Europe Endless - The Mediterranean: The Conformist (Dir Bernardo Bertolucci, 1h56m, 1970)
We reach Italy. Much like France, there is an embarrassment of cinematic riches we could consider: we have already spent a month in Rome in previous years, and the impact of Italian Neorealism, Sword and Sandal, Spaghetti Westerns etc on the rest of European cinema cannot be understated, whilst directors from Roberto Rossellini and Federico Fellini to Sergio Leone and Pier Paolo Pasolini to Luca Guadagnino and Paolo Sorrentino have carried the banner for their nation's considerable cinematic profile. Alongside France, this was the hardest nation to pin down - the Italian themselves have had quite a concerted go at narrowing down their nation's phenomenal cinematic output to a mere 100 films, the Cento film italiani da salvare (A hundred Italian films to be saved). Yet, here we are, with Bernardo Bertolucci, a figure successful in both his native Italy, and abroad, with the infamous Last Tango in Paris ...
