CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (19)
By:
March 8, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… anti-fascist art! Series edited by Josh Glenn.
THE CONFORMIST
It’s impossible to watch The Conformist, Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1970 adaptation of the Alberto Moravia novel, without other works echoing off one’s awareness. Beautiful and cold, the film is inarguably powerful on its own, yet its emotionally stunted protagonist Marcello immediately recalls Camus’ The Stranger, as its finale in the fire-lit Roman streets on the night of Mussolini’s fall conjures Fellini’s Satyricon. But so influential is the film that one is also reminded of Coppola and Scorsese films that came afterwards, pointedly borrowing from the gorgeously stately cinematography and modernist design. Yet perhaps most insistently, The Conformist in 2025 is an exercise in historical reverberation: if Bertolucci was attempting to excavate the emotional architecture of ambition and cruelty that informed the rise of Fascism 30 years before, to see Marcello — a small, damaged man (superbly portrayed by Jean-Louis Trintignant) pursuing his goal of joining the fascist secret police — is equally to see the ambitious operatives of the Trump Era, another time of damaged, small men running rampant. As perfectly as The Conformist realizes the Fascist period in Italy and France, an American viewer will undoubtedly experience — well, whatever the opposite of a contact high might be… contact nausea?
Trintignant perfectly captures the blend of hesitancy and greed that drives Marcello — the exact point where conformity, no matter how cruel, defines ambition. We do see sources of his damaged psyche — traumatized as a boy by a sexual assault, raised by uncaring parents — yet distress only spins him toward self-interest, without care for the consequences to others. In one darkly amusing scene, attending confession to impress his well-placed in-laws, Marcello blandly confesses to murder, homosexual acts, the hollowness of his marriage, even atheism, yet the priest absolves him from fear of secret police reprisal. Yet for all this, when given an actual assignment — to assassinate a former professor, now an exile in Paris speaking against Mussolini — Marcello’s judgment is clouded by feelings for the professor’s wife. He tries to warn her — to keep her for himself, despite being on his honeymoon — but the woman is murdered with her husband and Marcello’s Fascist handler accuses him of cowardice for not killing her himself. By the film’s end, his hollow status at risk with Mussolini’s fall, Marcello twists again, desperately denouncing both enemies and close friends as Fascists to stay ahead of a vengeful mob. Bertolucci’s final, apocalyptic composition suggests self-knowledge might be possible, if — equally — unbearable. That would take courage.
CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON | Lynn Peril on ZAZOUS | Judith Zissman on DIE GEDANKEN SIND FREI | Annie Nocenti on MEDIUM COOL | Mike Watt on FASCIST | William Nericcio on LALO ALCARAZ | Josh Glenn on THE LADY VANISHES | Carlo Rotella on INQUIETUD | Heather Quinlan on CASABLANCA | Adam McGovern on HEART OF GLASS (MAD JENNY) | Matthew Battles on WOODY’S GUITAR | Carl Wilson on PALACES OF GOLD | Ramona Lyons on UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED | Lucy Sante on CAMOUFLAGE | Adelina Vaca on THE LIVES OF OTHERS | Tom Nealon on THE BARON IN THE TREES | Nikhil Singh on PARIS PEASANT | Mandy Keifetz on THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED | Gordon Dahlquist on THE CONFORMIST | Michael Grasso on PYNCHONIA | Gabriela Pedranti on THE ETERNAUT | Heather Kapplow on ANTI-FASCIST PASTA | Marc Weidenbaum on (WHAT’S SO FUNNY ’BOUT) PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING | Peggy Nelson on PUPPETS | Sonia Marques on CARNATIONS AGITPROP.
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