Il Gattopardo

Directed by: Luchino Visconti (France/Italy, 1963)
Duration: 187 mins
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon, Paolo Stoppa
Dialogues: Italian
Subtitles: Greek

Virtually every Super Technirama frame of Luchino Visconti's 1963 masterpiece The Leopard could be described as "painterly" in its ornate details and exquisitely balanced color compositions, but one of the film's most memorable shots seems almost literally frozen in time. As members of a Sicilian aristocratic family gather for Mass in 1860, the camera tracks along their motionless faces as if they were figures in a wax museum, prematurely ossified by the forces of history. With the "Risorgimento"—a revolutionary movement that took 55 years to reunify a fractured Italy into a democratic state—taking its first shots across the bow, these monarchists represent a breed in decline, depleted of wealth and political influence. Born a count, the son of a cultured and powerful family, Visconti was uniquely attuned to the family's fall from grace, which he depicts as a resounding sigh, by aligning himself with a hero who's sadly and nobly resigned to his own downfall.