Unraveling the Fascist Illusion in The Conformist
Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist (Il Conformista) tells the story of fascist spy named Marcello on an assassination mission, as memories from his past haunt him in the present. One of the film’s central ideas is Marcello’s faith in the image of fascist Rome. Bertolucci weakens this image through a distortion of time and space and powerful imagery
Millicent Marcus, Yale professor of Italian Studies and Film and Media studies, explains how Marcello experiences a “disorienting group of flash-backs” until Paris, where “the narrative proceeds smoothly.” This is significant because by adopting flashbacks that don’t occur chronologically, Bertolucci creates a nonlinear storyline.
Importantly, in the film's opening scenes, Marcello is already in a car en route to Savoy. Thus, for the majority of the film, the viewer primarily experiences Rome through flashbacks of his childhood, as well as those of Fascist Rome, in places like the fascist headquarters. Marcello views the fascist state as “absolute, universal, and immutable,” that fascism is an enduring image that will ground him in his search for conformity.
Thus, the use of disorienting flashbacks, which depict moments of Rome before and during fascism, challenges the idea of fascist Rome’s permanence by fragmenting itas moments suspended in time and space, instead of a continuous storyline.
Bertolucci also utilizes visual imagery to weaken Marcello’s perception of an enduring fascist Rome. This is best illustrated through Plato’s myth of the cave, presented by Marcello when speaking to Professor Quadri in his Parisian office . In the myth, men have been inside a cave since childhood. They are shackled and facing away from the back of the cave. Behind is a fire, and between them and the fire a low wall. Behind the wall, men pass, carrying statues made of stone and wood. From the other side of the wall, the chained men only see the shadows of these objects projected by the fire. In response, Quadri comments, “Shadows, the reflections of things, as happens to you today in Italy.”
That is, the image of the cave becomes a powerful allegory for fascist Rome. Fascist Rome is an illusion sustained through propaganda, through monuments, and through people like Marcello, who only see what the fascist government wants them to see. But, like any illusion, that of fascist Rome can be shattered. The breaking of this illusion is evident in the movie's final scene.
In it Marcello is seated in a low stone wall in a niche in the Colosseum, where a young male prostitute lies with Marcello’s childhood chauffeur, Lino. Behind Marcello are black metal bars. And behind the bars lies a fire burning. As Marcus points out, all of these components provide the “equivalents of the setting for Plato’s prisoners enchained in the cave.” By this point, Mussolini has been arrested, and the fascist state has collapsed. The illusion breaks. The breaking of this illusion is evident in the Colosseum scene. At first, Marcello stares only at the shadows projected on the wall in front of him. But slowly, he turns his head and faces the scene behind him. Marcello now looks at reality, even if it is a taboo display of homoerotic interaction. He no longer conforms to the shadows, the illusions he wants to see. The fascist state has fallen, and inevitably, so has the veil between its illusion and reality. Thus, the shadows of the enduring fascist Rome are dispelled, and now Marcello gazes at a liberated Rome. A real Rome.
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Bernardo Bertolucci’s Il Conformista tells the story of fascist spy named Marcello on an assassination mission, as memories from his past haunt him in the present. One of the film’s central ideas is Marcello’s faith in the image of fascist Rome. Bertolucci weakens this image through a distortion of time and space and powerful imagery
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Bernardo Bertolucci’s Il Conformista tells the story of fascist spy named Marcello on an assassination mission, as memories from his past haunt him in the present. One of the film’s central ideas is Marcello’s faith in the image of fascist Rome. Bertolucci weakens this image through a distortion of time and space and powerful imagery
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