Il Conformista
Bernardo Bertolucci 1970
Though it seems to be incidental, one of the images that sticks in
the mind in this film was Raoul, a relatively minor character, having
walnuts covering every surface in his home. He walked and talked,
nutcracker in hand, as space was gradually freed up with every snack. It
seemed a kind of loosening, of surfaces, of architecture – the thickest
of dusts – or some way of measuring behaviour, tracing where one has
been. This remained (suitably) unexplained in the film – contributing
nothing, it just was, which was something that the set design
and art direction was arguably guilty of generally, with many
over-the-top (though beautiful) sequences, such as the shots of patients
scattered over the grand steps of the insane asylum, like white oracles
spread over the tiers of a shallow amphitheatre overlooking the bay.
Marcello Clerici, the central character of the film (played by
Trintignant), in his desire to conform – which would seem to be
consonant with a desire to disappear – takes his assimilation
of the prevalent ‘norms’ of society to the extreme of joining a covert
government organisation, working to seek out dissidents. Clerici’s
desire to become anonymous is interesting for many reasons, not least in
the way it is portrayed on film – not only as a critique of the origins
and nature of Italian Fascism, but also in the way that the character
is seen to become an agent of passivity and inaction. Clerici’s mania
for his absorption into the mass, whether it be into the prevailing
political system, or the anonymities of domestic life, seems a complex
mixture of a violent desire to belong and a terrible blankness. This is
obviously connected to the formative trauma in his childhood (where he
appears to kill a chauffeur who tries to seduce him) and contributes to
his intended withdrawal. One of the interesting sequences was the
confession he takes with the priest in preparation for his marriage to a
middle-class girl. After questioning him about past sins, which include
the volunteered murder of the pederast, the priest asks him about his
new bride. Marcello’s reaction, his articulation of blankness and his
approach to it, is oddly compelling. Condemning with faint praise,
Clerici’s description of his future wife as desperately ordinary, of
average intellect and lacking any emotional maturity, he somehow
relishes an implied description and delineation of the space she
provides for him to dissolve into. He admits that the ‘average’ or
‘normal’ life is what he seeks – “painfully” – as if slipping from an
ill-fitting garment in order to dissolve his body entirely – to change
the nature of the shadow he casts. This desire to blankness is rooted in
uncertainty. Tormented by suppressed memories, and uncertainties about
his own desire, Clerici seems eager to disappear into whatever vacancy
can be created, and the most readily available, the easiest (no matter
what the consequence) is the anonymity of a superficial, sedentary life.
Clerici’s movement into blankness and vacancy – an empty space slowly
being filled by the prevailing prejudices of the society of the time –
is a kind of recession that resonates with other forms of withdrawal,
such as Melville’s Bartleby. Yet the vacuum at the heart of Clerici is a
passivity borne out of a converse desire – rather than any non
preferred act of passive resistance or contamination, Clerici’s
disappearance stems from an excess acquiescence, that of going
along with anything in order to become inconspicuous, to belong so
effectively as to be unnoticed. Clerici’s movement toward dissolution is
based in desire and will (based in excess – excess of the average),
even if it is the willing denunciation of will. As a result of his own
isolation, Clerici’s obsessive pursuit of the mediocre naturally leads
him into the heart Fascist regime, yet still he cannot really accomplish
anything, lacking the commitment to any cause. The task he has been
given (to assassinate his former professor) is eventually taken away
from him – the gang of men kill them as he sits impassively in the back
of the car, simply remaining in his seat watching it unfold. It is as if
Clerici had finally shrunk back beyond himself, as if in a dream, or
lost to an out of body experience. His incapacity has overtaken him, and
his conforming makes him a passive voyeur, forced to stand by as the
figure of difference, the possibility of another life (Sandra)
wordless screams at the window. Clerici’s withdrawal into passivity, as
he is wrapped up in his overcoat, huddled in the back seat, seems
particularly horrific – the anti-Bartleby.
It also seems that his attempts to dismiss or misdirect focus, to
avoid attention, only brings it upon him – even the desperate horror
pressed against a car window (a screen that is a blockade) – and that he
can’t fail but be engaged, to have demands put upon on him, which leads
to his ultimate inaction – the scribe who has stopped writing yet
watches his task get completed nonetheless. In another two sequences
there are other images of Clerici’s contraction. In the first, set in
the dance hall, Clerici is caught by the Polonaise that had briefly
exited the room – the spiraling dance snares him like an insect in the
centre of its vortex, as if he were the blank singularity at the centre
of a black hole.
Another beautifully shot sequence alludes more directly to Clerici’s
dissipation. He is talking to his former professor in the Paris office.
With the blinds closed and sunlight concentrated in deep chiaroscuro,
the characters (discussing Plato’s allegory of the cave) cast strong
shadows onto the walls. When the blinds are suddenly opened again,
Clerici’s silhouette, clearly marked on the plain surface, is suddenly
erased – the disappearance of an ideal form, or an illusion, or of all
preferences and presence and the opening up of potentiality.
