Il Gattopardo pt. III - The film

"One of the films I live by"

Martin Scorsese

I end the Leopard posts introductory trilogy with a few words about the 1963 incomparable cinema masterpiece "Il Gattopardo" by Luchino Visconti.





One must first note that it would be really difficult to find a director better suited to direct such a film. Luchino Visconti (b. 1906) was a descendant of the Visconti family of Milano, the family that alternately with the Sforzas ruled Milan as Dukes for much of its independent medieval and Rennaisance history. As a young man he saw the two wars rendering any notion of nobility obsolete, a fate that was sealed by the rise of the nouveau-riche bourgeoisie.

Indeed, he shot several other films dealing in a similar way with the same concept of the decadence of nobility: "The Damned" (La caduta degli Dei/Götterdämmerung - 1969 ), "Death in Venice" - 1971 and "Ludwig" - 1973.

The film itself is exemplary in every way.

The photography manages to capture the essence of burnt flint that seems to insinuate itself in every colour of the sunblasted sicilian landscape.

The music was written by no other than Nino Rota.

The casting was superbly fortunate. Burt Lancaster as the patriarch of the Corbera family is a convincingly true Leopard, suave, noble and imposing. Alain Delon cuts the correct bella figura that Tancredi was supposed to be, a man of the new order of things, adapted to the manners, morality and compromises of the new less-than-noble era of italian history.

And then... Claudia Cardinale. No words for that woman. Absolutely no words for the creature that could easily give the legendary beauties that have supposedly walked this earth a run for their money.


The point of this post of course is not to laud an acclaimed masterpiece but to draw attention to some details that give the film the depth that an adaptation of such a novel truly deserves and I will illustrate these points with stills captured from the remastered bfi DVD release.

I choose to begin with this wonderful shot of the sicilian countryside. The picture alone makes one’s thought hazy, like a summer midday of merciless sunlight in the mediterranean. I can almost smell the hay and the horses… like the lazing summers of my childhood at Crete:



The Corbera family arrive at Donnafugata, where they are - in the customary (and surrealistically silly) way - greeted by the village band playing “Noi siamo zingarelle” ( “We are gypsy girls” by Verdi’s La Traviatta). Rota has followed the cadence and rhythm of this piece throughout his career. Extra note: “VIVA GARIBALDO” (sic) in the background...:



Probably the best moment of the film’s cinematography: The Corbera family attending the Te Deum liturgy, as another custom of their visits to Donnafugata, before even going to their estate to freshen up, the dust from their long journey by carriage from Palermo still on their clothes and faces, making their pose truly statuesque. Superb :



A shot so fundamentally “Risorgimento” that it has become a staple of its imagery: The plebiscite in Donnafugata:



And now the most striking detail that has left me completely flabbergasted… Sicilian Garibaldini singing “La Bella Gigogin”. This in itself is noted in the book and nothing too original, since La Bella Gigogin (Beautiful Teresa, Gigogin being a piemontese diminutive of Teresa: Teresa -> Teresina -> Gigogin ) was a very popular allegorical garibaldine song. However the greatness of the film was that its lively rhythm was adapted to sound like a Sicilian serenata, slow and almost wailing…!!! I do not know who had the brilliant inspiration to do this but whether it was Rota or Visconti, he managed to set the tone – for those who know - for the whole affair in the sicilian politics. The SI on their hats means YES in the plebiscite for the unification of Sicily and the rest of Italy and the dissolution of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Splendid:

A quindici anni facevo all'amore / Daghel'avanti un passo, delizia del mio cuore
(At the age of fifteen I made love/ come forth a pace, delight of my heart)

The reception at Donnafugata: The wealthy but ill-educated and crude Don Calogero Sedàra, and his daughter Angelica:

Don Calogero's comical entrance and his ill-fated attempt to shake hands with the Prince.

Note the expressions: Tancredi (Alain Delon) in rapture and Concetta (Lucilla Morlacchi) poisoned by envy and despair

Uncertain and nervous but still, the very image of loveliness

And the dance near the finale. I have absolutely no words. The old surrenders to the hands of the new, and a chapter of Italian history passes away in a swirl of grace, beauty and bravura. No words at all…



In the end:
"Noi fummo i Gattopardi, i Leoni; quelli che ci sostituiranno saranno gli sciacalletti, le iene; e tutti quanti Gattopardi, sciacalli e pecore continueremo a crederci il sale della terra."

(We were the Leopards, the Lions; those that will come in our place will be the petty jackals, the hyenas; and the whole lot, Leopards, jackals and sheep, will continue to believe that we are the salt of the earth - trnsl. by me).

The Leopard: Don Fabrizio Corbera, Principe di Salina, in his study, packed with telescopes and mathematical and astronomical papers...

PS: “But we shouldn’t waste sorrow over the aristocracy of misfortune” Count Hasimir Fenring, Dune by Frank Herbert

PS II: Click on images to enlarge...

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