It stars Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Gastone Moschin, Enzo Tarascio, Fosco Giachetti, José Quaglio, Dominique Sanda and Pierre Clémenti.

"[9] In 1938 Paris, Marcello Clerici finalises his preparations to assassinate his former university professor, Luca Quadri, leaving his wife, Giulia, in their hotel room.

A series of flashbacks depict Marcello discussing with his blind friend, Italo, his plans to marry, his attempts to join the Fascist secret police, and his visits to his parents in Rome: a morphine-addicted mother at the family's decaying villa, and his father at an insane asylum.

In Ventimiglia, Marcello meets with Fascist officer Raoul, who orders him to assassinate Professor Quadri, an outspoken anti-Fascist intellectual now living in exile in France.

In 1943, amidst Benito Mussolini's resignation and the fall of the Fascist regime in Italy, Marcello now has a daughter with Giulia and appears settled in a conventional life.

As an anti-Fascist crowd sweeps past, taking Italo with them, Marcello sits near a small fire and stares behind him at the young man Lino had been speaking to, now naked on a bed.

The film is a case study in the psychology of conformism and fascism: Marcello Clerici is a bureaucrat, cultivated and intellectual but largely dehumanized by an intense need to be "normal" and to belong to whatever is the current dominant socio-political group.

He grew up in an upper class, perhaps dysfunctional family, and he suffered a major childhood sexual trauma and gun violence episode in which he long believed (erroneously) that he had committed a murder.

[13] In 2013, Interiors, an online journal concerned with the relationship between architecture and film, released an issue that discussed how space is used in a scene that takes place on the Palazzo dei Congressi.

[15] Roman locations included the Palazzo dei Congressi, the Museum of the Ara Pacis, Sant' Angelo Bridge, Santa Marinella, the Theatre of Marcellus and the Colosseum.

Bertolucci, production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro made heavy use of the 1930s art and décor associated with the Fascist era: the middle-class drawing rooms and the huge halls of the ruling elite.

[25] The film had a staggered release in Italy, opening in major cities in the early months of 1971: Milan on 29 January, Turin on 5 February and Rome on 25 March, for example.

[35] In 2014, the digital restoration was released theatrically by Kino Lorber at New York City's Film Forum on 29 August and on Blu-ray by Rarovideo USA on 25 November.

"[38] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and called it "much more of a show than a story," with its narrative themes "all but lost amid Bertolucci's splendid recreation of the era.

"[30] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film "places young Bernardo Bertolucci in the front ranks of Italian directors and among the finest film-makers working anywhere.

In this dazzling film, Bertolucci, 30, manages to combine the bravura style of a Fellini, the acute sense of period of a Visconti and the fervent political commitment of an Elio Petri (Investigation of a Private Citizen) with complete individuality and, better still, a total lack of self-indulgence.

"[31] Jan Dawson of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote, "In his screen adaptation of Moravia's novel, Bertolucci has eliminated all explanations or analysed motivations, as well as any allusions to Marcello's life before the moment he first sees Lino ...

"[39] In 1994, critic James Berardinelli wrote a review and heralded the film's look: "Storaro and Bertolucci have fashioned a visual masterpiece in The Conformist, with some of the best use of light and shadow ever in a motion picture.

The website's consensus reads: "A commentary on fascism and beauty alike, Bernardo Bertolucci's The Conformist is acclaimed for its sumptuous visuals and extravagant, artful cinematography.

[citation needed] Wins Nominations The film was influential on other filmmakers; the image of blowing leaves in The Conformist, for example, influenced a very similar scene in The Godfather Part II (1974) by Francis Ford Coppola.

Additionally, the scene in which Dominique Sanda's character is chased through the snowy woods after her husband has been murdered, is echoed with mood, lighting and setting in a third-season episode of The Sopranos, "Pine Barrens" (2001), directed by Steve Buscemi.