Do I REALLY think The Conformist is the greatest movie ever made? Very possibly, but all I can truly say is that for me, its by far the most important, the one that changed my life and made me devote it to the medium. I first saw it in a tiny, long-gone second floor theater in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1973, and I was literally staggered by the experience. I want to make a movie as incredible as this! I thought. But Ill never make a movie as incredible as thisand I dont ever want to make anything less! was my next thought. Well then, Ill do the next best thing: show this movie to people! I decided, unconsciously embarking on a career in movie exhibition. And so here we are, with a new restored 35mm print of a film by a director who went on to notoriety (Last Tango in Paris), Oscar recognition (The Last Emperor) and more great masterpieces (Besieged, The Dreamers, Stealing Beauty). But The Conformist remains the film most full of life, passion, beauty and love of cinema.Ken Eisen. In Mussolinis Italy, Jean-Louis Trintignants repressed haut bourgeois Marcello Clerici, trying 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, whose Paris address, in a pointed homage, matched Jean-Luc Godards real one), he flashes back to a dance party for the blind; an insane asylum in a stadium; and wife Stefania Sandrelli and lover Dominque Sanda dancing the tango in a working-class hall. But those are only a few of the anthology pieces of this luminous and erotic political thriller. Bertoluccis 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 (Jules and Jim) and eye-popping color cinematography by Vittorio Storaro.

Sponsored by Bill Jefferson and Bevin Engman

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