Are you in the mood for a Criterion Films film? if not don't come anywhere near "The Leopard". It's 3 hours long and deals with the shifts in social structure in 19th century Italy. Do you know who Garibaldi is? If not, figure it out before you watch this.
I had no idea what his movie was about. I like to go in "cold" to movies. I just thought "criterion collection, "the leopard" bonus". then I noticed the running time. The first hour was an endurence test. In the second hour someting happened, t hat was the appearence of tunisia's own Claudi Cardinale. All of the sudden I was very interested in all the issues and the lives of Sicilian nobility. She is f**king hot. From then on I could not tear myself away. I guess that was the missing ingrediant wasn't it?
Besides Cardinale, the other thing I really liked about this movie was the wisdom of the main character, something Falconeri played by Burt Lancaster. There's a new trendy thing out there democracy and with it social engineering. everyone is going to be equal now and at least the world will have "progress". Falconeri is unmoved. In Silicy, he say, people's vanity is more important to them than alleviating their misery. Democracy is looking like another tyranny with the same guns used to extinguish trouble makers ideas. Boy was he right. AS we have seen, democratically elected people vote treats for themselves and the rest of us can eat straw and like it. You can't escape human evil. The size of the state is the problem, not it's label. That challenges alot of peoples conceptions and maybe it's not exactly the filmakers message but this is just to give an idea of the type of issues in the film. It's cynical, in other words.
Another way Falconeri is wise is that he knows that it's important, every once in a while, to go a little crazy and marry of one of your offspring to someone who is not one of your cousins.
"the Leopard" looks like a combination of every Italian movie you've ever seen except maybe "Super Argoman". "The Godfather", spaghetti westerns rural dustiness, giallo's big mansions.
So it's long and drawn out but great. our latest member is spacebunni
