The ConformistMovies like The Conformist
- Key Features:
- Political intrigue, Fascism, Assassination, Moral ambiguity, Conformity, Guilt, Psychological thriller, Historical period, Italy, Betrayal, Political violence, Existentialism, Character study
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, stylized
- Target Audience:
- Fans of political thrillers, Those interested in historical dramas, Viewers who appreciate complex characters, Art house cinema enthusiasts
- Emotional Arc:
- Anxiety → Dread → Resignation
The Conformist

A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.
The Conformist
1944. Primo Arcovazzi is a fanatical and dim-witted Fascist Party militiaman who accepts to escort an opponent of the regime to Rome in the hope of be promoted — still oblivious as ever to the forthcoming fall of the regime.

Suave antiques dealer Alfredo Martelli is picked up by the police with no justification. At the precinct, Martelli realizes what the investigation is all about-- that he is the main suspect in the killing of his wealthy ex-lover. Is he guilty, or is he just a sleaze?

Set in Fascist Italy before the outbreak of World War II, the story centers on Tunin, a farmer turned anarchist who stays in a brothel while preparing to kill Benito Mussolini.

A young man returns to his countryside hometown to investigate the unclear circumstances behind the death of his father, ostensibly killed by Fascists in 1936, before his birth. As he unravels a web of lies that seems to encompass the whole town, he finds himself entangled in the same web.

A young policewoman slowly goes insane while tracking down an elusive serial rapist/killer through Italy when she herself becomes a victim of the brutal man's obsession.

A conflicted youth confesses to crimes he didn't commit while a man and woman aroused by death become obsessed with each other.

In 1945, the dictator of fascist Italy and Hitler's close ally Benito Mussolini faces defeat. In a desperate attempt to avoid capture, he tries to flee the country with his lover Claretta Petacci, but Italian partisans are on their tail.

Michele Casali is a middle-class professor in Fascist Italy who teaches at the same high school attended by his only daughter, Giovanna. A shy and sensitive girl, her insecurities are only magnified by Michele's overprotectiveness—reaching a point of no return.

Onoff is a famous writer, now a recluse. The Inspector is suspicious when Onoff is brought into the station one night, disoriented and suffering a kind of amnesia. In an isolated, rural police station, the Inspector tries to establish the events surrounding a killing, to reach a startling resolution.

Eight Italian politicians from the communist party gather on a terrace in Rome for a get-together. They discuss about their past, present and future.

Art professor Nino Rolfe attempts to break down his wife Teresa's conventional modesty. Noticing her affection for their daughter's fiancé, Nino instigates her sexual interest in him - setting off a chain of unexpected events and emotional complications...

A recent college graduate flees to Paris after a break-up, where his involvement with a prostitute begins to reveal a potentially dark recent past.

In the early days of Nazi Germany, a powerful noble family must adjust to life under the new dictatorship regime.

Leftist radical-turned-terrorist Giorgio—hiding in Latin America since the '70s—turns himself in after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Wishing to lead a comfortable, bourgeois life in his native Italy, he cuts a deal with a dirty cop, getting his sentence reduced in return for ratting former comrades out. Once released, Giorgio obsessively pursues his dream of becoming an upright citizen, but his old police aquaintance keeps dragging him down...

Police commissioner Santamaria is investigating the murder of the ambiguous architect Mr. Garrone. The investigations soon drive him into the Torino's high society. Santamaria suspect Anna Carla and at the same time falls in love for her. Lello is the lover of Massimo, Anna Carla’s gay friend. He is following another direction in order to find out the truth, and his results are confusing the Policeman. But another murder happens...

An obscure Italian magistrate suspects that a well-known industrialist commited murder, and decides to investigate him, and bring him to court, whatever it takes. But - will the magistrate have it in him to go against impossible odds, in the name of the Italian people he represents?

The assassination of the would-be ruler of Rome at the hands of Brutus and company has tragic consequences for the idealist and for the republic.

Set in 1899 Paris, a young police sergeant is chosen to infiltrate a group of anarchists, an opportunity he sees to rise through the ranks. However, he soon finds himself becoming attached to the group.

On December 12, 1969, a bomb kills 17 people at the Piazza Fontana national bank in Milan, Italy, marking the beginning of the Years of Lead. Local anarchists are scapegoated for the massacre by police and the media, but a lone prosecutor uncovers a conspiracy of far-right groups, corrupt secret services, and other interests that seek to undermine democracy.

The Gestapo forces con man Victorio Bardone to impersonate a dead partisan general in order to extract information from his fellow inmates.

1828. In the wake of the repression of revolutionary uprisings in the monarchist South, three young friends join Giuseppe Mazzini's patriotic cause, seeking to finally unify Italy under a republican government. Their idealism will clash with the inevitable disillusionment as they grow apart over the following fifty years.

