Hailed as one of the great films of the 1970s, THE CONFORMIST is a forebear of the auteur invasion of the American mainstream typified by directors like Coppola and Scorsese. As fascism is sweeping Italy in the late 1930s, a desperate man wracked by childhood trauma is willing to do anything to achieve normalcy. The depths of his desperation for acceptance are tested when he is tasked with the assassination of his former mentor, an anti-fascist professor in exile, while on honeymoon.