The Conformist

The Conformist is a 1970 film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, an Italian, French and West German co-production following Marcello Clerici, a man who joins Mussolini's secret police in the 1930s largely out of a desire to appear ordinary, and who is assigned to assassinate his former university professor, an anti-fascist exile living in Paris. Marcello's mission becomes complicated by an affair with the professor's wife, and the film uses his story to examine the psychology of political conformism, showing how the wish to belong and to seem normal can lead a person into complicity with fascism. Its cinematography by Vittorio Storaro, built around stark geometric compositions and expressive use of color and shadow, proved highly influential on later filmmakers including Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather films, and the film is widely ranked among the greatest of Italian cinema.