THE LEOPARD: FOR the cinematography, the movie's palatial settings, the family's journey to Donnafugata and Burt Lancaster's physical and poignant performance of a prince aging in a changing world.
Visconti's The LeopardLuchino Visconti was the aristocrat of Italian cinema, and also an avowed Marxist. That fact alone makes his films intriguing, none more so than The Leopard, one of the grandest widescreen historical epics. It stars Burt Lancaster as Prince Salina, the Sicilian leopard of the title, an ageing patrician whose declining fortunes under Garibaldi and the Risorgimento of the 1860s lead him to arrange a financially advantageous marriage between his nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon) and Angelica, the daughter of a rich merchant (Claudia Cardinale). Lancaster, at first sight an eccentric choice for the part, carries all before him. He often said he based the character on Visconti himself - a man who acknowledged the need for change but increasingly began to regret the vulgarity of the present compared with the past. (from the Guardian)
