The film that made Bernardo Bertolucci's international reputation, The Conformist (based on Alberto Moravia's novel) is equal parts film noir, Freudian melodrama and political commentary. The hero, Marcello Clerici (Trintignant), joins Italy's fascist party, marries a simpering bourgeois woman (Sandrelli) and agrees to assassinate the university professor who once acted as his mentor, all to become a normal member of society. As his psyche unravels - a homosexual encounter at age 13, his father's illness, his desire for the professor's wife, Anna (Sanda) - Bertolucci gradually shows that Clerici wants to become a robot in order to forget the messiness of life. But Clerici is moral enough at heart to begin putting off the murder in true Hamlet fashion. Trintignant plays a rising young follower of Mussolini who must assassinate his former professor to demonstrate his loyalty to the Fascist state.