The ANNOTICO Report

"The Leopard," is set against Italy's turbulent era of unification in the
1860s, and brings to mind "Gone With the Wind" as a rich evocation of a
crumbling aristocracy.But "The Leopard" is as contemplative and understated
as "Gone With the Wind" is dynamic and tempestuous.

The difference between the versions is not a matter of restoring missing
scenes but rather of rounding out the film with missing bits and pieces of
40 minutes. Stately, elegiac, ruminative, the film truly does now feel
seamlessly all of a piece — and looks glorious.

Los Angeles Times
By Kevin Thomas
Times Staff Writer
May 6, 2005

Luchino Visconti's 1963 masterpiece, "The Leopard," a dazzling yet
profoundly reflective adaptation of Giuseppe di Lampedusa's 1960
international bestseller, at last has been released in its original
full-length 205-minute Italian version.

It was first released in the U.S. in an unfortunately truncated
English-language 165-minute version and then in 1983 in an internationally
successful Italian version supervised by its cinematographer, the great
Giuseppe Rotunno. The difference between the versions is not a matter of
restoring missing scenes but rather of rounding out the film with missing
bits and pieces. Stately, elegiac, ruminative, the film truly does now feel
seamlessly all of a piece — and looks glorious.

In period, scope and story, "The Leopard," set against Italy's turbulent
era of unification in the 1860s, brings to mind "Gone With the Wind" as a
rich evocation of a crumbling aristocracy. It has battle scenes and a
climactic 51-minute grand ball scene, which allows for a sublime
consideration of mortality on the part of its hero, the pragmatic yet
reflective Prince Salina (Burt Lancaster). But "The Leopard" is as
contemplative and understated as "Gone With the Wind" is dynamic and
tempestuous.

The film is a glittering triumph of personal expression at its most elegant
and opulent. Visconti, like Di Lampedusa, was a Sicilian nobleman, and "The
Leopard," as a saga of inevitable loss, corresponded precisely with the
paradox within Visconti, who was at once a Sicilian count and a Marxist.

As the film opens, at the San Lorenzo country estate of Prince Salina, his
large family proceeds with morning prayers as if there were no intrusion of
gunfire from the nearby Battle of Palermo. Early on, the sagacious,
prescient prince takes to heart the wise remark of his dashing but
penniless nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon): "In order for things to stay as
they are, things will have to change." The entirety of the film has to do
with the introspective prince acting on these words, culminating in his
confrontation with what it has cost him.

As the revolution draws closer, the Salinas move to Donnafugata, a small
mountain town where they have a palace immense enough to satisfy the
prince's observation that "no palace is worth having if you can count all
its rooms." Salina realizes that survival depends on accommodating the
emerging, increasingly wealthy middle class. Meanwhile, the blithely
opportunistic Tancredi has swiftly progressed from the red shirts of the
quickly betrayed Garibaldi to the fancy uniform of the new monarchy of
Victor Emmanuel. Meanwhile, the prince maneuvers his nephew into a marriage
to the beautiful daughter (Claudia Cardinale) of Donnafugata's mayor (Paolo
Stoppa), who is as rich as he is vulgar.

"The Leopard" moves at a measured pace from one comprehensive and subtle
sequence to another. There's the much-commented-upon symbolic pan of the
dust-covered and weary Salina family, freshly arrived in Donnafugata,
seated in church, looking as if they had turned into statuary — or corpses
— becoming part of the ancient Baroque décor surrounding them. During the
incredibly lavish and deliberately suffocating grand ball, Salina, a virile
45, in at last acknowledging his attraction to Cardinale's voluptuous
Angelica, makes the connection between his mortality and the waning power
of his class. He accepts the loss as inevitable but is convinced that
leopards and lions such as he will be succeeded by jackals and sheep.

Even though his role is dubbed into an Italian that has no resemblance to
his distinctive voice, Lancaster is nevertheless superb — it is said that
he modeled Salina on Visconti. It would seem that the onetime circus
acrobat from tough East Harlem was born to play a 19th century Sicilian
prince patterned after Di Lampedusa's great-grandfather.

'The Leopard'

MPAA rating: PG (1983)

Times guidelines: Complex adult themes

A Criterion Pictures release of a 20th Century Fox production. Director
Luchino Visconti. Producers Goffredo Lombardo, Pietro Notarianni.
Screenplay by Suso Cecchi d'Amico & Pasquale Festa Campanile and Enrico
Medioli & Massimo Franciosa and Luchino Visconti; based on the novel by
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno Verdi.
Editor Mario Serandrei. Music Nino Rota. Costumes Piero Tosi. Production
designer Mario Garbuglia. Set decorators Laudomia Hercolani, Giorgio Pes.
In Italian with English subtitles. Running time: 3 hours, 25 minutes.
Exclusively at the Nuart through Thursday. 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West
Los Angeles, (310) 281-8223.

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