The Leopard

Following his personal motto, "something has to change in order to keep everything in place," authoritative prince Fabrizio di Salina (Burt Lancaster) secures his position, and that of his social class, by resigning himself to the "Risorgimento" and making a pact with the representatives of the bourgeoisie. He marries his nephew, Tancredi Falconeri (Alain Delon) to the daughter of a nouveau riche mayor (Claudia Cardinale), who should infuse fresh blood into an old bloodline threatened with extinction: the alliance between "the Leopard" and "the Jackal" exemplifies the blend between old and new. The collector's box of this film includes an interview with Alain Delon who, in retrospect, claims that Visconti had almost played the role of prince Salina himself, given the analogies between the two characters. Like Salina, Visconti preoccupied himself with questions of disappearing social class and transience. Beyond the splendour and revelry in his films always lies a dark horizon, the imminence of death, whose premonitory signs are perceived everywhere. The closing marriage scene is a lamenting farewell to vanishing beauty. Awesome Burt Lancaster in tuxedo looks into the mirror and tears well up in his eyes. Outside, a coffin is brought out. Majestic grandeur and striking dignity intertwine with elegiac melancholy, grief and regret. The perfect illustration of Friedrich Schiller's definition of tragedy: "Tragedy is not synonymous with suffering. Rather, tragedy is the futile protest of the individual against inevitable suffering". Delon claims that today he finds himself unable to watch the film, which evokes memories and images from a world long since forgotten, let alone listen to the soundtrack, "qui me fait pleurer"...

To summarize, this film was released, dubbed and butchered, in the US in 1963/64, never released on video but occasionally seen in bootleg version. The British Film Institute did a restored print of the original Italian version in 2003. I saw it in a theater in London last summer and found it fabulous, not least for seeing it in the wide screen setting. It's now out on DVD on three disks: the restored print with Italian dialogue (Burt Lancaster dubbed into Italian -- it sounds wacky, but it works big time); a disk with the butchered English release version of forty years ago (valuable to see what they did, and also to hear Lancaster's own English); and a disk with supplementary materials including very interesting interviews with a wide variety of participants in the movie. Of the multi-hour blockbusters of the period, I'd put it behind Lawrence of Arabia, but very close to Doctor Zhivago and well ahead of Ryan's Daughter.

DvB

If you ever have the chance to see this magnificent film in an uncut, fully restored version, with good subtitles...DO IT. This is a film of astonishing beauty, bristling with ideas and magnificent performances.Like all truly great films it is full of sublime SCENES: Prince Tancredi riding off to war in his carriage., the astonishing ball sequence, when Prince Salina gazes at the painting and comes to grips with his own mortality,and the unforgettable end, when Salina kneels on the ground and speaks to the stars.Coppola, Cimino, and Scorsese all saw this film and learned from it..the Godfather echoes it repeatedly( in fact all THREE Godfathers echo it repeatedly). Scorsese once ranked it with The Red Shoes, Citizen Kane, Otto e Mezzo and The Searchers as one of the films he "lives by." Seeing it, one understands.

Could it be that Visconti's 1963 epic--long lying in ruins until its 1983 partial restoration--is the greatest movie ever made? The real subject of this movie, surely the wisest and most beautiful of all "period pictures," is the twentieth century--what has been gained and above all what is lost. Only a Marxist duke like Visconti could have had the split sensibility, and the anecdotal knowhow, to render Sicily just before its entry to modernity with the splendor and the caginess that radiates through every frame of this masterpiece. As the prince making final compromises before leaving the faded world he has inherited, Burt Lancaster gives one of the greatest performances in movies. Possessed of both an elegiac melancholy and a shrewd, dry-eyed appraisal of the failures and the glorious extroversion of its aristocratic world, THE LEOPARD is like a dream you can't bear to let go of. Contemporary viewers will see echoes of THE DEER HUNTER, 1900 and THE AGE OF INNOCENCE--and will see those films shrivel to the size of cocktail franks.

This is a beautiful and thoughtful film about the changes occurring in Sicily after 1860, with the unification of Italy and the disappearance of the old Kingdom of Sicily. It explores these changes and and changing role of the old aristocracy through the experiences of the Prince of Salina. Overall it is an excellent film with many beautiful scenes, much contemplation, and a great exploration of the prince's character, views, a realisations.

It has some absolutely incredible moments, particularly the grand ball at the end, which is handled wonderfully. The film perfectly captures the prince's feelings, sadness, and sense of separation or isolation from the rest of the seemingly happy people at the ball and I don't think that I have ever seen this phenomenon handled so powerfully. The whole atmosphere of the ball, with the prince sweating and feeling in a daze while others laugh, giggle, dance and gossip, is wonderful, as is the horrible din while people go to get food and chat away whilst eating. It is unusual in that it perfectly captures such negative aspects of big, "festive" parties so rarely even addressed, much less demonstrated so flawlessly. The fact that such feelings of isolation and the like are a fundamental reality of big parties, especially when one has a lot on one's mind, makes this all the more forceful and compelling.

However, the film has some weaknesses. It does not bring everything together quite perfectly and fails to completely hit the nail on the head. I understand the transformations in the film and the prince's emotions, yet there is too little information underlying all of this too really see the bases for these thoughts, etc. I needed to extrapolate and rely on my own knowledge of the historical circumstances, none of which really should be necessary. The result is that I can easily see how audiences may be confused or uncertain what it's all really about. Moreover, it introduces scenes or issues that seem to have no point, lack an explanation, and go nowhere. Some seem at first to have significance, but then go nowhere and this tends to distract from the central plot and themes of the film while leading to potential confusion about the point of the scenes, as well as expectations that the issues will arise again. However, while these points to me prevent this from being the absolute masterpiece that it could have been, they do not seriously detract from the film and are only minor dents in the film's incredible strengths.