Filed under: 1960's, Cardinale, Claudia, Cinematheque, Delon, Alain, Italian, Lancaster, Burt, Visconti
dir. Visconti
Burt Lancaster – the Prince, Fabrizio , Alain Delon as Tancredi), Camille Claudelle
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1963
Over 2 hours
Viewed at Cinematheque summer 2004. Had gone to view another film; on the wrong night. The Leopard was sold out, however someone had phoned in to cancell their pre-purchased tickets, and so the cinema gave them away (!) to first comers. I’ve seen it there since, a couple of times. It’s always just as good.
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utube – the entrance of the heroine
IMDB 8.0
but it is my favorite film, of all time, and all places.
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A masterpiece. Lancaster is the late middle aged aristcrat, father of the young, debonair Tancredi, and observer of the fall of his era to the red shirted Garibaldians swarming Sciliy – the rioginomoso. He makes a magnificent speech, saying that “we are the lions and the leopards, now of a past age�”. Lancaster knows his time is doomed and so votes with the inevitable regime, so as to, as he describes, at least slow the demise of his finer age, which is, in any case, inevitable. Thus we see and elegant bowing out by an elegant age.
Tancredi is also a very interesting study, who by his father’s own description would be useless at making money and in practical matters, but has everything in terms of magnetism, boldness and a certain new nobility about him. One could think of him as that famous young man from Stendhal’s novel Lucien Leuwen, in that he has “waged war ceaselessly on cigars and new boots” (a description by the boy’s father). Thus he should marry rich. He is, they say, the product of his age and family, and ‘one who is not only the product of his circumstance, but would be possible only under such circumstance’ – that being the last flowering of a declining nobility. There is your movie – an elegant, beautiful, historical tale of nobility in noble decline.
Five Stars.
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QUOTATIONS
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“Something had to change, for everything to stay as it was.”
Fabrisio (Lancaster) to his friend the poor artist, who voted no in the plebiscite (the plebiscite which reported 515 registered voters, 512 votes, 512 YES and zero for NO!). Fabrisio (the Prince) says that the interests of the monarchy are maintained by the Savoys, and that the plebiscite was necessary to avoid anarchy. A lesser of two evils.
