The Leopard stands out not only for its bold vision and epic scope, but because of the intricate ways in which it melds pop melodrama, historical sweep, and bold cinematic artistry. Director Luchino Visconti was a towering figure of the postwar Italian cinema, although at the time he was known primarily for his neorealist works, particularly 1948’s La Terra trema and 1960’s Rocco and His Brothers. He had evidenced a flair for romanticism in many of his films, and this emerges full-blown in The Leopard.

Based on a popular 1958 novel by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa, The Leopard tells the saga of an aristocratic Sicilian family facing sweeping historical and political changes in the mid-19th century. The story takes place during the Risorgimento, a decades-spanning political and social revolution that culminated in the unification of Italy in 1861, forever changing the country. For the film’s lead character, the aging Prince Don Fabrizio Salina (Burt Lancaster), it means that his way of life—that of the powerful aristocrat, insulated with wealth and prestige—was coming to an end.

The new Italy, one of which he and his ilk can never be a part of, is seen in his dashing young nephew, Tancredi Falconeri (Alain Delon), who is like a son to Don Fabrizio. Tancredi is, like Don Fabrizio, a child of wealth and privilege, yet he still goes out and fights in the streets with the revolutionaries. He eventually takes as his wife Angelica Sedara (Claudia Cardinale), who is the daughter of Don Calogero Sedara (Paolo Stoppa), the mayor of the villa where the Salinas spend their summers. Angelica is incredibly beautiful, but she is not a daughter of aristocracy, and her marriage to Tancredi is yet another means by which the Italian aristocracy began to crumble, as Tancredi can marry for wealth outside the old world of the aristocrats.

In a sense, The Leopard is a contradiction of a film, one whose point of view is rooted in two opposing camps. On the one hand, we get the sense that the film is an elegy for the aristocracy, artfully bemoaning its death. The great Don Fabrizio is a powerful, commanding figure who is kept consistently human, and in him we see so much potential greatness slowly fading into obscurity. It’s impossible not to feel a twinge of sadness as this great leopard, as he refers to himself, is slowly taken down by a world of jackals and hyenas. Yet, at the same time, the kind of life the Salinas lead is one that is based on the impoverishment of others, and much of the Risorgimento was about leveling the social and economic playing field, thus it’s not something we should necessarily mourn. The death of the lives led by men like Don Salina was a necessary corrective to massive inequities.

This fascinating contradiction shouldn’t come as much surprise because they essentially reflect Luchino Visconti, who was himself born into an aristocratic family, yet identified himself throughout life as a communist. His love of both the upper class and the lower class is evident throughout the film, and he brings a great sense of depth and richness to the depiction of social rituals that define the lives of all the major characters (Martin Scorsese was greatly influenced by The Leopard when he made The Age of Innocence). The film brings to life the lush decadence of the aristocratic lifestyle, never more so than in the epic 45-minute ball sequence that ends the film. In this sequence, we get a metonym for the entire film, with the new supplanting the old.

Always at the center of the film is Burt Lancaster’s performance as Don Fabrizio, which anchors the story and the conflicting emotions that swirl around it. Interestingly enough, Lancaster was not Visconti’s choice for the role (he wanted Laurence Olivier), and Lancaster was hired by 20th Century-Fox, the U.S. co-financier, without his approval. (The Euro-American films of the 1960s frequently made use of well-known American performers in crucial roles.)

Yet, despite Visconti’s initial reluctance to embrace Lancaster in the role (he referred to him as “that American gangster”), it turned out to be a great choice, as Lancaster brings not only his commandingly masculine presence to the screen, but also a deeply nuanced understanding of a great man being slowly torn down from beneath. He gives the film its sense of tragedy, not because of the loss of the aristocratic lifestyle (even with all the sweeping changes, vestiges of it would remain for decades), but because of the loss of identity suffered by men like Don Fabrizio. The symbolic final shot of him walking alone into a darkened alleyway is among the most poetic and moving of final images in any film, European or American.

Copyright ©2004 James Kendrick

All images copyright © The Criterion Collection and Atlantic-Film S.A.