by Bryn Gatehouse
Like Pasolini’s
The film itself acts as a non-chronological character study of Marcello Clerici, a fascist bureaucrat and eventual assassin in pre-war Italy. A complex and troubled character, Bertolucci slowly reveals to the audience the reasoning for Marcello’s affiliations and actions that control the main plot of the film, his job of killing an old professor in Paris. Throughout the film it is suggested that Marcello is distant from others, including his wife and his fascist colleagues. He is often seen in shadows whilst others are placed in light. As the film progresses, as does his distance from others, as he finds himself unable to dance and at times appears across barriers of walls from those who he is closest to. With others he seems often uncomfortable, and in Paris appears as a relic more than a man, older even than his professor. Yet what is most important to his character is the suggested sexuality that lies in his unconscious, purposefully repressed in the name of a need for normalcy.
Marcello’s possible homosexuality, suggested by his lack of feeling for his own wife along with his lustful final moments in the film, staring towards a boy he has just seen seduced, allow Bertolucci an opportunity to expose the root of fascism. This is the object of desire. Desire must be towards something, and for Marcello this direction is towards something he sees as abnormal – other men. Desire does not exist in an echo chamber, instead being informed by conditioning and the environment, and out of fear Marcello has decided that he must shift his direction of desire away from its homosexual origin towards something that appears normal. For him this desire is not shifted only towards women, like the professor’s wife along with his own, but also towards a greater sense of normalcy itself. Marcello desires his conformity as a conscious act, battling the unconscious homosexuality that his libido is directed towards. Here is the battle of reason and passion in one man, skewed to fit his belief in normalcy. Similarly, his desire is directed towards fascism – perhaps libidinally, as Lyotard would suggest – and a wish for suppression. It is this that causes his fervent support for the regime, with both deference and love sacrificed for a new lust, a fascist lust characterised by masochism. It is no surprise that both his relationships with women fail, one through a loveless marriage and one who Marcello orders killed, as his repression begins to turn on itself. His sense of normalcy driving him, Marcello rejects those who may actually bring him a sense of normalcy, leaving him alone and palely loitering by the time of Mussolini’s removal at the end of the film. All of that effort, all for nothing.
The effect of Marcello’s repression in his desire for normality is further evidenced by a key dialogue within the film – one between Marcello and the professor – in which Plato’s theory of the cave is discussed. In this thought experiment, people are chained within a cave believing reality to be the shadows they see, created by a hidden fire. One may escape, see the true light, but would be unable to convince those still in the cave of the truth. The willingness to believe in the shadows is reflected not just by Marcello’s frequent appearance within them, but also by his rational repression. He wants to believe in his own normality, and that the life he wants to lead, the ‘fascist’ life, is normal.
Within the film, a large divide is purposefully shown between the men and the women of Europe. Both in fascist Italy and free France, women are presented as passive, often in inferior roles, constantly surveyed by men. Marcello’s wife Giulia bonds with the professor’s wife Anna over this oppression, finding comfort in each-other. However, another divide is shown between the fascist woman and the woman of free Europe, which is found both in character and in style. Giulia is presented as childlike, completely subservient and loyal to Clerici despite his increasing disinterest in her throughout the film. On the other hand, Anna is androgynous, choosing men’s trousers and smoking in a manner reminiscent of a certain James Dean. Her behaviour too is more liberated, choosing consciously to flirt with Giulia, as well as openly dancing with her in front of a ballroom – the sexual expression here transgresses the boundaries found in the Italian setting, where homosexuality is seen as disgraceful and immoral, hence Clerici’s desire to be normal.
