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In the s, a dying aristocracy struggles to maintain itself against a harsh Sicilian landscape. The film traces with a slow and deliberate rhythm the waning of the noble home of Fabrizio Corbero, Prince of Salina the Leopard and the corresponding rise to eminence of the enormously wealthy ex-peasant Don Calogero Sedara. The prince himself refuses to take active steps to halt the decline of his personal fortunes or to help build a new Sicily but his nephew Tancredi, Prince of Falconeri swims with the tide and assures his own position by marrying Don Calogero's beautiful daughter Angelica. The climatic scene is the sumptuous forty-minute ball, where Tancredi introduces Angelica to society. Written by alfiehitchie. Burt Lancaster plays a true aristocrat in an aristocracy that is not an aristocracy. The degeneracy as well as the sophistication of the rival political factions in warring Sicily is shown, and the human insight of the central character that embodies true nobility, even though he is largely powerless to make his ideals reality. Garibaldi is invading Sicily with an army of a thousand, landing in Marsala and advancing through Palermo. Prince Salina Lancaster is a noble of a disappearing age. He refuses a place in the new senate and is unable to convince the new wave that the unification will not be good for Sicily. He is caught between different loyalties. A love story between his nephew played by Alain Delon and a rich merchant's daughter played by Claudia Cardinale interweaves the action and heightens the moral dilemmas that Prince Salina has to face. A brave film, opposing, exposing and opposed by government and church. The full length restored edition is a cinematic gem and the opulent costumes and scenery are a treasure to behold. Looking for something to watch? Choose an adventure below and discover your next favorite movie or TV show. Visit our What to Watch page. Sign In. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Full Cast and Crew. Release Dates. Official Sites. Company Credits. Technical Specs. Plot Summary. Plot Keywords. Parents Guide. External Sites. User Reviews. User Ratings. External Reviews. Metacritic Reviews. Photo Gallery. Trailers and Videos. Crazy Credits. Alternate Versions. Rate This. The Prince of Salina, a noble aristocrat of impeccable integrity, tries to preserve his family and class amid the tumultuous social upheavals of 's Sicily. Director: Luchino Visconti. Available on Amazon. Added to Watchlist. From metacritic. The Evolution of Armie Hammer. G my top civil war and slavery movies. Best Italian Films. Martin Scorsese is an Academy Award—winning filmmaker who has directed more than twenty features, including The Last Temptation of Christ, available from the Criterion Collection. Special Features New high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Giuseppe Rotunno and presented in the original Super Technirama aspect ratio of 2. Le cercle rouge Jean-Pierre Melville. Le notti bianche Luchino Visconti. From The Current. Sneak Peeks — Mar 31, Burt Lancaster: Body and Soul Having mastered his imposing physicality early in his career, the legendary Hollywood actor later gravitated toward roles that allowed him to explore a rich, complicated inner life. By Dan Callahan Features — Jan 24, The Leopard () - IMDb

Le notti bianche Luchino Visconti. From The Current. Sneak Peeks — Mar 31, Burt Lancaster: Body and Soul Having mastered his imposing physicality early in his career, the legendary Hollywood actor later gravitated toward roles that allowed him to explore a rich, complicated inner life. By Dan Callahan Features — Jan 24, Load More. View Cart Check Out. Close Menu Search Criterion. For Lampedusa, the new novel is mainly psychological. The topic is not a history of events but rather the history of human anxiety. Prince Fabrizio, the main character, is conscious of human limits as he lives through the ages of mankind: youth and sex, midlife, old age and death, a succession of 60 years. And he develops a stoical attitude, a frame within which he moves through the changes of life with a clearer insight. It is a novel where the temporal limits of human nature are always present, melancholic, touching and wise. At the end of the Forties, he bought part of a Palazzo on via Butera 28 , in the historic centre of Palermo, in the Kalsa neighborhood, where he would live until his death in July In the midth century the palazzo had belonged to his great-grandfather, Prince Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi di Lampedusa , an amateur astronomer. Giuseppe Tomasi was childless and had adopted a young cousin, Gioacchino Lanza di Mazzarino, to be his heir. The Leopard ( film) - Wikipedia

