The Leopard (1963)

Director: Luchino Visconti
Writers: Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Suso Cecchi D'Amico
Stars: Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale
Runtime: 187 minutes

Plot: The Prince of Salina, a noble aristocrat of impeccable integrity, tries to preserve his family and class amid the tumultuous social upheavals of 1860's Sicily.

Review: "The Leopard" is a stunning visualization of a mood of melancholy and nostalgia at the passing of an age. Sentiment and sadness whisper through it like the soft Mediterranean breeze that flutters the curtains in the windows of the palace in the stark Sicilian hills, on the outskirts of Palermo, as the unhurried story begins.

Faithful to the contours of the novel, he hasn't attempted to intrude into this handsome colour picture and all he gives us in this picture are loose suggestion of the personal accommodations to the pressures of the revolution that the Prince and his family have mild confrontations of the Prince with members of the middle class. But the quality of the presentation is not in a running display of plotted, emotional crises. It is in a slow, rhythmic, tempered account of the yielding of the Prince to changes that he realizes are inevitable, but perhaps not as gracious as he would have them.

Reviewed by Mohaiminul Islam