A very fine and disturbing film by Bernardo Bertolucci, exploring the basis and methodologies of autocracy among the affected citizenry.

While Bertolucci makes no secret of his bias in the film (he's a hard-line communist) its direction, cinematography and acting is beyond reproach.  A very fine film.

As far as acting, dialogue and cinematography, this is a near-perfect film.  Despite its technical brilliance, I have certain reservations about its politcal message.  Bertolucci was a Communist, and like his other works (notably The Last Emperor) The Conformist exaggerates in demonizing Mussolini's regime, portraying his followers as either deranged maniacs, fanatics or opportunists, and Communists as heroic freedom fighters.  Mussolini was a complex individual, and while his regime eventually devolved into a brutal puppet-state under de facto Nazi control, it was never the pitch-black totalitarian regime that Bertolucci portrayed it as.

Bernardo Bertolucci's superlative and frightening study of the exploitation by autocratic regimes of any persuasion of the mediocre among individuals for political purposes, incarnate in Jean-Louis Trintignant's splendid portrayal. A companion piece to Louis Malle's 'Lacombe, Lucien' (1974), Alan J. Pakula's 'The Parallax View' (1974) and Francis Coppola's 'The Conversation' (1974).