Giuseppe Tomasi was childless and had adopted a young cousin, Gioacchino Lanza di Mazzarino, to be his heir. Part of the Palazzo hosts now Butera 28 Apartments. The Leopard — Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Via Butera, 28 - Palermo Italy. Pin It on Pinterest. However, the Prince demurs and refuses this invitation, claiming that Sicily prefers its sleep to the agitations of modernity because its people are proud of who they are. He sees a future when the leopards and the lions, along with the sheep and the jackals, will all live according to the same law, but he does not want to be a part of this democratic vision. He notes that Tancredi has shifted allegiances from the insurgent Garibaldi to the king's army, and wistfully recognises that his nephew is the kind of opportunist and time-server who will flourish in the new Italy. A great ball is held at the villa of a neighboring Prince, and the Salinas and Tancredi attend. Afflicted by a combination of melancholia, the ridiculousness of the nouveau riche , and age, the Prince wanders forlornly from chamber to chamber, increasingly disaffected by the entire edifice of the society he so gallantly represents — until Angelica approaches and asks him to dance. Stirred and momentarily released from his cares, the Prince accepts, and once more he resembles the elegant and dashing figure of his past. Disenchanted, he leaves the ball alone and asks Tancredi to arrange carriage for his family, and walks with a heavy heart to a dark alley that symbolises Italy's inordinate and fading past, which he inhabits. The original novel had been a best-seller. The movie would be an Italian-American co-production, shot in English, with a combination of Italian and American stars. Ettore Giannini was preparing a script although it was expected he would collaborate with an English speaking writer to finish it. Several treatments were reportedly done before Visconti became involved. The popular conscience was strangled by the way the Piedmont upper class tried to keep the social structure of the south just as it was. Warren Beatty was in discussions with Visconti to play the nephew, while Visconti approached Laurence Olivier and Spencer Tracy to play the lead. When Visconti was told by producers that they needed to cast a star in order to help to ensure that they'd earn enough money to justify the big budget, the director's first choice was one of the Soviet Union's preeminent actors, Nikolai Cherkasov. In November, Lancaster agreed to play the lead with filming to start in April. He had doubts about accepting the part because "the novel was so perfect as a novel" but decided to accept. All the scenes with Lancaster would be shot in English, and dubbed into Italian for the Italian version; other scenes would be filmed in Italian then dubbed into English for the English version. In April 20th Century Fox announced it had bought the distribution rights to the movie. Filming started in May in Palermo. The first two weeks of the two month location shoot in Sicily were dedicated to battle scenes. After 22 weeks of location scenes, interiors would be shot in Rome. Lancaster called Visconti "the finest director I've ever worked with. Archibald Colquhoun worked as dialogue director. The Leopard has circulated in at least four different versions. Visconti's first cut was minutes long, but was felt to be excessive in length by both the director and producer, and was shortened to minutes for its Cannes Film Festival premiere. Visconti then cut the film further to minutes for its official release, and considered this version to be his preferred one. The U. S English-dubbed version, in which the Italian and French actors were dubbed over except for Burt Lancaster, whose original English voice work is heard , was edited down to minutes by its distributor 20th Century Fox. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Full Cast and Crew. Release Dates. Official Sites. Company Credits. Technical Specs. Plot Summary. Plot Keywords. Parents Guide. External Sites. User Reviews. User Ratings. External Reviews. Metacritic Reviews. Photo Gallery. Trailers and Videos. Crazy Credits. Alternate Versions. Rate This. The Prince of Salina, a noble aristocrat of impeccable integrity, tries to preserve his family and class amid the tumultuous social upheavals of 's Sicily. Director: Luchino Visconti. Available on Amazon. Added to Watchlist. From metacritic. The Evolution of Armie Hammer. G my top civil war and slavery movies. Best Italian Films. Watched in Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin.

