The Leopard (1963)

Arguably Luchino Visconti's best film and certainly the most personal of his historical epics, The Leopard chronicles the fortunes of Prince Fabrizio Salina and his family during the unification of Italy in the 1860s. Based on the acclaimed novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, published posthumously in 1958 and subsequently translated into all European languages, the picture opens as Salina (Burt Lancaster) learns that Garibaldi's troops have embarked in Sicily. While the Prince sees the event as an obvious threat to his current social status, his opportunistic nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon) becomes an officer in Garibaldi's army and returns home a war hero. Tancredi starts courting the beautiful Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), a daughter of the town's newly appointed Mayor, Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa). Though the Prince despises Don Calogero as an upstart who made a fortune on land speculation during the recent social upheaval, he reluctantly agrees to his nephew's marriage, understanding how much this alliance would mean for the impecunious Tancredi. Painfully realizing the aristocracy's obsolescence in the wake of the new class of bourgeoisie, the Prince later declines an offer from a governmental emissary to become a senator in the new Parliament in Turin. The closing section, an almost hour-long ball, is often cited as one of the most spectacular sequences in film history. Burt Lancaster is magnificent in the first of his patriarchal roles, and the rest of the cast, especially Delon and Cardinale, become almost perfect incarnations of the novel's characters. Filmed in glorious Techniscope and rich in period detail, the film is a remarkable cinematic achievement in all departments. The version that won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival ran 205 minutes. Inexplicably, the picture was subsequently distributed by 20th Century Fox in a poorly dubbed, 165-min. English-language version, using inferior color process. The restored Italian-language version, supervised by cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, appeared in 1990, though the longest print still ran only 187 minutes. ~ Yuri German, Rovi

Directed by Luchino Visconti. With Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale, Paolo Stoppa. The Prince of Salina, a noble aristocrat of impeccable integrity, tries to preserve his family and class amid the tumultuous social upheavals of 1860's Sicily.

The original trailer in high definition of Il gattopardo directed by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale and Paolo S...

Overview of The Leopard, 1963, directed by Luchino Visconti, with Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale, at Turner Classic Movies

In the middle of The Leopard (Il Gattopardo 1963) there is a hunting trip. The ring of Sicilian cicadas. A rabbit is killed. A conversation takes place. Don Fabrizio (The Leopard himself The Prince of Salina, Burt Lancaster) engages with his gamesman Don Ciccio (Serge Reggiani) about recent events: Ciccio is furious at the rigging…

Some period pieces are immersive: They succeed, to an extent, in transporting you to another time and place. Others seem to create, accidentally or on purpose, an artificial remove, looking upon past events as though they were occurring behind the glass at a museum. Somewhere smack-dab in the middle of these two approaches lies The Leopard, Luchino Visconti’s lavish, leisurely historical drama about waning aristocracy in 19th-century Italy. The details of clothing, architecture, and bric-a-brac are so carefully and meticulously recreated, they generate a sense of you-are-there immediacy. In The Leopard, it’s not the audience but one of the characters himself who’s acutely aware, at all times, that he’s experiencing ancient history as it unfolds. He knows he’s in a period piece, even when we forget.