This benefit is made possible through the generosity of Twentieth Century-Fox International Classics. All net proceeds from this event benefit the University Art Museum's Pacific Film Archive and are matched by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Louis B. Mayer Foundation.
The Leopard opens its theatrical engagement at the Castro Theater, San Francisco, on Sunday, November 20.

“Luchino Visconti's The Leopard recreates Italy at a period of change and integrates the dramatic potential of a family history with a panoramic account of the Italian Risorgimento. Class conflicts and revolutionary fervor mark the clashes among Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina (the “leopard”) (Burt Lancaster); his nephew Tancredi, the young revolutionary (Alain Delon); and Don Calogero, a representative of the newly emerging middle class (Paolo Stoppa). Don Fabrizio is the cream of the old aristocracy--culture, grace, learning and style; Don Calogero is a comic figure, self-serving and amusingly mannered. Yet, these two classes merge symbolically with the marriage of Tancredi and Don Calogero's daughter, Angelica (Claudia Cardinale).
“On the one hand, The Leopard is a lavish recreation of an excellent historical novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa; on the other, it becomes a meditation on death, historical change, and the demise of a social class. The point of view is entirely that of The Leopard. Peter Bondanella writes: ‘The concluding sequence is a damning indictment of the political compromises underlying Italian unification. Visconti, the critical Marxist, provides the viewer with an historical context from which to judge the events he presents.'
“Until now, The Leopard was available only in a shortened and dubbed version, but it has now been restored to its original length and subtitled for the first time. What emerges is a truer and more valuable work, more clearly imbued with Visconti's preoccupations and talent.” Christopher Adcock, San Francisco International Film Festival '83