The Conformist: Kind of an ironic title for a film that just set fire to the multiplex

Yesterday at Film Forum, I had the terrible misfortune of arriving too late to get into the sold-out 5:20 screening of Bernardo Bertolucci's 1969 classic The Conformist. So I thought I would go ahead and take a walk and come back for the 7:40 showing. Alas, that too was sold out, and after resigning myself to watching something by some guy named Bergman, I knew there was something special going on.

As it turned out, The Conformist's box-office take was symbolic of a robust turn out for several smaller art-house and independent films around New York last weekend. In Film Forum's case, the 10th anniversary of The Conformist's restoration and rerelease (and a sparkling new print) brought in $15,810--one of the highest per screen averages in the city.

"It's amazing," said Film Forum repertory spokesman Gabriele Caroti. "There is kind of the cliche of people going to the multiplex and just picking what movie to see based on what's playing. With this film, it is partly that--I'm sure if people go there and see a hundred people in line for it they want to know what it is all about. But this is also a major event."

Another reasonably major event (at least by business standards) happened to take place a little further uptown, where ThinkFilm's dirty-joke-a-thon The Aristocrats raked in part of its beyond-staggering $268,176 weekend score. Evidently, whatever it was about the unrated film's purported obscenity that rankled AMC Theaters did not turn off the filmgoers in New York and Los Angeles who blessed it with a $67,044 per-screen average, and look for The Aristocrats' figures to climb as it goes into wider release Aug. 5.

Then there was something called Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, which opened over at the Paris Theater. Sure, the title sounds like a phrase you would hear improvised in a Christopher Guest movie, but the source novel's faithful following helped launch it to a $16,694 NYC opening.

So when studio half-asses want to tell you about flagging box office, mention to them that a fucking penguin movie (at $5,340 per screen) outearned faster-louder garbage like Stealth ($3,862 per screen) and The Island ($1,797 per screen)--and it has been out a month longer than those stale-ass bombs. I can hardly wait to see what independent offering beats the shit out of The Dukes of Hazzard this upcoming weekend.

Anyhow, Caroti offered no word yet on whether or not Film Forum will be able to extend The Conformist's residency, but for my sake, I hope it is a possibility--after all, two weeks can never be enough time for films that actually matter.