Paramount Pictures presents the conformist, a film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci.

The condition that Marcello and the people around him, with the exception of his professor,

find themselves in, is comparable to conditions that we all find ourselves in, navigating

cruel and corrupt worlds and trying to live in comfort in them.

Marcello's boss is a true believer, but he's kind of the only one in the movie who is a true

believer. His boss is a true believer. His professor is a staunch anti-fascist, and everybody

else is just kind of trying to find a way to live in this society. And in doing so, they uphold the status quo to use another

tired expression. It's hard to know. I'm not entirely sure what I make of that. I mean, I think

Marcello is such an enigmatic character, because you're right, on the one hand, I mean, he's not a

conscious fascist at all and that's really been

my take on him from the get go but you know there's a scene where he's talking to the priest right he's

he tells the priest about his childhood sexual trauma and then he's saying like oh but all all my sex after

that it was all it was all normal uh and he's like I'm to build a normal family. And then, you know, later when they're at dinner, when he's at dinner with Quadri and Anna, he's saying, oh, in Italy, we're going to build a new man.

And Anna says, you mean through repression?

And he says, no, no, no, through example, you know, not repression, through example.

But then going back to the scene with the priest, the priest asks him, are you part of one of these groups of subversives?

And he says, no, no, no, I belong to a group that hunts down subversives. And the priest seems to

absolve him quite hastily upon learning that he's a fascist. This line from Marcello really stuck out

for me, like, where he's like, because this is the only sense that we get from him that what he's doing is a sort of, you know,

active, you know, that he's engaged. It's the only sense we get from him that he's engaged in a sort of

active project that he's, you know, thought through, even though the project is, is one that is really

just about, you know, repressing certain things about himself. And, you know's it's a kind of psychological defense mechanism for navigating his inability

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