Despite Anna’s initial liberated nature, the masculine power of fascism ultimately destroys her freedom and her life. Clerici makes a number of unwanted advances towards her, and despite her flirtations, she chooses to stay with the professor. Upon the professor’s assassination, Clerici looks Anna in the eyes and allows her to be killed as well, yet is too cowardly to kill her himself. The fascist ideal requires the destruction of feminist liberation. On the other hand, as the film shifts to 1943 and the first removal of Mussolini, Giulia is shown to be alive. She is still with Clerici, and has a number of children, fitting the ideal of the housewife. However, a clear shift is shown as a wall now separates the pair – it is not just her husband who is uncomfortable and cold, but now Giulia too. The final shot of Giulia is her alone, standing at the door that Clerici has just walked out of, as the light flickers above her head. She has been separated from other women, and now is completely reliant on her husband.
One striking detail in Il Conformista is the comparative architecture and structures of fascist Rome and free Paris. Paris is characterised by colour, from the ballroom and the ballet school to the shopping streets. This colour may be representative of the free expression in Paris at the time, the cultural hub of the 20th century, filled with literature and art – and the home of the anti-fascist professor. On the other hand, the architecture of the Italian scenes take one of two forms – conformity and ruin. In pre-War Italy, the EUR district in Rome was chosen by Mussolini to host the 1942 World Fair, and was developed over an area of woodland on the outskirts of the city. Characterised by its sense of grandeur, this area may also be viewed as an expression of uniformity. The buildings in the area, with the notable use of the Palazzo dei Congressi, are designed in a triumphalist manner, making use of large spaces to accentuate a feeling of power within and consciously emulating the Rome of old. This results in an architectural vision of wide spaces, solitude and a sense of dullness, with colour and intricacy lost in favour of size, the mountain peak of fascism. Marcello’s character fits perfectly in these buildings, his need for conformity and a place in the history that he believes is tending towards fascist ends reflecting the hopes of the fascist project across Europe. On the other hand, ruins are extensively used to foreshadow the conclusion of the 20th century fascist project. Marcello’s dream will collapse, as will Mussolini’s, just as any committed Roman would have felt as the Goths began their unruly descent, leaving the Colosseum nothing but a pile of bricks within which the ghosts of Roman hope lie. It is thus of no surprise that Bertolucci chooses to film this Roman architecture, in its varying states of ruination, in order to show how dreams die, no matter how hard we want them to survive. History cannot be static. The serpent bites its own tail.
At the core of Il Conformista is the idea of struggle. This takes place both in the character of Marcello and in the two locations that define Europe at the time. It is important, when noting Bertolucci’s Marxism, to engage in some form of dialectic when viewing the conflict at the root of this film. Marx butchered Hegel, so rather than engage in the butchering of another thinker I will revert to a very simple definition of dialectic which is found in Plato – dialectic may be the rational process of conflict, often in the form of argument and repeated questioning, in order to gain a greater understanding of a given topic. What is important is that dialectic necessarily involves struggle, and for Marx this characterised history as the Manichean tendency of all forms of economic governance led to inevitable clashes and usurpation of control. Avoiding whether this is actually true for Bertolucci’s sake, we may find a great sense of dialectic at the root of Il Conformista. Europe must clash in order for history to move, and it is within Marcello that this occurs first, the old West and the new Fascism coming head-to-head in his conscience. However, this is subverted in the denouement of the film, as fascism wins with the death of the professor and Anna, and then quickly loses with the shift to 1943. Nothing remains. There are no winners in this game, and yet as Marcello sits down at the end of the film to look upon the boy he lusts for, a sense of freedom appears from where no foundations lie but the ruins of dreams.
Concluding, Bertolucci's image of fascism is that of uniformity, structure, and a great sense of loneliness. The concept of difference is pushed aside and forced into line. Yet, as the fascism of the twentieth century collapses, one notices how difference lives on, indestructible in the soul of the Western man Bertolucci aims to portray through Marcello. Repression works, but does not solve the issue of what is being repressed. The self-destruction of all ideas is inevitable, leaving man open only to the ruins of the world. Humanity has only two options - to strive for destruction or to live in youthful dreams.
by Bryn Gatehouse, July 2023.