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Usually ships in 1 business days | | | | | | Making its long-awaited U.S. home video debut, Luchino Visconti's The Leopard is an epic on the grandest possible scale. The film recreates, with nostalgia, drama, and opulence, the tumultuous years when the aristocracy lost its grip and the middle classes rose and formed a unified, democratic Italy. Burt Lancaster stars as the aging prince watching his culture and fortune wane in the face of a new generation, represented by his upstart nephew (Alain Delon) and his beautiful fiancée (Claudia Cardinale). Awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, The Leopard translates Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel, and the history it recounts, into a truly cinematic masterpiece. The Criterion Collection is proud to present the film in two distinct versions: Visconti's original 187-minute Italian version, and the alternate 161-minute English-language version released in America, in a newly restored, three-disc special edition that also features a new hour-long documentary on the making of the film, and more. | | | |
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| | Product Details | | Actors: | Luchino Visconti, Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon | | Format: | Anamorphic, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC | | Language: | English, Italian | | Subtitle: | English | | Number of Discs: | 3 | | Studio: | Criterion | | Run Time: | 187 minutes | | DVD Release Date: | June 08, 2004 | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 104 reviews |
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1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Beautifully Magnificent Jul 09, 2010
"The Leopard"
Beautifully Magnificent
Amos Lassen
I just finished watching the Criterion Bluray release of Luchino Visconti's "The Leopard" and it is even more magnificent than when I first saw it.
Prince Salina is tired and waiting for the day when he'll be t destroyed. Where once his farms and orchards drew out the boundaries of his kingdom, now rebellion changes the rules of order and nobility no longer has a place. He is a fixture in a dying dwelling that no one wants. In Luchino Visconti's operatic masterpiece, The Leopard, Prince Salina is the title titan, once he had been a beast of a man and now he is about to be reduced by fate to a member of the disappearing ruling class.
"The Leopard", Luchino Visconti's epic masterwork of the upper class in decay and a country in conflict, is a movie so rich, so dense with detail and social significance that it cannot be absorbed all at once. At first, the viewer is captivated by the opulent splendor of the sets and locations (the mountains and vistas of Sicily have never looked this beautiful). The story is intricate as told by Visconti and his screenwriters, as they match history with myth and real life with fantasy to create a tale of change that is epic in scope and seems to suggest more than a mere motion picture. The performances of Burt Lancaster (as the Prince), Alain Delon (as his conniving nephew Tancredi), and Claudia Cardinale (easy on the eyes as well as the acting aesthetics), managed and manipulated by Visconti's masterful hand are stunning.
The story is told in three distinct segments. First, the director lays the foundation for the story -we feel as if a blanket of rights and duties has been thrown over us and within the first twenty minutes, we are introduced to the Salina family, learn of Garibaldi's landing in Sicily, see the young Tancredi join the rebellion, witness the bloodshed over Palermo, and learn of the family's traditional trip to Donnafugata, a hastily arranged holiday. Mixed in are the Prince's love of prostitutes, his fascination with science, and his sly, almost sinister efforts behind the scenes. We get a bedrock of narrative tension and a stream of stories that will eventually swallow those who participate. Act two takes us on the trip to Donnafugata, a small village high in the hills and we meet the remainder of the cast, the nuevo riche Mayor, Don Calogero Sedara, his fetching daughter Angelica, and the rest of the locals who are eager to help the Salina family as the rebellion moves across the country. It is here that connections are created -- the lovers and the outcasts and the dutiful and the dilettante. When Tancredi rejects the Prince's daughter, Conchetta, for the far more exciting and fertile Angelica, a regular story would set off a string of misunderstandings and violations of the honor code that would require the saving of face and the demanding of retaliation. But that is not what happens here. Instead, the impending marriage is embraced, Prince Salina sees a chance for his favored family member (even over his own sons) to escape the kind of loveless, sexless marriage in which he himself has resorted to infidelity over the many years.
But the real thrill of "The Leopard" is a 55-minute dress ball where the layers of lies, deceptions, promises, payoffs, tributes, temptations, politics, personalities, philosophies, and traditions come crashing down around the Prince and his insular world.
Prince Don Fabrizio Salina, aging ruler on the tiny island of Sicily. Among the landed gentry, of which he is a high-ranking member, Prince Salina's cunning and craft are legendary. He is known for decisive yet deceptive strategies, using all information and elements at his disposal to plot his actions. He is filled with temper and passion, but his demeanor is captivating and suave. He holds true to the old traditions while dabbling in new studies like astronomy. He wants to feel connected to both the superstitions of religious tradition while embracing the realms of science. He is the guardian of Italian history and culture, a ferocious protector of the values in the past.
