Metaphoric Italian Epic Makes Fine BluRay

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Staff Writer

Luchino Visconti’s “Il Gattopardo” (“The Leopard”) won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1963. Its official Italian version ran three hours and five minutes (about 20 minutes shorter than its premiere). The English-dubbed American release was cut even further, to two hours and forty-one minutes, received some lukewarm critical praise, and was a boxoffice dud.

Twenty years later, the director’s preferred 185-minute cut appeared in the U.S. and critics suddenly discovered that the film was drastically better than they remembered, some now declaring it a masterpiece. About a month ago, the Criterion Collection released both cuts on BluRay.
The film is a lush costume epic set in Sicily, focusing on one aristocratic family during the 1860s as a popular revolution was hoping to unite Italy’s various independent kingdoms, principalities, and provinces for the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire.

It’s something more than an Italian “Gone With the Wind,” however. “The Leopard” is bittersweet nostalgia for an old and elegant social order based on 2500 years of tradition. There’s a grudging acknowledgement that the feudal tradition needed to change and a recognition that its own decadence led to a rising wealthy middle class replacing it as the seat of political power, and nouveau-riche mafia families superseding the inbred and overspent families of princes, dukes, and barons. It’s also symbolic of any generation’s gradual mutation into the next.

Burt Lancaster plays an aging and melancholy prince whose energetic but impoverished young nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon) opportunistically joins the revolutionaries and then switches to the army of the victorious united monarchy. The prince reluctantly understands the wisdom of his nephew’s assertion that “for everything to remain the same, everything must change.” He dismisses his lovesick daughter’s attraction to the handsome military hero and arranges for Tancredi to marry the beautiful daughter (Claudia Cardinale) of the doltish but extremely wealthy village mayor.

The last quarter of the film is devoted to the elaborate engagement ball at which the once separate social classes mingle for the first time; the crude but practical businessmen hoping to gain the same prestige that clings to the genteel but irresponsible aristocracy they are rapidly supplanting. The prince is the only one who can foresee and accept the approaching death of his class and himself, mourning the inevitable substitution of lions and leopards with jackals and hyenas.

The Italian cut of the film is a leisurely but deliberate accumulation of details and atmosphere, which is occasionally elliptical but builds to a powerful conclusion. Lancaster’s commanding physical performance dominates the film, even though a nameless (and deeper) Italian voice speaks his words. The American cut, besides having a mediocre English-dubbed soundtrack with a not-always accurate translation (although Lancaster’s own voice can be heard), deletes scenes and sequences that often leaves what remains hard to follow and substantially decreases the emotional involvement in the central characters.

Criterion’s high-definition transfer of the Italian cut was made from the original horizontal 35mm Super Technirama negative at the 2.2:1 aspect ratio used for its 70mm release, supervised by the film’s original cinematographer, and generally looks excellent. Although a few scenes show higher levels of grain due to the original film stocks and lab work, overall it reveals a level of fine details and textures (especially when projected eight feet wide) that give a new understanding of the numerous actions going on during the film’s many long shots, things simply unrecognizable on any video versions until now. The original optical mono soundtrack is adequate but lacks wide frequency range.

The transfer of the American cut was done from a standard 35mm positive 2.35:1 CinemaScope reduction print whose softer appearance, contrastier color, and frequent printed-through specks of dust make it appear at least two or three generations removed from the negative. The transfer itself looks softer, without the obvious care taken during the transfer of the Italian version. At least the reel-change cues were allowed to remain, giving a nostalgic movie-theatre flavor to the film. The English-language soundtrack also sounds more worn than the one on the Italian version, with even less frequency response.

As usual, Criterion includes an excellent selection of supplementary materials, from a color illustrated 20-page booklet with a nice essay and info on the restoration, to an hour-long documentary on the film, interviews with the producer and an expert on Italian history, newsreels, trailers, posters, and numerous production stills (including some from scenes deleted from even the 3-hour cut). The Italian cut includes a very informative commentary by critic Peter Cowie (there’s no commentary on the American cut).

“The Leopard” ranks as one of the great works of Italian cinema, and now in Criterion’s BluRay edition, home viewers can finally see why. “THE LEOPARD” on BluRay –Italian cut – Movie: A- / Video: A / Audio: B+ / Extras: A (American cut – Movie: C+ / Video: B / Audio: C+ / Extras: A-)

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