Movie Screening & Discussion - The Leopard

Join Marcus Renna in the Scott Room for a screening and discussion of the 1963 historical Italian epic film The Leopard. Directed and written by Luchino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale, Paolo Stoppa, and Rina Morelli, The Leopard is based on the 1958 novel of the same name (Il Gattopardo in Italian) by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

During the unification if Italy in the 19th century, aging Sicilian nobleman Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina (Lancaster) is caught up in the social and political turmoil. With fighting brewing between the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the nationalist rebels led by Giuseppe Garibaldi, Don Fabrizio is at first reluctantly tolerant of his nephew, Prince Tancredi Falconeri (Delon), supporting Garibaldi and the romantic dream of uniting Italy. When the uprising begins in earnest, Don Fabrizio is disgusted by the rising tide of modernity and the downfall of the old order. To escape the fighting, Don Fabrizio leaves for his summer palace at Donnafugata where the mayor, Don Calogero Sedara (Stoppa), is scheming to throw the town to the rebels. When Don Calogero visits Don Fabrizio's villa, he brings his beautiful daughter Angelica (Cardinale), who fascinates both Don Fabrizio and Tancredi. Throughout the intrigue and politicking, Don Fabrizio feels increasingly out of place in the new world, reflecting that his brand of aristocratic rulers from Italy's past - whom he pictures as "leopards and lions" - are being replaced by bureaucrats and the ridiculous, venal nouveau riche - whom he calls "hyenas and jackals." At the ball celebrating Angelica and Tancredi's wedding, Don Fabrizio briefly seems to recapture some of the gallant elegance of the past before wandering down the empty streets of the town in the early morning.

Tomasi's novel was a bestseller in Italy and won the Strega Prize, Italy's most prestigious literary award. The film was a huge success in Italy and won the Palme d'Or at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival. It has since been preserved by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage. The original reception of the abridged, English-dubbed release was only middling, but the uncut Italian version has since been regarded as one of the greatest historical epics of all time. The film was mostly shot on location in Palermo, Sicily, and Burt Lancaster was dubbed into Italian Corrado Gaipa.

An enchanting, baroque, and elegiac look at a turbulent period in Italy's history with one of the most lavish and moving ballroom waltz scenes ever put to film.