But inside the civil unrest of 1860s Italy, Prince Salina is a dying breed, a marked man whose power and position are blamed, as with all other royalty and nobility, of keeping the country away from its people. Lead by the charismatic revolutionary Garibaldi, civilians are rebelling against a class-based system, one filled with feudal lords (of which Prince Salina is one) and divergent national interests (at this time, three conflicting parties rule the country: the Royalists, the Republicans, and the Nationalists). The people dream of a unified Italy -- a land where all citizens are equal.
It's the final class struggle between the privileged and the impoverished that makes up the majority of the thematic resonance in "The Leopard". What "The Leopard" demonstrates is that, once autonomy and self-rule are tasted by the oppressed masses, it is a hard habit for them to forgo.
Visconti is a master of imagery, using the power in iconography and the emotion in artistry. His cinematic canvas is filled with outrageous riches, frescoes, and friezes marking time, place, and person perfectly. His camera glides effortlessly around and in between scenes, playing spectator to the situations occurring. Occasionally his lens is the eye of God, looking down and judging his flock. At other times, it's an intimate, a confidant given snatches of information or the ability to eavesdrop on essential elements of the plot.
"The Leopard" is a time capsule to an era that no one thought would ever end. However, change was going to happen whether they liked it or wanted it. The seeds of distress were planted, and the the disenfranchised had been abused long enough. The people who made it possible for the rich to wallow in their decadent lifestyles were fed up and fighting. Even as they attended to their protocol and refined their manners, doom seeped into the soil and spoiled the country for anyone of noble birth. To say anymore does not do justice to this gorgeous film. This is something you must see for yourself.
2 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 The leopard or the tortoise? Jun 15, 2010
You are not going to believe this folks, out there in Amazon land. But I had a little problem with this film. It certainly does not have the intensity of say: Kurosawa's "Ran". Although it does have a brief battle sequence. And I would like to refer to other reviews on Amazon. By the way, by the number of reviews, it seems people have been waiting a long time to see this film. I gather it was never available on VHS? One reviewer on Amazon, "Amazonian", says: if you are looking for "plot driven" films. And another, "Thomas Plotkin", calls it: "nuanced". But moreover, I had a problem with another legendary, and long film, none other than-"La Dolce Vita". Am I the type of person who prefers films like: "Il Bidone" (The Swindle) or "Nights of Cabiria" to "La Dolce Vita"? So is my problem with "The Leopard" analogous to my problem with "La Dolce Vita"? Do I prefer the eroticism of "Senso" to the plodding of "The Leopard"? Although, this is funny because I enjoy reading long books, and enjoy other long films. Furthermore, to address some concrete issues. I felt Burt Lancaster looked too old at times. And I also had a problem with the ending. Prince Salina literally is becoming ill at the end? So he is not only the emblem of a dying era, he is dying himself? And Cowie's commentary does not help here. So get back to me. Share your thoughts. Thank You
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
A Beautifully Made Film May 29, 2010
I was a bit nervous about watching this acclaimed "arty" film because, so often, such films end up being totally boring and you wonder what is going on in the minds of the critics.
Well, not to worry. My husband - an action film lover - and I both were mesmerized by this. It really is art - like a living painting.
The plot, as such, is more or less a meta-plot that exists outside the drama taking place onscreen, so don't be looking for any clearly defined good vs evil thing. Just watch and breathe in the atmosphere.
In a way, it is kind of like being a fly on the wall in the house of a noble Italian family. Their way of life, what they accepted as normal and what they thought was amusing, gauche and/or intolerable are curiosities. One ordinarily thinks that such families lived as they pleased, but it becomes clear that they understood at some level a certain obligation to their subjects which they accepted as the price they paid for their position. You see the family making a long, miserable, dusty journey, at the end of which they were expected to parade through the village, attend a long and boring church service still in their dusty travel clothes, after which they were expected to entertain the local notables. So, despite their exhaustion, they perform their expected duties, even the children.
The Prince comes across as an extremely decent guy, and the Princess as an over-coddled, repressed and consequently, neurotic woman who, nonetheless, knows her duties and performs them without complaint.
You won't be sorry for adding this film to your library.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
The sensuality of oblivion Apr 25, 2010
The Leopard was thought the greatest novel of the century by William Golding.The part of Don Fabrizio ,the Prince of Salinas, was originally ear-marked for Olivier or even Brando by Visconti. The Fox studio only agreed to make it if Burt Lancaster was given the role. Reportedly, Visconti called him a 'gangster' and treated him harshly, but they were to become lifelong friends. Now nobody else could have done justice to the role. Lampedusa was recalling a world of lost content, his aristocratic childhood. The Palermo palace he lived in as a child had been destroyed by American bombing in the second world war and the family's country villa was reduced to rubble by an earthquake. Feelings of nostalgia produced the novel based on his great-grandfather's world,a world that is depicted aspassing with the rise of the movement of unification and democracy under Garibaldi, and the constitutional monarchy of Victor Emmanuelle in the 1860s.The Leopard of the title, is depicted on the prince's coat of arms but also refers to aristocrats living in their lost paradises as lions and leopards who in their passing are to be replaced by jackals and hyenas. Sicily is depicted as a land of perfection suffering successive waves of invasion, the invaders all being absorbed(Greeks,Spanish, Arabs and Normans).Don Fabrizio himself, is based on Lampedusa,who Lancaster captured in his portrayal.
