The Leopard

The Leopard is a 1963 epic historical drama film directed by Luchino Visconti. Written by Visconti, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Enrico Medioli, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Massimo Franciosa, and an uncredited René Barjavel, the film is an adaptation of the 1958 novel of the same title by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Burt Lancaster stars as Don Fabrizio Corbera, an aging Sicilian nobleman caught up in the sociopolitical turmoil of the Risorgimento (Italian unification) during the mid-19th century, with Alain Delon as his opportunistic nephew Tancredi, and Claudia Cardinale as his goddaughter. Paolo Stoppa, Rina Morelli, Romolo Valli, Serge Reggiani, and Terence Hill play supporting roles. The film was an international co-production between Italian studio Titanus and French studio Pathé. The Leopard won the Palme d'Or at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, and was released theatrically in Italy on March 28, 1963, and in France on June 14. It was a critical and commercial success in Europe, but reception was more lukewarm in the United States, where a truncated, English-dubbed cut was released. Retrospective reviews, drawn from the film's longer original cut, have been more positive, and the film is now widely regarded as a classic and one of the greatest movies ever made. In 2008, the film was included on the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."