The Leopard
The Leopard on DVD |
Don Fabrizio is symbolic of the "old" Sicily -- a
Bourbon aristocrat in an age when the bourgeoisie is the coming thing. What makes Don
Fabrizio a compelling figure is that he's an intelligent man -- a natural leader who loves
the life he lives and comprehends, and who is smart enough to see that his way of life is
ending. Because he can clearly see the coming rise of the merchant class, Don Fabrizio is
aware that it’s a good time for his daughter to strike a felicitous alliance between
his nephew and the daughter of the social-climbing local mayor.
The novel is divided into scenes that show Don Fabrizio's
life, the encroachments on it by the coming change, and his manipulations to ride those
changes. An autocrat, he's essentially a good man who wants the best for his family and
for his subjects; as the novel unfolds, we come to respect and admire him.
Luchino Visconti's film of the novel, made only five years
after its publication in 1958, is an even rarer creature than a great novel: it’s a
great film of a great novel. These are astonishingly scarce.
Part of the brilliance of Visconti's film comes from its
casting: Burt Lancaster seems an unlikely choice for Don Fabrizio, but his intense
virility and flawless carriage vividly bring the prince to life. Likewise, Alain Delon,
Paolo Stoppo, and Claudia Cardinale are letter-perfect as the nephew, the mayor, and his
daughter.
The cast delivers a finely nuanced historical epic and
comedy of manners, aided by an extremely well-realized script that culminates in a
40-minute-long party scene in which almost every important communication is expressed
though facial expressions, calculating glances, and skillful juxtapositions of the
characters and their surroundings. It may be the most powerful meditation on change (read:
mortality) that film has ever achieved.
But The Leopard, at least as it has usually been
shown in the US, was not the film Visconti made. Based on Lancaster's
participation, 20th Century Fox sank $3 million into the film, and, from all accounts,
expected to get a historical epic in the mold of Ben-Hur (that was Italian, too,
right?). When the studio received a three-hour-plus rumination on the death of the
aristocracy, it was concerned. Even worse, the film was in Italian.
So Il gattopardo was dubbed into English, re-named The
Leopard, and a bleeding chunk of 30 minutes was hacked from it -- which made it hard
to follow, and a very different kettle of anchovies.
Now, just when I was beginning to get comfortable with
double-disc special editions, we get a new three-DVD Criterion Collection edition of The
Leopard. Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, released the same day, also runs to a
third disc. I haven't yet seen Mystic River, but the three-disc The Leopard
doesn't have a speck of filler. It's packed to the brim with 100% prime stuff.
Disc 1 is about as close as we're going to get to
Visconti's 192-minute final cut of the film. Criterion had Giuseppe Rotunno, the film's
original director of photography, produce a new transfer, which runs 187 minutes -- not
quite what Visconti envisioned, but a noble effort. In addition to this new transfer, disc
1 includes a commentary track by film historian and Criterion stalwart Peter Cowrie. It's
a corker, filled with information about the film’s cast, crew, and background.
Disc 2 has the "special" features -- and, for
once, they are special. There's an hour-plus series of interviews with the
film’s surviving principals, collected under the title A Dying Breed: The Making
of The Leopard. These include: Claudia Cardinale; two of the screenwriters, Enrico
Medioli and Suso Cecchi D'Amico; the son of the novel's author, Gioachino Lanza Tomasi di
Lampedusa; art director Mario Garbuglia; Rotunno himself; costume designer Piero Tosi; and
an in-depth analysis by American film director Sidney Pollack.
In addition, there's a fascinating feature with Geoffredo
Lombardo, who produced The Leopard -- which bankrupted his production company,
which had also produced Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers and Olmi's I Fidanzati.
It's good stuff, as is a segment on the Risorgimento featuring historian Millicent
Marcus. I wish I'd had something like this when I read the novel, lo, those many years
ago. Completing disc 2 is a promotional section that collects Italian newsreels, an
Italian and two American trailers, and a stills gallery.
Disc 3 is the 162-minute American release, complete with
its English soundtrack (for which Burt Lancaster and Leslie French reprised their roles in
their native tongue). This hasn't received the amount of restoration that the Rotunno
reconstruction did, but it is nice to have it for comparison's sake -- and yes,
that extra half hour does clarify things and fill in the story in significant ways.
The picture quality, at least on disc 1, is superb for a
40-year-old film. There are sharper prints of films this old, but this transfer is
light-years beyond any print of The Leopard I've ever seen. It's pretty darn good,
and the colors are bright and vivid. And the 2.21:1 aspect ratio finally gives us the
whole picture that Rotunno filmed.
The sound quality is also very good -- clean and
unblemished Dolby Digital 1.0, with no attempt to expand the soundscape (a good thing).
If you've never heard of The Leopard, the $50 price
tag may strike you as steep for a film that isn't a blockbuster or a demo spectacular --
but The Leopard is one of those great films that got away. It must have been
remarkably expensive to reconstruct, and all of that money is visible in the total package
Criterion has delivered. To those of us who’ve waited for 40 years for a chance to
own this fabulous movie, that's priceless.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhometheater.com
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