An experienced commercial pilot is forced to collaborate with his country's intelligence services to avoid being punished for a serious fault he committed on the job. He is quickly plunged into an underworld of intrigue and extortion that will put his life at risk and he will pay a very high price to escape from it.

Rome, 1825. Bishop Rivarola and Colonel Nardoni are in charge of suppressing the liberal revolution. Shoemaker Cornacchia got the information that the liberal Filippo Spada is a spy and is going to denounce his revolutionary companions.

Lisbon, 1938. Mr. Pereira is the editor of the culture section of an evening paper. Although fascism is on the rise in Europe, like in nearby civil war Spain or even inside Portugal itself in the form of Salazar's regime, Pereira only concerns himself with writing bios and translating French novels. Things change after he hires a young writer as his assistant, getting to know also his girlfriend – both opponents to the regime – and reluctantly helps them when they begin to get in trouble for subversive activities. Eventually, he's forced to take a stand...

Philippe Jordan is a policeman prone to advancing the cause of justice by any means necessary. On his agenda is a powerful drug cartel working out of Paris and Marseilles, with a drug lord who is essentially inaccessible -- but not immortal.

Italy, early '90s. Calm, clever and inscrutable, politician Giulio Andreotti has been synonymous with power for decades. He has survived everything: electoral battles, terrorist massacres, loss of friends, slanderous accusations; but now certain repentant mobsters implicate him in the crimes of Cosa Nostra.

What are we talking about when we talk about negotiations? About the state's concessions to the Mafia in exchange for ending the massacres? About who assassinated Falcone and Borsellino? Of the eternal coexistence between the Mafia and politics? Between the mafia and the church? Between the Mafia and law enforcement? Or is there more? A group of actors enacts the most relevant episodes of the affair known as the Mafia-state negotiation, impersonating mobsters, secret service agents, high officials, magistrates, victims and murderers, Freemasons, honest and courageous people, and courageous people up to a point. Thus one of the most intricate events in our history becomes an exciting tale.

A prominent politician is murdered during a demonstration. The government and army are trying to suppress the truth. But, a tenacious magistrate is determined to not to let them get away with it.

Four corrupted fascist libertines round up 9 teenage boys and girls and subject them to 120 days of sadistic physical, mental and sexual torture.

Silvio refuses to fight for the fascists and joins the resistance with Elena. After the war, his vitriolic newspaper articles cause him to be sentenced to imprisonment.

A recently widowed American begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman.

A school teacher discusses types of government with his class. His students find it too boring to repeatedly go over national socialism and believe that dictatorship cannot be established in modern Germany. He starts an experiment to show how easily the masses can become manipulated.

A vicious serial sex killer is on the loose, and landscape gardener and shop-window outfitter Loris is the prime suspect, thanks to his unfortunate habit of getting caught in compromising situations (for which there is always a totally innocent explanation that the police fail to spot). Undercover policewoman Jessica is assigned by eccentric police psychologist Taccone to follow Loris.

The vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia, knowing he's being watched and followed, is one day arrested and put into solitary confinement.

Roman police detectives interrogate a series of potential perpetrators in their struggle to determine whom to arrest for the brutal murder of a beautiful prostitute whose body is discovered in a park on the day of a torrential rainstorm. One by one, the prime suspects -- girl-crazy teenager Nino, pickpocket Canticchia, a soldier on leave, a tourist and a pimp -- recount the events of the day to the police, each insisting he is innocent.

Tullio Hermil is a chauvinist aristocrat who flaunts his mistress to his wife, but when he believes she has been unfaithful he becomes enamored of her again.

Dispatched to a small Italian town to await further orders, assassin Jack embarks on a double life that may be more relaxing than is good for him.

A French hit man is hired by a crime family to end the life of a rival mobster, but things fall apart when the boss who hired him is killed.

A nerdy film student and lifelong voyeur begins to believe that two lovely young strangers may have conspired to commit a brutal murder.

After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts, finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trench coat can protect him.

Italy, after the promulgation of the racial laws (1938). Luciano, a Fascist-abiding restaurateur, nonetheless believes he can still live by his own rules inside his business. However, everything changes when Anna, a girl with a dangerous secret, starts to work at his restaurant.

A teacher conducts an experiment in an American high school where students learn how easy it is to be seduced by the same social forces which led to the horrors of Nazi Germany.

Guido Anselmi, a film director, finds himself creatively barren at the peak of his career. Urged by his doctors to rest, Anselmi heads for a luxurious resort, but a sorry group gathers—his producer, staff, actors, wife, mistress, and relatives—each one begging him to get on with the show. In retreat from their dependency, he fantasizes about past women and dreams of his childhood.

