TELESCOPE
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The Leopard(Il gattopardo)
Italy, France
·1963
Rated PG · 3h 6m
Director Luchino Visconti
Starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale, Paolo Stoppa
Genre Drama
As Garibaldi's troops begin to unify Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family adapts to the social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.
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WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING?
Visconti's aristocratic roots show through his sympathy for a different time in Italian class consciousness. This epic film depicts the end of a family's era and the personal effects of a national revolution. Despite the film's tendency to eulogize the Sicilian aristocracy that crumbled for the sake of Italian unification, the quality of the film is on par with other epic films of the time and is beautifully and unapologetically melodramatic.
Luchino Visconti's classic epic follows an aristocratic Sicilian family struggling to adjust to the changes in Sicilian culture during the Unification of Italy in the 1860s. Visconti's film, based on a novel of the same name, beautifully captures Italy's history and socioeconomic structure during the Risorgimento. Following Visconti's other epic works like Rocco and His Brothers, he explores the intricacies of Italian culture through the interpersonal relationships of his characters, condensing massive moments into epic and melodramatic narratives.
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WHAT ARE CRITICS SAYING?
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Chicago Reader by Dave Kehr
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
Village Voice by J. Hoberman
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias