Word: conformiste
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BRATTLE THEATER. The Conformist 5:30, 9:30. Burn...
LAST TANGO in Paris won't be shown in Boston until April, and perhaps that's just as well for the sake of earlier films by Bernardo Bertolucci which will be around before then. The Conformist, which had its fair share of attention when it came out in 1971, will soon be showing at two local theaters. And now Before the Revolution, the film which won Bertolucci international renown at 23, returns to the Square together with The Spider's Strategem, a film made in 1969 for Italian television but released in the United States only this year...
Made in 1969 for Italian television, this mesmeric film is only now being released in America, in the wake of the wide acclaim for Bertolucci's The Conformist and in anticipation of the brouhaha over Last Tango in Paris (TIME cover, Jan. 22). Perhaps Tango may not SO much sweep up The Spider's Stratagem in its wake as swamp it. The Spider's Stratagem boasts no superstars in the cast, no odor of brimstone and no heavy hype. It should not need them. Less exotic than The Conformist or Tango, certainly more subtle and contained...
Revolution's single most memorable scene-the young protagonist dancing with his aunt, with whom he is having an affair-has turned up, with appropriate variations, in every subsequent Bertolucci film. One of The Conformist's most elaborate set pieces was the late-night Paris café, where all the customers got up to dance, spontaneously crowding the floor; Tango's lingering and desperate ballroom interlude gives the film its title. Bertolucci is smitten by dancing the way Hitchcock is obsessed by staircases. Each motif gives the director occasion to employ the best elements of his visual...
...technique he adopted with his actors in The Conformist and especially in Tango is based on an informal method of psychological investigation. To create a climate conducive to such probing, Bertolucci says, he "mixes the Hollywood studio with the techniques of cinema verite. This permits the best possible conditions for improvisation, and gives the public a continuous sense of risk and danger." It also means, as Bertolucci admits, that "it would be proper to put my analyst in the main titles, because he is the first person to whom I confess the ideas of my films...