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In choosing to adapt Alberto Moravia's novel The Conformist fox the cinema, Bernardo Bertolucci assumed what would appear to be a near impossible task, for rarely did verbal content seem less suited to making the transition into visual content. Besides being a protracted work, apt to strain the potential scope of a single film, the novel is constantly introspective and analytical to a fault and thus does not lend itself readily to adaptation as these elements do not have objective, visual correlatives capable of being projected onto the screen. The first of the book's three parts is almost devoid of dialogue and action, two factors which contribute to the difficulty of adapting it to the cinema's unique modes of expression. Nor do we encounter a significant resurgence of action and dialogue as the novel progresses, for Moravia's principal and sustained concern lies more in depicting internal character development than in focussing on external plot interest. Nothing in the novel is dealt with elliptically; names and precise descriptions are assigned to even the most inconsequential characters, and static, reflective passages succeed each other with predictable regularity.
The number of required amendments was therefore formidable before The Conformist could be adapted from one artistic medium to the other. The narrative had to be rigorously condensed; a chronological sequence that was somehow compressed and manageable had to be devised; minor characters and events had to be eliminated; and above all, what is introspective and passive in the novel, had to be dramatised, to be made dynamic. All but the most determined of directors would have renounced the undertaking long before finishing the book. And as if all this were not sufficient in itself to deter him, then that which leads Moravia's protagonist inexorably to his doom represents yet another seemingly insurmountable hurdle for the aspiring adapter. Marcello Clerici's actions throughout the novel are determined by Fate, a peculiarly literary characteristic, more proper to Greek tragedy than to the contemporary cinema. It was, then, at this fundamental level that the changes had to begin. When asked if he had modified the motivations from the Moravian novel, Bertolucci acceded that he had:
Yes, in the sense that in the book the story of the conformist is a tragedy and, as...