 "Turbulent Times at Sicily!" | 2009-10-13 |
| - Reviewed By max_aka_iron_s_flint |
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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| "My first movie review of one of my favorite actors." | 2009-08-26 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1V2Z2JHEW801D |
The cinematography was just beautiful. The movie was a bit long, though. Burt Lancaster's performance was as I would expect it to be, his whole personality was infused with the title character. (I also loved him in the "Tattoo Rose"). I have always been an admirer of Mr. Lancaster.
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| "Great Work" | 2009-08-19 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3LY692S9YFLUH |
| One of the most congenially transposed efforts from great literature to film. This must have provided a template for the later scenic glimpses in The Godfather. The films work well in tandem, by the way, if you are seeking a large grab at the family system in Sicily. Anything by Burt Lancaster is good or very good, or just brilliant as is the case in view. He is one of the most compelling screen presences, never failing to deliver, right up until the last drop. Don't neglect the written word. But whether you prefer it before or after the movie, it will not detract from the director's vision or your pleasure. |
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| "Gorgeous to look at and intimate to the touch; an outstanding cinematic feat..." | 2009-02-27 |
| - Reviewed By User: ANCOMAI0I7LVG |
One of the most beautifully shot films I think I may have ever seen; `Il Gattopardo' is a stunning cinematic achievement to say the least.
Some have made reference to `The Godfather' or `Gone with the Wind' but the comparisons, while understandable in parts, really shouldn't be drawn as an exact. `Il Gattopardo' is much subtler film; a hushed film if you will. It approaches a very weighty subject with such an intimate stance that you feel the calm of the surroundings as apposed to the rush of the situation.
Coppola's direction of `The Godfather', while flawless, has layers of panic that make the film much tenser and much more visually and mentally stimulating. Luchino Visconti takes a different approach here, allowing for a more personal flow. We are given the film moment for moment, which delivers a much different feeling to the viewer. Instead of pondering the films actions in entirety we take it step for step and thus are drawn in close to the films protagonist. Both directorial efforts are stunning, but both are also very different. In fact, the only true comparison comes from the cinematic scope (these are both epics of a more close-compact nature).
`Il Gattopardo', adapted from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel, takes place in 1860's Sicily. The main focal point of the film is the Prince of Salina, Don Fabrizio, as he tries to hold himself together, preserve his family and class and hold fast his integrity as Italy works toward a unified self. Times are changing and this weighs heavy on the Prince as he watches what he has built for himself begin to wane in the sight of a new generation and a new way of life.
The film is propelled by a stunning performance given by Burt Lancaster; a true genius here. He captures the very subtle and very intimate emotions of this man and demonstrates them with power and commanding strength. It is impossible to take your eyes off of him. There is a moment towards the films end (although not end of the film since the films end sequence is like half the movie) where Lancaster is staring at himself in a mirror, reflecting on his on conflict, and I just felt this knot in my stomach the whole time.
Flawless.
He's aided by a large and impressive supporting cast; most notable is the stunning Claudia Cardinale who just steals every scene she is with her smoldering and passionate performance. Without a word she can evoke utter jealousy. I just love it.
Like I mentioned on the outset; this is truly one of the most gorgeously shot films in the history of cinema. It does at moments appear too long; albeit never boring (you don't have to be boring to feel a little over-stretched). It is a complete package; and while I won't say that it is better than the films it has been likened to (there are very few films that can top `The Godfather'; sorry) I will say that it is genuinely crafted and expertly executed and delivers top notch on its own right. No need to compare; for this is a different film all together. Just sit back and enjoy. |
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| "Stop Calling it Gone With the Wind or The Godfather...The Leopard is Far More Subtle" | 2009-02-23 |
| - Reviewed By abu_plamu@aol.com |
While FF Coppola undoubtedly learned a thing or two about telling a dynastic story with a historical backdrop from The Leopard, and while Fox undoubtedly marketed the film as an Italian Gone With the Wind (and confused and alienated the US audience in the process), this film has nothing else to do with those oft-thrown around comparisons, and may have much to do with why some reviewers come away bored.
The Leopard, despite its sumptuous period design and glamorously cast triumvurate of Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale, is better compared to Chekhov or the mid-to-late '30's films of Jean Renoir (under whom director Luchino Visconti apprenticed in that era), a gentle, contemplative, anti-dramatic and uncoercive specimen of story-telling that unfolds slowly as a means of conveying not merely the fates of its characters, but an unusually nuanced piece of historical analysis, quite alien to narrative cinema.
