MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Arguably Luchino Visconti's best film and certainly the most personal of his historical epics, The Leopard chronicles the fortunes of Prince Fabrizio Salina and his family during the unification of Italy in the 1860s. Based on the acclaimed novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, published posthumously in 1958 and subsequently translated into all European languages, the picture opens as Salina (Burt Lancaster) learns that Garibaldi's troops have embarked in Sicily. While the Prince sees the event as an obvious threat to his current social status, his opportunistic nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon) becomes an officer in Garibaldi's army and returns home a war hero. Tancredi starts courting the beautiful Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), a daughter of the town's newly appointed Mayor, Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa). Though the Prince despises Don Calogero as an upstart who made a fortune on land speculation during the recent social upheaval, he reluctantly agrees to his nephew's marriage, understanding how much this alliance would mean for the impecunious Tancredi. Painfully realizing the aristocracy's obsolescence in the wake of the new class of bourgeoisie, the Prince later declines an offer from a governmental emissary to become a senator in the new Parliament in Turin. The closing section, an almost hour-long ball, is often cited as one of the most spectacular sequences in film history. Burt Lancaster is magnificent in the first of his patriarchal roles, and the rest of the cast, especially Delon and Cardinale, become almost perfect incarnations of the novel's characters. Filmed in glorious Techniscope and rich in period detail, the film is a remarkable cinematic achievement in all departments. The version that won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival ran 205 minutes. Inexplicably, the picture was subsequently distributed by 20th Century Fox in a poorly dubbed, 165-min. English-language version, using inferior color process. The restored Italian-language version, supervised by cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, appeared in 1990, though the longest print still ran only 187 minutes. ~ Yuri German, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 3
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Screen: Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV
• Subtitle: English
• Features:
  • • Disc One:
    • New high-definition Digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Giuseppe Rotunno, with restored image and sound and presented in the original super technirama aspect ratio of 2.21:1
    • Audio commentary by film scholar Peter Cowie
    • New and improved English subtitle translation
    • Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition
    • Disc Two:
    • A Dying Breed: The Making of The Leopard, a new hour-long documentary featuring interviews with actress Claudia Cardinale, screenwriter Suso Cecchi D'Amico, director of photography Giuseppe Rotunno, filmmaker Sydney Pollack, and many others
    • Interview with producer Goffredo Lombardo
    • An exclusive video interview with professor Millicent Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania on the history behind The Leopard
    • Original theatrical trailers and newsreels
    • Stills gallery of rare behind-the-scenes production photos
    • Disc Three:
    • New transfer of the 161-minute American release, with English language dialogue (including Burt Lancaster's actual voice)
    • Plus: a new essay by author and film historian Michael Wood

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Nominated Best Color Costume Design - 1963 (Piero Tosi)

• Cannes Film Festival

•     Won Palme d'Or - 1963

• Hollywood Foreign Press Association

•     Nominated New Star of the Year - Male - 1963 (Alain Delon)

• National Board of Review

•     Nominated Best Foreign Film - 1963

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Luchino Visconti

• Producer:

  Goffredo Lombardo

• Screenwriter:

  Pasquale Festa Campanile, Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Massimo Franciosa, Luchino Visconti, Enrico Medioli

• Book Author:

  Giuseppe Tommasi di Lampedusa

• Cinematographer:

  Giuseppe Rotunno

• Composer (Music Score):

  Nino Rota

• Featured Music:

  Giuseppe Verdi

• Musical Direction/Supervision:

  Franco Ferrara

• Editor:

  Mario Serandrei

• Production Designer:

  Mario Garbuglia

• Costume Designer:

  Piero Tosi

• Makeup:

  Alberto de Rossi

REVIEW:

• Il Gattopardo is perhaps much too cinematically opulent to fit comfortably into director Luchino Visconti's body of neo-realist work, but it is likely his most personal film, with a powerful central protagonist (Burt Lancaster) who resembles aspects of Visconti's own life. Visconti was among those wealthy Italians who became attracted to Marxist ideals, but who was not willing to relinquish his own personal wealth or status. There is at least some parallel to the central character in Il Gattopardo, an aristocrat who aware of his own impending obsolescence. The film is meticulously produced, with great attention to period detail. Giuseppe Rotunno's cinematography is a substantial asset, as is Nino Rota's orchestral score and Mario Garbuglia's production design. Several versions of the film exist, most of them considerably shortened from the original theatrically released version. ~ Richard Gilliam, Rovi