‘The Leopard’ or — The Aristocat?
In ‘La Terra Trema’ (1948) Visconti fixed his eye on impoverished Sicilian fishermen. In ‘The Leopard’ (1963) he focuses on the Sicilian aristocracy, possibly because they had the better crockery.
It’s always annoying when you’re in the middle of family prayers and Garibaldi turns up and unifies Italy. This happens to aristocratic leopard Don Fabrizio (Burt Lancaster), Prince of Salina, one day who lives with his family at their estate in Sicily. Here the Prince enjoys the privileges of his position, visits his prostitute and observes the heavens along with the to-ing and fro-ings of local Sicilian life with a similar detachment. Yet Prince can also see the writing on the wall — that the aristocracy’s days are numbered and it shall be the middle class who will replace them. The days of leopards will make way for those of jackals.
To secure his family’s financial survival Don Fabrizio sees sense in the marriage between his opportunistic nephew, Tadcredi (Alain Delon), and the beautiful Angelica (Claudia Cardinale), daughter of Don Sedara, a lower class yet wealthy social climber who sees his offspring as the key to high society. These might be the last days of the aristocracy but the nouveau riche will always be snobs.
So Don Fabrizio watches as the old gives way to the new with the inevitability of an astronomical force.
And that’s ‘The Leopard’s biggest issue (“problem” might be a tad inaccurate) in that for all the historical upheaval going on — the Risorgimento, war, political corruption — ‘The Leopard’ feels somewhat dramatically inert. For example — Don Fabrizio wants Tancredi and Angelica to marry but they already love each and end up together with no obstacles, so where are the stakes? Likewise we know change is coming but it just, sort of, happens with little indication of any alternative outcome possible. So it’s appropriate the Prince, like Visconti himself, was an amateur astronomer because ‘The Leopard’ often feels like watching the Moon pass overhead; it’s captivating but unexcitingly inexorable.
This could easily tip ‘The Leopard’ into the realm of the terminally dull but what keeps that from happening (to an extent) is the combination of Visconti’s empathy for Don Fabrizio and his exacting eye for historical detail… a LOT of historical detail.
It’s not hyperbole to state that ‘The Leopard’ is one of the most insanely beautiful films ever shot but it is so to the point it becomes overbearing to the cusp of parody and unintentionally hilarious (Visconti wouldn’t achieve full unintentional hilarity until the laughable ‘Death in Venice’). Sicilian light smothers the landscape with an unreal glow that’s overwhelming, creating a sort of luminous stodge; it’s like having molten Ready Brek poured directly into your eyes. I think it’s safe to say that ‘The Leopard’ is aesthetically certifiable.
And then, forty five minutes before the end, things get REALLY silly with an extended ballroom sequence that might just be the most unhinged three quarters of an hour put to film. The opulence levels, which were already vibrating away at a dangerously high frequency as it is, go through the fucking roof whilst fabric, gowns and drapery acquire a density of detail usually only found in Mandelbrot Sets and all lit by candlelight that’s so intense it’s hyperreal. Amongst all this the aristocracy waltz and glide, the women fluttering their fans so creating countless, discreet units of precise movement that they practically pixelate the image. I’ve not seen a film this visually over stimulating since the Wachowski’s ‘Speed Racer’ (2008)!
Throughout all this Don Fabrizio observes the moving bodies twirling in their galactic rotations aware that he is a lone dark void, a gravitational well of self-absorption. Receding from the proceedings Don Fabrizio broods in a darkened room (you can see how the lighting here inspired Coppola for his own Don) on his mortality, a glimpse of death that would soon utterly transfix Visconti completely. Yet this self-absorption threatens to render all other concerns — romantic, historical, political — as meaningless window dressing (what else can challenge the Void?) and we have the nagging feeling the Prince’s telescope has been pointing in the wrong direction all this time.
There is really nothing else quite like ‘The Leopard’. It’s a film of such staggering splendor it boggles the senses even if what’s lying underneath seldom rises above melodrama. In many ways the film is astronomical, not just in terms of production and scale but also Visconti’s direction as bodies move with the precision of planets, although there is a black hole at the centre of this movie and I have the feeling Visconti isn’t going to be able to escape from it.