A hitman finds himself embroiled in the middle of a Mafia war between the Sicilians and the Calabrians.

Rich entrepreneur Rebecca Zuin has died from an alleged heart attack, raising suspicions on the part of a police inspector after her body disappears from the morgue. When her handsome young husband becomes a suspect, he starts thinking she may have faked her death to sadistically torment him.

Following the death of her wealthy husband, American widow Kathryn West migrates to Italy and takes up a reclusive existence in a luxurious villa. After quickly succumbing to the charms of a local man, she lets him move into the villa and the two are later joined by his sister, which soon leads to complications.

The story of a man who murdered thirty-two people, gained power, and then got afraid because too many people wanted to kill him. One August morning, he disappeared. For fifteen years, everyone believed him dead.

The epic tale of a class struggle in twentieth century Italy, as seen through the eyes of two childhood friends on opposing sides.

Cesare Botero, an ambitious and corrupt young minister, hires a new spokesman, honest and polite high school professor Luciano Sandulli.

An Italian high school student becomes infatuated with a woman he sees outside his class window. Her fiancée is in jail for being involved in a radical movement, and she spends much time in court providing moral support. At first she resists the student's advances, but eventually begins an affair with him. Their situation is condemned by her family and his father, who is the woman's psychologist.

Charles drifts through politics, religion and psychoanalysis, rejecting them all. Once he realises the depth of his disgust with the moral and physical decline of the society he lives in, he decides that suicide is the only option...

Melissa is an experienced, exemplary prison guard. But a dangerous spiral is set into motion when she transfers to a Corsican jail, where she accepts help and protection from inmate Saveriu to get her bearings. Upon his release, he contacts Melissa expecting to collect.

Gunman Flame and his partner Citron assassinate Nazi collaborators for the Danish resistance. Assigned targets by their Allies-connected leader, Aksel Winther, they relish the opportunity to begin targeting the Nazis themselves. When they begin to doubt the validity of their assignments, their morally complicated task becomes even more labyrinthine.

After a fateful miss, an assassin battles his employers, and himself, on an international manhunt he insists isn't personal.

"The Family," an album with a velvet cover, is meant to touch the extended family of man. Formal portraits, bookends in this 80-year saga, enclose the central story, which opens with the baptism of Carlo, a baby in his grandfather's lap, and ends with Carlo as a grandfather with a baby in his arms. And never once do we get out of the house, whose rooms provide the film's structure. Comfort or passion? Carlo couldn't really decide until it was too late.

When a shipment of heroin disappears between Italy and New York, a small-time pimp in Milan is framed for the theft. Two professional hitmen are dispatched from New York to find him, but the real thieves want to get rid of him before the New York killers get to him to eliminate any chance of them finding out he's the wrong man.

A mob hitman wants to retire, but his bosses don't think that's a good idea. Complications - and many bloody shootouts - ensue.

As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.

A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.

Meursault is a man who feels utterly isolated from everyone and everything around him. This alienation results in sudden, inexplicable bursts of violence, culminating in murder.

A Stalinist assassin tracks exiled revolutionary Leon Trotsky to Mexico in 1940.

An imprisoned murderer carries out a violent bid for control of Naples' underworld crime syndicate.

Aging small-time conman Augusto works with two younger men: Roberto, who desires to become the Italian Johnny Ray, and Carlo, nicknamed Picasso. Through a series of mishaps and personal entanglements, things go badly for Augusto.

This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.

Following the assassination of President Marc Jarry, a member of the investigation committee refuses to sign off on the committee's final findings.

While touring in Italy, a recently-widowed American opera singer has an incestuous relationship with her 15-year-old son to help him overcome his heroin addiction.

Star-crossed lovers Thérèse and Laurent think they've gotten away with murder after Thérèse's weakling husband "falls" from a speeding train. But when forced to contend with a blackmailer's demands and the mute accusations of Thérèse's mother-in-law, it's only a matter of time before the law, their passion or blind chance trips them up.

Claude is a ruthless and efficient contract killer. His next target, a woman, is the most difficult.

Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.

An episodic satire of the political and social status of Italy in the seventies, through the shows of one day of a television channel.

A young academy soldier, Maciek Chelmicki, is ordered to shoot the secretary of the KW PPR. A coincidence causes him to kill someone else. Meeting face to face with his victim, he gets a shock. He faces the necessity of repeating the assassination. He meets Krystyna, a girl working as a barmaid in the restaurant of the "Monopol" hotel. His affection for her makes him even more aware of the senselessness of killing at the end of the war. Loyalty to the oath he took, and thus the obligation to obey the order, tips the scales.

Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.