The film starts magnificently with the storming of Palermo by Garibaldi's army.The injection of action vigorously displays the period of the Risorgimento with an epic sweep setting up the extravagant and grandiose style to come. We see the Prince(Lancaster),shaving, and looming up in his mirror, his nephew, Tancredi(Delon) saying he is going to join the rebellion with his uncle's blessing. We observe how Tancredi's allegiances shift like the wind, as he always wants to come out on top. His credo like his uncle's is: "Things will have to change in order that they remain the same". This becomes like a coat of arms prefiguring a survival plan.The middle section shows the trip to their hilltop estate in the village of Donnafugata.The family are seen being made welcome by the mayor, Don Calogero,one of the noveau-riche, and with the dust of their journey on them, they go straight into Mass. The scene where they are in their pews-cubicles, and the camera traverses the whole family's dusty faces,revealing them as the relics of an outworn system. Calogero, the nouveau-riche mayor,is a self-made entrepreneur of peasant stock. He comes to the Prince's residence awkwardly in top and tails, but he produces the jewel of his daughter, Angelica(Cardinale), who arrives in the main room like a vision of the future. Her and Tancredi immediately bond and are soon engaged through the manipulations of the Prince. Don Fabrizio knows he must sacrifice his own shy daughter,Conchetta, to engender the continuation of his lineage. Tancredi is an image of his youth,but without the loveless marriage he has known. Asked by an ambassador to become a senator,he puts forward the name of DonCalogero instead. He knows his time has passed. They need someone who can unite private wishes with vague public ideals.
In the last part of the film there is the magnificent ballroom sequence where we truly get the changing of the guard. The Prince is a pale shadow of his former self, shown to be a marginal figure. He rises to his former majesty one last time, in a waltz with Angelica, a concession of defeat. He then walks home alone instead of getting a carriage.What is noticeable in a film in which nothing much seems to happen is revised with further viewings knowing the historical background and political changes. Lancaster,is the fulcrum of power and dignity that controls and unites the film, suggesting physical presence and animal grace; also a sense of melancholy, mortality and resigned nobility with the passing of his feudal class. There is an opulent splendour in the sets and locations, an eye for painstaking detail. The cinematography is a vivid mixture of bright, dusty exteriors and chiaroscuro interiors, combined with Rota's lush music and Visconti's painterly compositions and theatrical framing. The film,preferably the Italian version with subtitles, is a masterclass in turning great novels into great films.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Turbulent Times at Sicily! Oct 13, 2009
Director Luchino Visconti (1906-1976) was undoubtedly a refined film maker, won Cannes' Golden Palm (1963) with the present film.
His, relatively short, filmography encompasses such great films as "La Terra Trema" (1948) (aka "The Earth Trembles"), "Rocco e i soui Fratelli" (1960) (aka "Rocco and His Brothers) and "Morte a Venezia" (1971) (aka "Death in Venice").
The story is situated in Sicily in 1860s when Garibaldi's forces invade the island to consolidate Italy's unity under a Milanese king, supported by the ascending bourgeoisies.
The Prince of Salina, nicknamed "The Leopard", assist watchfully to the turmoil and put into action a clever plan: "We should change everything so nothing changes".
He supports from behind the stage the rise of Don Calogero and at the same time allies his nephew, Prince of Falconeri, marrying him with Calogero's daughter Angelica.
The whole film set a morose development pace, with the melancholic sight of an ending era and the birth of a new one.
The cinematography in charge of Giuseppe Rotunno, a usual collaborator of Visconti and Fellini, is a major contribution to this film excellence. This is not a coincidence; Rotunno has been awarded with the Silver Ribbon 7 times by the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists between 1960 and 1988; one of them for this film. Amongst his best efforts, aside from the present one, we may mention "On the Beach" (1959), "Satyricon" (1969) and "All That Jazz" (1979).
Nino Rota's musical score is another plus of the movie, as Rotunno, he has earned several Silver Ribbon for "8 1/2" (1963) and "Romeo & Juliet" (1969) amongst other.
Playacting is great Burt Lancaster as Prince of Salina, Alain Delon, in ascent career, as Prince of Falconeri, beautiful and ductile Claudia Cardinale as Angelica and Paolo Stoppa as Don Calogero are very convincing.
This is a film to see and keep in your collection!
Reviewed by Max Yofre.
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