Il Conformista (1970) combines Italian aesthetics, French New Wave innovation, and the dread of German Expressionism as an intoxicating visual metaphor for Plato's Cave. "I'm going to build a life that's normal," admits Marcello, the mysterious stoic who marries into mediocre, but Bernardo Bertolucci's film, paradoxically lush and spare, reveals a complex parallel between subconscious trauma and Fascist logic. Vincent Canby's review in the New York Times describes the director's style as so "rich, poetic, and baroque that it is simply incapable of meaning only what it says," and the effect is a film full of bewildering cinematic contingencies that threaten to break apart and yet never quite denounce reality as an illusion.

Reminiscent of The Samurai but more vulnerable, Il Conformista also features stunning 1930's period costumes, locations and art direction. At the very least, the discreet sensuality, discreet as compared to Last Tango in Paris, transfixed this viewer on Bertolucci's flickering shadows.