Il gattopardo / The Leopard (1963) – 3/5

Okay watch, not a CATastrophe

„Il gattopardo“ or „The Leopard“ is a co-production between Italy and France that is mostly in the Italian language. This should not surprise anybody if you look at who made this film. The director and writers are Italian and same is true about most cast members. Actually, this seems to apply to almost everybody except Lancaster and Delon, but I will get to the cast a little later. The director is Luchino Visconti and this is one of his most known films, even if it is not the one for which he scored an Oscar nomination less a decade later. This movie here is from 1963, so it will have its 60th anniversary next year already or, depending on when you read this review of mine, maybe it even happened already, which also means that the people who worked on this one are not alive anymore or really old now. Visconti is no longer with us and that makes sense because he was already in his 50s when he shot this film, which would mean that in 2022 he would be among the oldest people still alive. The fact that many remember this film when hearing his name also has to do with the awards recognition it received. It won the prestigious Palme d’Or in Cannes, which is always big and also scored one Oscar nomination for its costumes. The man in charge there was Piero Tosi and it was the first Academy Award nomination he received. Four more would follow, two of those again for Visconti films, but a win was never meant to happen. He took home a BAFTA though and eventually received the honorary trophy from the Academy not too long ago. He died just a few years ago. If you look at the writers, you will find three names. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was no more alive when this film came out and he is the one who wrote the novel this is based on. The other two are Suso Cecchi D’Amico and Pasquale Festa Campanile. The latter scored an Oscar nomination in 1964, so the year after this came out and the aforementioned female writer got in in the year 1966. Big successes for them. While she is the one who was more than a decade older, she also outlived him for decades.

Now, let us look at the cast. I gave you a few names already. The title character is played by Burt Lancaster and he made this a little while after his own Oscar-winning effort. He was around the age of 50 here or slightly under. Then there is Alain Delon who was really a rising star in his 20s still at that point and he is still alive today. The exact same thing is true about Claudia Cardinale whose name is also still familiar to many in America and here in Europe these two are household names anyway. Cardinale is known for her blonde mane by many, but here in the early years of her career, she is still wearing black hair and I think it suits her very well too. Having these three names in the cast is surely quite something. You can say it would be the equivalent of having three of the best and most talented rising actors from the year 2022 in the same movie. It can happen. But it would maybe turn out more spectacular and more wild than this movie did here. It was a pretty slow film for the most part and heavily relied on dialogue. I have not read the base material, but I guess they used many quotes form the book. So I can also not compare book and movie and point out parallels and differences. The rest of the cast then does not include any truly big names, even if some actors were also at least in Europe relatively popular back then. The reason I got to watch this one was in fact Terence Hill. I always keep an eye out in terms of films starring him and/or Bud Spencer that are on television and this was on the small screen here the other day. Does not happen too often. The way things are going right now with many movie theaters showing old(er) films again, it could very well happen that it is more likely you get to watch it at a movie theater. Also not the worst choice given the film’s visual impact. The costumes, cinematography and sets were really a joy to watch at times. Maybe my favorite shot was from high above when we see several characters inside carriage that is pulled by horses through a rather bleak valley-like area and the characters are feeling a bit sick inside because of the bumpy road and also complaining about that. I really would have liked to be there. Not inside the carriage necessarily, but there in the nature. Beautiful spot!

Anyway, I was talking about Hill and he was still going by the name Mario Girotti at that point of course. He was only in his early 20s there and the Bud Spencer years were far away. Still, it is surreal to see in how many films Girotti already acted before this one here. An incredibly prolific actor since his years as a teenager. He was also quite handsome and maybe there was talk about him becoming the next really big thing from Italy. Well, things took a different turn at least in terms of success in America not really happening, but he had a dream career here in Europe where he will probably never be forgotten. His character here, however, is not really lucky. He does not even woo Cardinale’s character, but Lucilla Morlacchi’s and even if the men in this film are all crazy over Cardinale and her looks, I probably would have picked Morlacchi if I had to decide. Quite a natural beauty. La Cardinale is of course for Delon and I did not find him too likable in here. Or maybe I should say that I did not find his character too likable. But I think he was kinda meant to be seen as likable. For me it did not really feel this way though, perhaps because of my Hill bias. The poor guy did not even get Morlacchi’s character. He wooed her and charmed her and brought her a nice present that resulted in a funny comment about being deaf, which was one of really not many slight comedic inclusions this film had. Or maybe it was also rather meant in a bit of a sad way when this book was written or movie filmed, even if with Hill for me it is never really easy to take him truly seriously as a dramatic actor. This obviously has to do with me and how I know him from all these entertaining films and is not meant in a derogatory fashion linked to his talent. He is a gifted actor I believe.

I already talked about this being a rather slow film, but this only comes as the movie continues. In the beginning, a lot is happening. We understand there is a man with an honorable job killed outside on the protagonist’s premises, so drama is there right away when people are praying and it is interrupted by the noise outside. The action moves forward to the protagonist then dealing with a complicated situation that even brings out some tears in the people around him and we also get a young man’s decision to stand up and fight with those who oppose the king. So, the revolution is a big factor here in this film that is set in the early 19th century if I remember correctly. This also already could have been enough content and plot almost for a film itself, a 1.5-hour movie perhaps, but this one here runs for over three hours, so it is an incredibly long watch and could even have worked as a miniseries consisting of four parts for example. However, it is nothing unusual at all that Italian feature films from that era have a really long running time. While we are talking the basics again, I could also mention that this film is in color, which is really not a given for a film from the first half of the 1960s. I could still mention two other actors: Giuliano Gemma had a truly prolific career and maybe you came across him in other films and Romolo Valli also left a bit of a lasting impression on me here, maybe because he was the only somewhat comedic character in here and his mannerisms made me smile on a few occasions. It is a bit ironic because he is a man of the Church and this is really an institution that is not known too well for its humor. Of course, the scene that stays most in the mind is when he enters the room where the main character is naked and that made for a funny and awkward situation, also when he starts rubbing the man’s back then after receiving the towel. Of course, Lancaster’s character’s words there about how the religious man has seen stuff that burdens people’s souls that is much more aggravated than physical nudity (I don’t remember the exact quote) also stayed in the mind as one of the film’s most memorable quotes.

Aside from that, I struggled a bit with the movie title. I surely did not expect a nature documentary or something, but the inclusion of the elaboration why the film (and maybe also the protagonist) would have such a nickname did not feel memorable enough to me that I would support the movie being named like this. It was basically from one single quote in which the main character also mentions other animals. But well, it could have been the case obviously that this was handled differently in the book and made more sense there then. The first half included a battlefield scene and this was when we saw Hill/Girotti for the first time and also this lengthy sequence was one example of how the first hour was much more fast and wild than what followed afterwards. In the last third of the movie, politics play a bigger role for example. One character is trying to convince the protagonist to step into politics, but the latter is hesitant and says that ideology-wise his views still lie with the past and that he is not the right person to bring new inspiration, so he suggests somebody else, but that is a character who does not have the same reputation or class like Lancaster’s. So of course, there are many plots and stories packed in here with this running time. Here and there, I was surprised that Lancaster was not as much at the center of the film as I would have thought given the title. All in all, this was a decent movie. I think the rating on imdb and some of the awards recognition are still too much. The positive recommendation and thumbs-up are safe though, even if I guess it is not a film I would consider among my favorites from 1964.