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to the female protagonists Severine and Giulia (Marcello Clerici's wife). They both allow
wealthy, older men, linked to their families, to seduce them; a train journey constitutes a
turning point in the stories, during which Severine is forced to witness the assassination of a
man by her husband's hand, whereas Giulia confesses the affair to her husband, who - in
accordance with the cynicism permeating the film - reverses jealousy into a perverse
eagerness to re-enact the intimacy enjoyed by Giulia's older lover.
Julien Duvivier^s Pepe le Moko (1937) can also be considered as a possible influence,
particularly for its use of lighting that creates striking interplay between darkness and
shadows, combined with unconventional camera angles, techniques that, in The Conformist,
become an important motif in the mise-en-scene. As regards potential influence from
American noir, The Conformist perhaps relies on more codified visual traits, such as colour
schemes, lighting, disorienting visual effects, and the use of flashbacks as a structural
component; it has something in common with American noir'?, construction of a male
protagonist who is not fighting against an adverse social environment as epitomized by Jean
Gabin's roles, but who is driven by fate, and characterized by an ambiguous, violent attitude.
The Conformist shares another similarity with American noir for its incorporation of the
figure of the femme fatale into its narrative, an element which is absent from French noir on
account of many female characters being 'too marginal to qualify for the label of femme
fatale' (Vincendeau, 2007: 26) or 'too vulgar" (Vincendeau, 2007: 34). Consequently, Tlie
Conformist presents numerous artistic nuances with the potential to elicit intellectual
recognition and engagement from sections of its audience familiar with key features and
tenets of European and American noir.
Earlier critical writing on The Confomnst has identified several noir strands within it,
Barbara Creed highlighting the film's development of the figure of i\\e femme fatale, (Creed,
1993: 407) while James Naremore considered that Polanski's noirish Chinatown (1974) had
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