Adapted from an Alberto Moravia novel, The Conformist is a study of a man who, following a homosexual assault in his youth that led to a shooting, develops an enormous thirst for normality which leads him to become a Fascist in Mussolini's Italy. Jean-Louis Trintignant perfected a seemingly impenetrable blandness for the part of Marcello, whose urge to suppress his own individuality actually sets him apart from a world that, as Bertolucci depicts it, is full of complexity and contradiction. The Conformist is a series of compelling set pieces recreating Europe in the thirties, contrasting the imperiousness of Fascist Rome with the warm exoticism of Paris. All the potentialities of the French city are implied in the character of Anna (Dominique Sanda), wife of an anti-Fascist professor and doomed, along with her husband, by the Conformist's powerful attraction to what she represents. But if the equation of repressed homosexuality and Fascism plays a bit facilely, as Stephen Farber wrote in a 1971 New York Times piece, "I think Bertolucci is trying for a more complex psychological study than his conclusion suggests. He and actor Trintignant give Marcello surprising depth, and they manage to release him from the liberal stereotype.... The Conformist makes most sense as an exploration of the irreconcilable tension between the desire for freedom and the need for social acceptance.... The film is witty and perceptive about the magnetism of banality, and extremely bitter about the sacrifices civilization demands in return for absolution."