Il Gattopardo (The Leopard)

(1963) Director: Luchino Visconti Duration  195 minutes  (avoid the 165 minutes version in English)

This is a movie directed by Luchino Visconti taken from a book by Tommaso di Lampedusa with the same title. It is 1860.  Garibaldi has landed in Sicily. Does he aim to liberate Southern Italy from the inept Bourbon dynasty, or to merely add Savoy to the long list of foreign rulers to this once glorious land?  What to do? Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina, played by Burt Lancaster, pounders on this.  On one hand there is his nephew Tancredi. He joins Garibaldi in order to have a saying in the aftermath of these events. He tells his uncle that “things must change in order to remain the same.” Don Fabrizio approves of his nephew’s opportunism. On the other is the Jesuit confessor, a priest in the household of the Salinas as was the custom of the times.  This representative of the Church of Rome, an avid supporter of the nobility and of  the church’s  feudal lands in the South, arch-enemy of Italian aspirations and progress chides Don Fabrizio for his ambiguity. He wants Don Fabrizio to come to the aid of the Bourbons. To Don Fabrizio these events are irrelevant. He sees, as many Southern Italians see, the inevitability of change and what these changes will bring. As he says “We were the leopards, when we are gone all that is left are the jackals”.  We see the first inkling of what is to come, when the Salinas, as a privileged class, are allowed to proceed to their latifundia in Donnafugata even though Garibaldi’s troops have blocked the road for all others. Once the Bourbon king is deposed, a plebiscite is held to determine whether Sicily was to be joined to the newly formed Kingdom of Italy under the House of Savoy. The Prince publicly endorses this. With great fanfare, the mayor of Donnafugata, Calogero Sedara,  announces the unanimous wishes of the people. This in spite of the fact that a confidant of Don Fabrizio reveals that he had in fact voted against the annexation.  Tancredi falls in love with Angelica, the daughter of Don Calogero,  the wealthy mayor of Donnafugata who exhibits great political ambitions, and marries her. Don Fabrizio sees this as a great opportunity for his nephew to climb the social ladder of the new State and declines the offer of Senator of the new Italy since he is very skeptical that anything will change in Sicily recommending,  in his place, Don Calogero. (Lampedusa sees this as the abrogation of the old Sicilian ruling class of their responsibilities to the new country and the leaving of its governance in the hands of opportunists).  During a great ball, where all the Sicilian nobility attends,  the personages of the future ruling class are seen, including those who gladly shorn the red uniform of the “garibaldini” in favor of that of the Piedmontese army and the Colonel of the Bersaglieri whose troops shot Garibaldi at Aspromonte in Calabria as he was preparing to continue his quest to unite the rest of Italy. During that ball, Don Fabrizio contemplates his death and the end of all that his society stood for.  The movie ends as Tancredi and Don Calogero feel secure in their posititions as they hear the shots of the Piedmontese regulars executing the remnants of the “garibaldini” captured at Aspromonte.

Cut, dubbed, and printed in an inferior color process, the U.S. release of Luchino Visconti's epic didn't leave much of an impression in 1963; 20 years later, a restoration of the much longer Italian version revealed this as one of Visconti's best.