The Leopard

 If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.

In 2013 I wrote a post after reading Guiseppi Tomasi de Lampedusa's magnificent and melancholic novel, The Leopard.  Set in Sicily in the 1860s during the unification of Italy, it tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, as he maneuvers to provide for his family's survival amid the turmoil, even as he knows the era of the aristocrats is fading.  It is the Prince's nephew, Tancredi, a volunteer in Garibaldi's revolutionary army, who gives him the advice quoted above.

I finally got around to watching the 1963 film version of the book, directed by Luccino Visconti and starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, and Alain Delon.  The film was an award winning hit in Europe but was not well received in the U.S., where a half hour was cut before being shown in theaters.  The version I watched was the restored European cut of the film - the only annoying part is that Lancaster is dubbed in Italian.

The film is quite good and a visual feast.  This video essay explores its main themes.

I was quite struck by how The Leopard must have influenced the making of The Godfather I and II a decade later.  The music for all three films was composed by Nino Rota and has obvious similarities.  The look of the Sicilian countryside and towns prefigures the Sicilian scenes in both Godfathers; some of the hillsides and street scenes look identical.  And the figure of the Prince, as embodied in Lancaster, bears a resemblance, in his dignity, reserve, perceptiveness, and intelligence, to Marlon Brando's Don Corleone.