I feel like I wasted the whole day. Mostly because I actually did waste the whole day. I spent a lot of time watching John Schlesinger's 1975 film The Day of the Locust. The movie is boring and tiresome and I kept getting irritated and confused with it (a lot like I would if I were watching one of David Lynch's ridiculous nonsensical films). Some of the performances are good. It stars William Atherton, Karen Black, Donald Sutherland and Burgess Merideth. Geraldine Page makes a cameo as a faith healer (in a weird sequence totally typical of this film.) I pretty much hated it. It reminded me a lot of James Ivory's The Wild Party, actually. It's set in the same time period and it has a very similar look as far as light goes. More than Ivory, though, Day of the Locust reminded me of Lynch. And I don't like to be reminded.
But YESTERDAY, I finally saw Bernardo Bertolucci's Il Conformista (The Conformist) which is one of the best movies I've ever seen in my life. It was shot by Vittorio Storaro and stars Jean-Louis Trintignant as the eponymous conformist, a Fascist sympathizer in Mussolini's Italy. It's a gorgeous-looking film with beautiful performances and fabulous costumes. It's filled with symbolism, too. Evidently Bertolucci was a little obsessed with symbolism at the time, but as I was watching I kept thinking that I was watching a master filmmaker. This movie is superb!
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