Product Description

Making its long-awaited U.S. home video debut, Luchino Visconti's The Leopard is an epic on the grandest possible scale. The film recreates, with nostalgia, drama, and opulence, the tumultuous years when the aristocracy lost its grip and the middle classes rose and formed a unified, democratic Italy. Burt Lancaster stars as the aging prince watching his culture and fortune wane in the face of a new generation, represented by his upstart nephew (Alain Delon) and his beautiful fiancée (Claudia Cardinale). Awarded the Palme d'Or at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, The Leopard translates Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel, and the history it recounts, into a truly cinematic masterpiece. The Criterion Collection is proud to present the film in two distinct versions: Visconti's original 187-minute Italian version, and the alternate 161-minute English-language version released in America, in a newly restored, three-disc special edition that also features a new hour-long documentary on the making of the film, and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10582 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2004-06-08
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Italian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 3
• Running time: 187 minutes

Amazon.com
With this magnificent Criterion DVD release, Luchino Visconti's 1963 historical drama The Leopard will finally earn widespread recognition as one of the most beautiful epics ever produced. In adapting the popular novel by Giuseppe Tomassi di Lampedusa (an Italian equivalent to Gone with the Wind, set during the tumultuous Garibaldi revolution of 1860-62), Visconti was initially reluctant to cast Burt Lancaster as the melancholy Prince of Salina--the aging aristocrat "leopard" of the title--who accepts change as inevitable during the struggle for a unified Italy. But Lancaster (even with his voice dubbed in the fully restored Italian release) delivered one of his finest performances, modeled after Visconti himself, and reacting to political and familial upheavals with the wisdom and whimsy of a man who knows that his way of life--and all he holds dear--must change with the times. You won't find a more intimate epic, and Giusseppe Rotunno's masterful cinematography represents the pinnacle of painterly beauty, matched only by the authentic splendor of the film's impeccable production design. The climactic hourlong ballroom scene--which even the hard-to-please Pauline Kael called "one of the greatest of all passages in movies"--is utterly breathtaking. Anchored by Lancaster's performance and the romantic pairing of Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, The Leopard is sheer perfection, fully restored to its 185-minute glory. --Jeff Shannon

DVD features
In the scholar/critic category, Peter Cowie's full-length commentary for The Leopard ranks as one of the finest ever recorded--a delightfully unpretentious synthesis of erudition, informed analysis, production history, and biographical detail on Visconti, incorporating well-chosen readings from Lampedusa's source novel to illustrate the elegance of the screenplay adaptation and enhance one's understanding of the story's historical context. (Cowie also notes the Proustian influence on the film's celebrated ballroom sequence.) The hourlong documentary features 2003 interviews with most of the film's surviving cast and screenwriters, and in a dignified interview, producer Goffredo Lombardo expresses his affection for The Leopard despite the fact that his company, Titanus, was bankrupted by the film's exorbitant cost. University of Pennsylvania historian Millicent Marcus provides scholarly detail about the film's lavish historical background. And while it's hard to imagine anyone preferring the now-obsolete, truncated English-dubbed American release that includes Lancaster's own vocal performance, that version is included here for collector value and critical comparison. All in all, The Leopard is yet another polished jewel in Criterion's burgeoning collection of cinematic treasures. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

A Panoramic View of Sicily during Its Unification
It is incomprehensible to me why this movie has not yet made it to DVD. I think it is easily Visconti's greatest work, and one of the masterpieces of Italian film from a great era in general; and it is also a flawless adaptation of one of the finest Italian novels of the twentieth century. The film is a close study of a noble Sicilian family, and especially of its Prince (played by Burt Lancaster in what I think is also his best role), as they interact with the new middle-class parvenus of revolutionary Italy. The cinematic values of the film itself are stunning, from the vast panoramas of the desolate Sicilian countryside, to the stifling intimacy of the final ball (which lasts nearly an hour on film without once being boring). What is most amazing is the depth of the film. Even small gestures are carefully observed and capture the nuances of an aristocracy in decline. I loved "Death in Venice" as well, but this film should justly be considered Visconti's most tightly controlled and haunting.

THIS DVD IS NOT CUT!!! SOME OF THE REVIEWS ARE ALL WRON
criterion gives a real royal treatment to this movie and it is higly earned by it...in some reviews people say that the movie is cut and italian version is better blah blah...what they dont know is this 3 disc set has all two of them...check that out yourself:
DISC ONE
*The Film - Visconti's original Italian version (185:52)
Audio commentary by Peter Cowie (film scholar)
English HoH subtitles (removable)
2.21:1 Anamorphic NTSC (Super Technirama OAR)
Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono

DISC TWO
"A Dying Breed: The Making of The Leopard", a new documentary featuring interviews with Claudia Cardinale, screenwriter Suso Ceccho D'Amico, cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, filmmaker Sydney Pollack, and many others (61:31)
Interview with producer Goffredo Lombardo (19:30)
Video interview with professor Millicent Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania on the history of the Risorgimento (13:36)
Promotional Materials:
- Stills gallery of rare behind-the-scenes production photos
- Italian newsreel footage (3:11)
- Italian theatrical trailer (3:40)
- American theatrical trailers (2) (3:46)

DISC THREE
*The Film - alternate American release (161:23)Subtitles:NonePicture format:2.35:1 Anamorphic NTSC Soundtrack(s):English Dolby Digital 1.0 MonoCase type:Special CaseNotes:Black Triple Alpha case
Disc 1 is region-free (R0); discs 2 and 3 are encoded R1

A truly masterpiece, if there was ever one
I saw this film twice in Spain, the first time at least fifteen years ago, in its original version and length, not, as I have read here, an American dubbed-abreviated version. I think this is the best movie by Visconti, although to be fair I have not seen all of them. It seems amazing, however, its relative obscurity, compared for example to the somewhat overhyped Death in Venice, which I consider to be much inferior to Il Gatopardo. It is also one of my favourite films of all time. Lancaster's performance is unforgetable, the ambience, the music, the story and the painful ending, all amount to a masterpiece difficult to match. The Sicilian landscape is captured in all its magic and grandiosity and dominates my memories of the film. Comparing it to Gone with the Wind is, I think, a bit frivolous, as, with due respect, the estethics of both films - one Italian-European, the other American - are light years apart, without at all questioning the merits of the American film. Sadly, the pervasive notoriety of GWTW is also light years apart from the obscurity of Il Gatopardo. Il Gatopardo truly deserves to be taken out from that obscurity and get a much higher recognition as an all time classic. Will that ever happen? I doubt it, but at least I join the fans of this film in begging for its integral and original release in DVD, asap please.