The film is set against the backdrop of the liberation of Italy from centuries of Austrian rule and its unification into a nation from a handful of feudal states. Set in Sicily, the most remote, impoverished, and backward of those states, the protagonist is Prince Fabrizio Salina, master of a vast estate and the end-point of an ancient lineage; Salina is an aristocrat, but as an amateur astronomer, and as embodied by Lancaster with his characteristic mix of physicality and intelligence, he is a man of vision as well. When Garibaldi's revolutionary army lands practically in his backyard, the Prince gives his dashing, beloved, Byronic nephew-and-prospective-son-in-law Tancredi (Delon) his blessings to join them, when Tancredi explains that if there is to be a new order, the family may as well be on the winning side. What follows is basically The Prince's somewhat passive witnessing of his nephew's startling series of transformations from rebel war hero to glittering officer in the new army of Italian monarchy, in comic opera uniform, to member of the new nation's senate; the further Tancredi moves from his donning of the revolutionary red shirt of the Garibaldians and up the ladder of power, the more the energies of a people's revolution have been betrayed -- the new Italian constitutional monarchy is there to make sure an orderly transition occurs to preserve the perogatives of those who have always ruled. If the shifting sands of labyrinthine Italian politics sound arcane and confusing to you, really all you need to know is Pete Townshend's summary of most revolutions: "Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss."
If this sounds dry and academic, it is not; because there is another thematic strand which over-arches and overwhelms the political story. The Prince further decides that to preserve his lineage, which he observes is threatened by decadence through in-breeding anyway, he will permit Tancredi to break off his engagement with his daughter and marry instead the daughter of a rising member of the new Italian bourgeoisie, a further survival tactic for the preservation of the old order; luckily, said daughter-in-law is the heart-stoppingly beautiful Claudia Cardinale (and watch her interviews in the special features -- without evident cosmetic enhancement, in her 60's she's still pretty staggering). The last half of the movie involves the Prince engineering this marriage; a three-fold circumstance, subtly conveyed by the film, arises: the ageing prince and the young woman strike immediate sparks; he, a vital, physical man, would likely have taken her to bed not long ago. There is a powerful sense of desire smothered not by propriety but by a sense that the time for this has passed, which bleeds into the epic ballroom scene that takes up 1/3 of the film, wherein the woman is introduced into society and her class invades the Prince's house. As the ball continues, the Prince visibly diminishes, a historical process is occurring where his machinations have rendered him obsolete, as he foresees not just his own ageing and death but the end of an ancient way of life.
The third thematic strand is the most powerful: Visconti's unbelievably sumptuous evocation of the vanished world of the House of Salina is marked by elegy and nostalgia. This nostalgia is deeply personal, because Visconti was telling his own story and the story of his family, albeit he was a Northerner. Visconti was quite likely the only titled noblemen, scion of ancient Lombard dukes, ever to be a movie director; born in 1906, and heir to a vast fortune (these weren't typical bankrupt Euro nobles), Visconti remembered from childhood the pre-World War One luxe of an Imperial Europe; his father had similarly married beneath him into an industrialists family to maintain the cash flow. Lancaster said later that all he needed to do to prepare for what he felt was his finest performance was watch how the Viscount behaved on set and imitate him. But Visconti was not merely the sympathetic member of a dead order; he was also a fervent communist. His double-vision allows the film thus to be a Marxist analysis of a failed revolution and an elegy for a vanished and luxurious way of life.
Visconti accomplishes this through what I referred to earlier as his Chekovian story telling; the camera observes from a middle distance, (with gentle movement and a minimum of cutting) the social rituals of the Prince and his family; during these meals, masses, picnics, balls, history invades through the backdoor of conversation, changes in costume, new previously univited houseguests in attendance. With the exception of a single epic recreation of the Battle of Palermo, the tone is low-key, observational, lyrical.
This is a nuanced, analytic film, bolstered by the star power of its leads, but gentle and quiet for all of its formal elaboration. Visconti, with his fascination for historical recreation, operatic hysteria (he was one of the foremost opera directors of the era, collaborating frequently with Callas), and fascination with decadence and deviant sexuality, would never again make a film with such balance and poise. His aspiration was always to create both "a novelistic cinema," with the richness of detail of 19th century fiction, and "an anthropomorphic cinema," which situates its protagonists in history by means of meticulous observation of externals. While he had hitherto pursued the latter goal via neorealism, documentary-style observation of the contemporary working poor (see his earlier La Terra Trema), oddly enough he succeeded best with this monomaniacally detailed recreation of an Imperial past. |
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 "Visconti's Italian epic provided a curious change of pace..." | 2009-02-03 |
| - Reviewed By robertfrangie |
Visconti was widely praised for both the realism and vaguely politicized tone of his early films, and the operatic sumptuousness of his later historical costume dramas... Throughout his career, however, style dominated content; all too often, the result was a decorative melodrama disguised as solemn, socially significant art...
Adapted from an internationally popular novel by Giuseppe Tomassi di Lampedusa, it was termed a masterpiece by some and a bore by others... Certainly, it was deliberately paced, with minute attention given to period detail...
A prime example is Visconti's climactic and grandiose ballroom sequence, which seems to fill one-third of the film... But the director presented the charm and manners of a bygone era so masterfully... "The Leopard" saw a return to a long, lushly historical drama, observing an aristocratic family's reluctant but inevitable acquiescence to a son's romance with a middle-class girl, set against the backdrop of Garibaldi's unification of Italy... |
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