Bernardo Bertolucci’s indictment of fascist Italy is a masterwork. From his haunting images of the cold, cyclopean architecture housing the ruling elite, to his often surreal and dream-like dramatizations of a crushing life devoted to serving fascist rule, The Conformist (Il Conformista) is a powerful reminder of what the art of filmmaking can do. Memory, dreams, history and cinema intersect and collide in this remarkable movie, and a region-free Blu-ray release has been long in demand. Thanks to Raro Video, that demanded home video has arrived, and I am distraught in bringing you painful news that it (or, at least, my copy) is awful.
I first saw Bertolucci’s masterpiece during my earliest days as a cinema major in college. I loved movies, but when professors required that I sit through such soul-smashers like Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt, I started to think there really was a fatter line between art and entertainment than I had previously imagined. Then, I was given The Conformist. Here was a film, not quite strictly a narrative, which told its story mostly through the elements specific to filmmaking. It was a transformative experience. For the first time, movies really started to speak to me. You can imagine my horror when I popped this new disc into my player, and the image was all wrong. It was hazy, the colors were drab, and the motion was choppy and blurred. With regard to the motion, it almost looked like compressed video, or perhaps more like a silent film being projected at the old standard 16fps. Frames seemed to be missing. It almost reminded me of the look of Three Stooges shorts. That’s not the kind of comparison I expected to draw!
Okay, I can already hear several of you yelling a chorus of obvious troubleshooting in the comments section based on what I have described. Trust me, I covered my bases. I was obsessed. Like the movie was my long-time lover and she dumped me for her secret husband obsessed.
Listen you, to my tale of first-world niche-problem woes!
All my shit is up to spec. My television is true HD, and I fucked around with every setting on both the TV and the Blu-ray player that could have negatively affected video playback. I also played other Blu-rays to be certain it was only this disc.
I even turned it off… and turned it on again. However, what with my home theater being NOT The Internet and all, this measure had no affect! Then, I consulted other reviews of this release, and this is where things really start to get weird.
I don’t know why I ever bother heading to Amazon expecting people to be smart. Wait, that’s not what I meant to say. I NEVER expect people on Amazon to be smart. What I do foolishly expect to find in Amazon reviews is an informed opinion on the quality of the digital transfer on a new release. As usual: no such luck. So, the handy Blu-ray.com was up next (yeah, I don’t know why I checked them in that order, either), but even the most thorough Blu-ray review site on the web didn’t really mention anything resembling my experience.
Was it all a dream?
Then, I check out the special features to see if the horror has spread to the farthest regions of the disc. To my disbelief, I was shocked to find a trailer… created for the purpose of advertising the very release I was watching… absolutely overflowing with the beauty I was expecting to find in the film.
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED!?
THE PACKAGE
Booklet Insert: Thick and meaty essay on the film, incites from Bertolucci himself, and blurbs taken from critics at the time of the theatrical release.
Original 1970 Trailer: Very interesting.
2014 Restoration Trailer: VERY INTERESTING…
In The Shade Of The Conformist: An excellent visual essay on how this film fits within Bertolucci’s body of work.
