The Leopard (1963)

Original title

Il gattopardo

Directed by

Luchino Visconti

Genre

drama film

Country

France, Italy

Runtime

3h 03m

Rated

14

Rating

7.7 of 10 from 959 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

An aging Sicilian prince watches his world change during the Italian unification. He tries to preserve his family's status while his nephew marries the daughter of a rising commoner.

slow-burnmelancholicvisually lushepicbittersweetelegiacaristocraticobservationalstately

What happens

The Leopard (Italian: Il Gattopardo, lit. 'The Serval' [il ˌɡattoˈpardo]) is a 1963 epic historical drama film directed by Luchino Visconti. Written by Visconti, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Enrico Medioli, Pasquale Festa Campanile, and Massimo Franciosa, the film is an adaptation of the 1958 novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Burt Lancaster stars as Don Fabrizio Corbera, an aging Sicilian prince caught up in the sociopolitical turmoil of the Risorgimento (Italian unification) during the mid-19th century, with Alain Delon as his opportunistic nephew Tancredi, and Claudia Cardinale as his goddaughter. Paolo Stoppa, Rina Morelli, Romolo Valli, Serge Reggiani, and Terence Hill play supporting roles. The film was an international co-production between Italian studio Titanus and French studio Pathé. The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, and was released theatrically in Italy on March 28, 1963, and in France on June 14. It was a critical and commercial success in Europe, but reception was more lukewarm in the United States, where a truncated, English-dubbed cut was released. Retrospective reviews—of the film's longer original cut—have been more positive, and the film is now widely regarded as a classic and one of the greatest movies ever made. In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978." (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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