The Leopard

Visconti integrates a family history into a panoramic account of the Risorgimento; revolution informs the most intimate relationships between the aristocrat Fabrizio (Burt Lancaster), his radical nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon), and Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), whose marriage to Tancredi signals the symbolic merging of the classes. “Perhaps no film captures the Proustian aesthetic more firmly,” Warren Sonbert wrote. “Visconti’s camera visually caresses the passage of time, the shifting nuances among the adrift and split characters and the recording of specifics transcending to the universal. . . . The folly and grandeur of aristocratic dissolution, subsumed into the bourgeois ranks, never receives a pointed finger in this intricate investigation. No cut unless necessary and each gliding camera movement a reflection on the dramatic situation. CinemaScope allows freedom of choice, which not surprisingly is one of the major themes of this grand, classically constructed cinematic feast.”