THE LEOPARD
The Leopard (Il Gattopardo), 1963, dir Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon
This film by Visconti followed on from his major early neo-realist works Ossessione (1943) and La Terra Trema (1948), a period when Visconti was concocting internationalist spaghettis with disparate European and American talents. Some of these films are very good and Il Gattopardo is surely one of the very good ones, but sometimes they lurch towards the ludicrous side of camp (such as his Death in Venice - although it is still visually splendid). They mark a period which might be summarised in general terms as the end of the dominance of European arthouse cinema and the beginnings of a more complexly stratified Hollywood cinema, still capable but more readily capable of immense international syntheses in the same sense that European directors like Visconti were once capable of.
Visconti, both an aristocrat and a Marxist, went to the novel Il Gattopardo (The title is rendered in English as The Leopard, but the Italian word gattopardo refers to the American ocelot or to the African serval. Il gattopardo may be a reference to a wildcat that was hunted to extinction in Italy in the mid-1800s—just as Don Fabrizio was dryly contemplating the decline and indolence of the Sicilian aristocracy.) by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (December 23, 1896 - July 23, 1957) for inspiration for his historical drama that covers the era of Italian Unification, the Risorgimento (resurgence). The film follows the family of Sicilian nobleman Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina (played by Burt Lancaster) through Garibaldi's rebellion and the ensuing plebiscite. His nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon) for whom Don Fabrizio has high hopes, is a red coated, red hatted Garibaldist, but eventually becomes a regular soldier for King Victor Emanuel after the completion of the defeat of the Austrians. A plebiscite overwhelmingly confirms the unification of Sicily and the Neopolitan Kingdom with the Northern Italians who had previously defeated the Austrians overwhelmingly with the aid of the French at the great battles of Magenta and Solferino. Don Fabrizio is a member of the aristocratic class who realise that the times are changing, that the aristocracy must follow suit, but he is also obstinate, realising that he is now too old to be politically effective, failing to employ or muster the self-deception necessary to express devout political convictions. As Tancredi says, unsuccessfully urging Don Fabrizio to abandon his allegiance to the crumbling Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and ally himself with the Savoy dynasty: "Unless we ourselves take a hand now, they'll foist a republic on us. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."
Tancredi (and Visconti) embrace the politics of accommodation and compromise, but Don Fabrizio is seemingly too old to change his views, abnegating his political ambitions, instead being overwhelmed by private fears for his own mortality. The film is overwhelmingly painterly, moving between the Sicilian landscape, darkened interiors and intimate group and individual portraits of great beauty and mystery. The film focusses especially on Tancredi's marriage to a suitable woman, the candidate being Angelica Sedara (Claudia Cardinale - and why not). Claudia Cardinale, nominally an Italian actress, but really North African from Tunis, hence her seemingly too dark, olive skinned 'Italian' beauty. Lancaster resembles a Mexican, Delon a Berber. Visconti manages the cult of international celebrity by shuffling his pack of actors, making them seem to embody stereotypical European celebrity while actually not being very European at all. But that is also part of Visconti's accommodation.
Il Gattopardo is undoubtedly a great novel, a novel of immense mystery and political acuteness. There's no doubt that Visconti's rendering of it here is also exceptional and this film is, indeed, an absolute must see for anyone even remotely interested in 20th century film-making or even for people remotely interested in being alive in this and the last century.
Paul Murphy, The Riverside Studios, London
This film by Visconti followed on from his major early neo-realist works Ossessione (1943) and La Terra Trema (1948), a period when Visconti was concocting internationalist spaghettis with disparate European and American talents. Some of these films are very good and Il Gattopardo is surely one of the very good ones, but sometimes they lurch towards the ludicrous side of camp (such as his Death in Venice - although it is still visually splendid). They mark a period which might be summarised in general terms as the end of the dominance of European arthouse cinema and the beginnings of a more complexly stratified Hollywood cinema, still capable but more readily capable of immense international syntheses in the same sense that European directors like Visconti were once capable of.
Visconti, both an aristocrat and a Marxist, went to the novel Il Gattopardo (The title is rendered in English as The Leopard, but the Italian word gattopardo refers to the American ocelot or to the African serval. Il gattopardo may be a reference to a wildcat that was hunted to extinction in Italy in the mid-1800s—just as Don Fabrizio was dryly contemplating the decline and indolence of the Sicilian aristocracy.) by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (December 23, 1896 - July 23, 1957) for inspiration for his historical drama that covers the era of Italian Unification, the Risorgimento (resurgence). The film follows the family of Sicilian nobleman Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina (played by Burt Lancaster) through Garibaldi's rebellion and the ensuing plebiscite. His nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon) for whom Don Fabrizio has high hopes, is a red coated, red hatted Garibaldist, but eventually becomes a regular soldier for King Victor Emanuel after the completion of the defeat of the Austrians. A plebiscite overwhelmingly confirms the unification of Sicily and the Neopolitan Kingdom with the Northern Italians who had previously defeated the Austrians overwhelmingly with the aid of the French at the great battles of Magenta and Solferino. Don Fabrizio is a member of the aristocratic class who realise that the times are changing, that the aristocracy must follow suit, but he is also obstinate, realising that he is now too old to be politically effective, failing to employ or muster the self-deception necessary to express devout political convictions. As Tancredi says, unsuccessfully urging Don Fabrizio to abandon his allegiance to the crumbling Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and ally himself with the Savoy dynasty: "Unless we ourselves take a hand now, they'll foist a republic on us. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change."
Tancredi (and Visconti) embrace the politics of accommodation and compromise, but Don Fabrizio is seemingly too old to change his views, abnegating his political ambitions, instead being overwhelmed by private fears for his own mortality. The film is overwhelmingly painterly, moving between the Sicilian landscape, darkened interiors and intimate group and individual portraits of great beauty and mystery. The film focusses especially on Tancredi's marriage to a suitable woman, the candidate being Angelica Sedara (Claudia Cardinale - and why not). Claudia Cardinale, nominally an Italian actress, but really North African from Tunis, hence her seemingly too dark, olive skinned 'Italian' beauty. Lancaster resembles a Mexican, Delon a Berber. Visconti manages the cult of international celebrity by shuffling his pack of actors, making them seem to embody stereotypical European celebrity while actually not being very European at all. But that is also part of Visconti's accommodation.
Il Gattopardo is undoubtedly a great novel, a novel of immense mystery and political acuteness. There's no doubt that Visconti's rendering of it here is also exceptional and this film is, indeed, an absolute must see for anyone even remotely interested in 20th century film-making or even for people remotely interested in being alive in this and the last century.
Paul Murphy, The Riverside Studios, London
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