Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Conformist” is one of those pivotal works that collect and redefine all the cinematic styles that came before. Though set in Mussolini’s Italy, Mr. Bertolucci’s 1970 film deftly leaps from hard-edged noir to Felliniesque surrealism to super-saturated romanticism – sometimes all in the same scene. Yet the director and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro meld these styles into something all their own.

“The Conformist” solidified Mr. Bertolucci’s status as a major international director; his next major film, 1972’s “Last Tango in Paris,” would make him a household name and give him the somewhat undeserved status of a provocateur. Although it too has its share of sex and titillation, “The Conformist,” based on Alberto Moravia’s novel, is a film about the corruption of an entire community; at its heart is the notion of belonging.

Marcello Clerici (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a 30-something man haunted by the memory of a childhood homosexual encounter, joins the Fascist Party and marries into a middle-class family in order to repress his sexuality and embrace what he calls “normality.” Terrified of being different, he craves the anonymity of the bourgeois ideal.

In order to convince his overlords of his loyalty to the party, he leads them to his former philosophy professor, now in exile in Paris. Undercover, Mr. Clerici visits the City of Light (and oh, what light, as shot by Mr. Bertolucci and Mr. Storaro!) with his new wife Giulia (Stefania Sandrelli), and finds himself smitten with the professor’s lovely, bisexual wife (Dominique Sanda).

The film is structured as a series of scenes in which every bizarre attempt to maintain stability breaks down: A dance organized by blind people degenerates into a comical fistfight; a social visit to an asylum turns into an insane screaming match; an obligatory confession becomes a disturbing journey into the past. Mr. Bertolucci is the poet of social breakdown, depicting the futility of maintaining order in a fundamentally sick society. Through it all, Clerici’s own skeletons are waiting to come out of his closet.

Mr. Bertolucci depicts a culture where everything is a reflection, just as the film’s style regurgitates the genres preceding it. A trio of women sings happy pop tunes, imitating the Andrews Sisters. Fascist operatives talk like dime-store mafiosi, walking around inside hilariously gigantic offices recalling the monumentalism of ancient Rome. A blind homosexual radio commentator makes bombastic, stentorian speeches about the glories of Mussolini and Hitler. In the center of it all is the bourgeois wannabe Clerici, his rhythmically jerky movements betraying his neurosis. (Mr. Trintignant’s performance is as much dancing as it is acting.)

Nowadays some critics overlook the film’s political subtext in favor of gushing praise for its visual accomplishment. Mr. Bertolucci was a member of the Communist Party when he made the film (though communism only makes a brief, funny appearance, in the form of a blind Parisian flower seller singing “The Internationale”). He, like most of the rest of the world, has become less politically radical since those days. But his satire of Mussolini’s Italy as an empire of hypocrisy carries more than a little resonance for any society in which people feel the need to redefine themselves in order to fit social and political ideals. “The Conformist” may be one of the most gorgeous films ever made, but it’s also one of the most insightful.

Until August 11 at Film Forum (209 W. Houston Street, between Sixth & Seventh Avenues, 212-727-8110).