Review of The Leopard (1963) by Aldo M — 02 Apr 2016

This magnificent movies is taken by the novel of the same title, "Il Gattopardo", by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, a geniuse who had a terrific deep understandin of the Italian character, virtues and vices. The importance of the original story lies just in the fact that the expresson "Gattopardo" came to mean, in Italian, somebody who is willing to change his mind and opinion (and especially political opinion) to follow the mainstream. Memorable is the quotation "It is necessary to change everything, if we want that everything stays unchanged": stressing the point that a real revolution is just impossible in Italy.

In this, the story is deeply pessimistic, and Luchino Visconti turned it to even more.

It is true that to fully understand this movie it is better to have been born in Italy, and, not enough, to have a good understanding of the history of Italy. However, even without that, it is visually so great, every frame is a painting, that one can just "watch the pictures" and walk away satisfied: in fact, somebody who was watchin with me oserved that "it looks magnificent as a Peter Greenaway film". Correct, but when this movie was made, Greenaway was wearing short trousers, more or less. But that is the estetic feeling.