Luigi has lived with his mother and little brother since their abusive father Franco left when he was 10. Now a young man brimming with rage, he joins a far-right gang in search of belonging, but Franco's return poisons everything.

Old professional killer Wagner seeks someone to teach what he knows as long as he is already dying, and he chooses Max, young and passionless thief to be his successor.

Gloria encounters Francisco, a man whose social veneer betrays a truer self burrowed underneath.

On the run from his former employer, a reluctant hitman seeks refuge in an isolated village where he is faced with events that test the true nature of his conscience.

Two close friends' plan to execute a flawless crime is crushed when one of them inadvertently leaves his glasses at the crime scene.

Palermo, Sicily, 1980. Mafia member Tommaso Buscetta decides to move to Brazil with his family fleeing the constant war between the different clans of the criminal organization. But when, after living several misfortunes, he is forced to return to Italy, he makes a bold decision that will change his life and the destiny of Cosa Nostra forever.

In New York, a Pakistani native finds that his American Dream has collapsed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

An international assassin known as ‘The Jackal’ is employed by disgruntled French generals to kill President Charles de Gaulle, with a dedicated gendarme on the assassin’s trail.

Policewoman Anna Mari is forced to play a dangerous game with the title serial killer. If she loses, she witnesses the maniac's tortured victims having their throats cut in explicit close-up detail via webcam. She teams up with British cop John Brennan to find out the identity of the murderer.

In the late 19th century, a former high school teacher turned unionist tries to organize workers laboring with inhuman conditions at a textile factory in Turin, Italy.

Giuseppe Di Noi, an Italian surveyor living in Swiden, gets arrested at the border while going back to Italy with his family for a vacation. But can someone tell the man why?

A group of idealistic but frustrated liberals succumb to the temptation of murdering right-wing pundits for their political beliefs.

The 1978 kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by Red Brigades terrorists

The heroic story of a dictator who risks his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed.

A wealthy, self-absorbed Rome socialite is racked by guilt over the death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city’s poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity.

In the first episode, Quirino tries to conquer co-worker Gabriella. In the second episode, Prof. Beozi ends up in a raid of the police in a local for homosexuals when trying to avoid a scandal. In the third episode, Guglielmo passes all tests in order to become reader of the television news brilliantly, although the commission works with all subtleness's to exclude him.

November 2, 1975: Pier Paolo Pasolini is murdered in the outskirts of Rome. The suspect, a 17-year-old hustler, pleads to have acted in self-defense, citing Pasolini's notorious sexual habits as proof. However, many inconsistencies start to undermine his version, pointing to him not having acted alone or even being assaulted in the first place. Was Pasolini also killed for another reason?

A tough, violent cop who doesn't mind bending the law goes after a machine-gun-carrying, hunchbacked psychotic killer.

After serving prison time for a juvenile offense, Freddo gathers his old buddies Libano and Dandi and embarks on a crime spree that makes the trio the most powerful gangsters in Rome. Libano loves their new status, and seeks to spread their influence throughout the underworld, while the other two pursue more fleshly desires. For decades, their gang perpetrates extravagant crimes, until paranoia threatens to split the friends apart.

Rome, Italy. After committing a heinous crime, a senior police officer exposes evidence incriminating him because his moral commitment prevents him from circumventing the law and the social order it protects.

An unlikely friendship between a dour, working class butcher and a repressed schoolteacher coincides with a grisly series of Ripper-type murders in a provincial French town.

A leftist professor wants the truth about two men killed during a hunting party; but the mafia, the Church and corrupt politicians don't want him to learn it.

The surreal tale of an unassuming man who is accused of a never-specified crime and shambles through bizarre encounters to escape this nightmare.

A prison drama where an old mobster and a prison guard must find a way to coexist so that imprisonment can become less so, and perhaps reveal the paradox that is behind the very concept of captivity.

When socialite and heiress Julie Wardh begins receiving blackmail letters attributed to a mysterious serial killer, she suspects her cruel and sadistic former lover Jean is behind them. With her husband Neil frequently out of town, she falls into the arms of her friend's cousin George, and as the unknown assassin begins to make his move, she fears that one of the three men in her life may be the killer.

Set during a retreat of Christian Democrat politicians who practice spiritual exercises together, it is an allegory of corrupted power. Disturbing, claustrophobic settings are the background to a series of mysterious crimes.

David Locke is a world-weary American journalist who has been sent to cover a conflict in northern Africa, but he makes little progress with the story. When he discovers the body of a stranger who looks similar to him, Locke assumes the dead man's identity. However, he soon finds out that the man was an arms dealer, leading Locke into dangerous situations. Aided by a beautiful woman, Locke attempts to avoid both the police and criminals out to get him.
