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The Leopard (1963)

Director: Luchino Visconti, Goffredo Lombardi

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Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Prince Salina has always been the biggest cat on the block. Guys call him The Leopard. He growls, they shift ass. Now some biscuit-brain named Garibaldi wants to run the whole show from City Hall. Did 20th Century-Fox think this was the movie Visconti sold them back in l963, the way they hacked, dubbed and reprocessed? At last, 20 years later, we have the original version in a restored Technicolor print, revealing this as one of the finest 'Scope movies ever made, and Visconti's most personal meditation on history: muscular in its script, which deals with the declining fortunes of a Sicilian aristocratic clan under the Risorgimento, vigorous in performance, and sensuous in direction, changing moods through subtle shifts of lighting to give a palpable sense of the place and the hour. Lancaster, in the first of his great patrician roles, is superb; the rest of the players, right down to the hundreds of extras in the justly celebrated ball scene, are flawlessly cast, each of them living a moment of history for which Visconti, Marxist aristocrat himself, privately sorrowed.

Author: MA 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

  • Giuseppe Paolo Mazzarello said...
    Posted on Dec 19 2007 16:43 THE OLD PRINCE'S SUNSET
    In this movie Luchino Visconti gives us a multiplicity of voices which represents a disappearing world as a whole. An old Sicilian prince is leaving the stage with gloomy regret. The Italy's kingdom is sweeping away the Two Sycily's kingdom and one must adapt oneself to new rulers. However in the background one realizes without true democracy little things are really going to get changed. The prince sure will change because is becoming irremediably aged. So he must be satisfied with a dance with his nephew's wife. In the past he would have had much more. Baroque church, gleaming halls, countryside bathed in sunshine. Garibaldi and his braves are very enterprisings in their lightning military operations. Burt Lancaster is perfect in his role of the prince on the wane. In italian the word 'Gattopardo' means somebody which is only seemingly going to get changed.
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The Leopard

Cast & crew

Director: Luchino Visconti, Goffredo Lombardi

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale, Paolo Stoppa, Rina Morelli, Serge Reggiani, Romolo Valli, Leslie French, Ivo Garrani, Mario Girotti, Pierre Clémenti full cast

Duration: 185 mins


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