haven't read the book, either, but from what I've heard it's a case of movie >>> book.

Actually, she hated ACO because Kubrick's inability to create compellng (and well-acted) secondary characters placed Alec in a contextual vacuum; we have no choice BUT to sympathize with him. Kubrick overlooked the book's ambiguity.

Well, to completely derail the thread, when I say she chided Kubrick for being on Alex's side, I'm describing her (astute) observation that Kubrick rigs the game by making Alex a vibrant character and everyone else a total moron. But that's not at odds with the book at all, and it's hardly a poor aesthetic choice - Kael's observations are correct, I just don't agree with her conclusion.

The book is narrated by Alex, and any charity extended to his victims is via the reader filling in the blanks, i.e. taking the role of an active reader interacting with an untrustworthy narrator. Kael can't seem to make a similar leap when it comes to the film, or maybe wants bigger signposts that Alex is a bad person (uh hello?) or maybe wants Kubrick to judge him. In other words, "I need stronger supporting characters, because I can't contextualize Alex's behavior myself." C'mon, this is anti-hero 101 stuff.

Kael thinks the movie is "a vindication of Alex" - it's not. It's blackly ironic and filtered 100% through his demented viewpoint, but Kubrick assumes his audience is comprised of thinking adults while Kael thinks he's "sucking up to the thugs in the audience." I find this type of is-this-movie-good-for-society handwringing pointless.
Think for a minute of the other names attached to A Clockwork Orange and imagine how poorly it could've been handled - The Rolling Stones (with you-know-who as Alex), Ken Russell (with Oliver Reed as Alex), Tinto Brass(!!!). Russell may have had an interesting go at it, but Kubrick was possibly the only person in the running who could've gotten it right.

Here's a good interview with Kubrick on ACO:
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.aco.html
and Kael's review if anybody else is interested:
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0051.html

definitely looking forward to the bertolucci's as well, I guess it's time to finally go through 1900

Milton - yeh, Jessica's great 70s gothic horror, just in time for Halloween.

I guess it's time to finally go through 1900

1900: A Cinematic Endurance Test

i had no idea that la commune was out on dvd. i am so pumped.

Now that I own this and rewatched it today, I'm closer to Edward's opinion, even though the movie's politics remain a muddle.

Are these as good as The Dreamers?

As good as the worst movie ever?

The Conformist is nothing short of incredible.

Muddled politics, sure, but still one of the best damn movies I've ever seen. Certainly the best thing Bertolucci ever did.

Just watched The Conformist for the second time. (My wife had never seen it and was interested.) I think it's great. I understand the style vs. substance arguments upthread -- the movie forces itself on you so ostentatiously that it can be hard to keep perspective on whether it's more than just gorgeous. But there's narrative choreography to accompany the visual. As a statement on the roots of fascism, sure, it's glib. But it feels more like a character study than a political thesis to me. The conformist will adapt to whatever situation he's in, it doesn't have to be a World War II movie. Except that for a filmmaker of Bertolucci's generation, of course it did.

Anyway, it's also a huge amount of fun to watch. Which may be why Kael liked and distrusted it -- should this story be this sumptuous? But it's a heck of a performance, auteur-wise.

In his latest FC piece on the history of film craft, Paul Schrader identifies The Conformist as a pivotal work in production design.

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/game-changers-production-design/

Top review on Letterboxd
https://letterboxd.com/film/the-conformist/

Review by Will Sloan ★★★★★ 2
The moving story of a young Pete Buttigieg's struggle to cut ties with his Marxist father. Vittorio Storaro's stunning cinematography introduces many of the visual ideas he would perfect a half-century later in Rifkin's Festival.

Like review 810 likes

Reviving only because I had never seen The Conformist until now. Some revival booker would have a great time double-billing this with Starship Troopers

The Conformist had maybe the most effective English dub I'd ever seen. The big loss from the original was the subtle indications provided by the dialogue changing between Italian and French.

I do love early Bertolucci (even Partner) but this may be the first of his films where the subject matter is strong enough to withstand his tendency to say "look what I just did" at some stylistic flourish.