The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

This book offended me. There, I said it, long before anyone who is offended by another's offense can claim to my having wasted their time. Those who are more interested in valid discourse than polite niceties, stick around. Perhaps it'll be worth your while. What offended me exactly? A pet peeve, to be frank, one that I can usually prepare for when the warning signs are sufficiently displayed. This, however, was not the case, and I had the misfortune of unexpectedly slogging through yet another tome authored by a heterosexual man in love with his own cock. However, this fault is usually more of an annoyance than a fatality, but only if other features of the piece redeem the lazy characterization of women and juvenile focus on sexuality that usually accompanies such a tendency. This did not happen, and indeed the persistence of this disgusting flippancy reduced every other aspect of the novel to inconsequential, no matter how worthy of admiration they would have been on their own. It's one thing to be critical of a character, and quite another to be judgmental, especially when the last is coupled with unmitigated casual cruelty and otherwise sickening lack of empathy. If you based your insight into the female gender on this novel alone, you would be left with a picture of hysterical and empty headed poufs only worth the pleasures derived from their aesthetics and anatomy, hysterical due to their adoration of the male sexuality, empty headed because of the inescapable characteristic of being: childish and above all feminine in mind. There are many examples of this sort of authorial condemnation, including a passage that particularly exemplifies its origin being nothing but a sense of entitled bigotry, this being a priest dwelling on a niece whose marriage to a cousin who impregnated her is hoped to resolve a familial conflict. And he thought of how the Lord, to bring about His justice, can even use bitches in heat. Those who decry the translation to be at fault for this, please. The meaning is quite clear, and frankly, I prefer not having my sensibilities to this sort of composition blinded by obscene amounts of purple prose. Besides, I'd like to see a translation handle this sentence any 'better', I really would. Outside of this issue, there is of course the dying Sicilian aristocracy embodied in a single man ever dwelling on his decadent ideals and his coming demise, something that would have been melancholic had the character managed to invoke my empathy. As it stands, I was not impressed by the prose, the historical nuances, the authorial 'reasoning' behind the need for the church to continue hoarding its mounds of wealth and the preference of the peasantry to remain horribly oppressed than to hope for change, and especially the main character's musings that came off more as spoiled hogwash than any sort of noble insight. If you want to convince me to look past all the disagreeable ideologies and enjoy everything else, works in the vein Memoirs of Hadrian and Imperial Woman are the way to go. This is not. View all 66 comments. I read this great book many years ago but still can remember that superb atmosphere of long gone glory. Everything is in decay, a once proud aristocrat the leopard got old, time overtook him. Here his long life passes in review. And in the end? Well, the book has one of the greatest and most melancholic endings ever. Absolutely recommended. A modern classic! View all 5 comments. The Paul Neyron roses, whose cuttings he had himself bought in Paris, had degenerated; first stimulated and then enfeebled by the strong if languid pull of Sicilian earth, burnt by apocalyptic Julys, they had changed into objects like flesh coloured cabbages, obscene and distilling a dense almost indecent scent which no French horticulturist would have dared hope for. The Prince put on It was a garden for the blind: a constant offence to the eyes, a pleasure strong if somewhat crude to the nose. Bendico, to whom it was also proffered, drew back in disgust and hurried off in search of healthier sensations amid dead lizards and manure. Don Fabrizio and Tumeo climbed up and down, slipped and were scratched by thorns, just as an Archedamos or Philostrates must have got tired and scratched twenty-five centuries before. For people, plants, even songs there is a steady regression to the Sicilian mean. The Prince of Salina, Don Fabrizio view spoiler [ the Leopard view spoiler [ if I remember correctly that is a mistranslation, it ought to be the 'Civet Cat' rather than the 'Leopard' but the name has stuck hide spoiler ] of the title is the heraldic symbol of the family and something totemic to the Prince through the narrative, there is much play on his 'paws' and nature as a big cat, the author advised though to play close attention to a different animal - his dog hide spoiler ] , knows this but only has the power to observe, dominates the narrative and his family even as his power and wealth crumble away, his beloved nephew Tancredi aims to thrive among the waves of change, he tells his uncle that to keep everything the same, everything has to change and is the lesson that runs through this book. Reading the novel is a sensuous experience, I am baked by the sun, assailed by the winds and soaked by the rains as the page turns and I seek refuge from the burning light. Chapters deal with the period just before and then after at longer intervals Garibaldi's landing in Sicily and the creation of a unified Kingdom of Italy under the King of Piedmont. At one moment in a ball the narrator flicks ahead to WWII and recalls the bomb that will destroy the ballroom in the future view spoiler [while characters and Sicily seem locked in the past,the narrator with ironic intent looks often into the future hide spoiler ] but at all times it is clear that for Sicily to stay the same at a basic fundamental level it must embrace change at a superficial surface level. As a result it is very much a book about power, ambitions that are realised across generations and the relationships that fall by the wayside. The historical setting is irrelevant, di Lampedusa was illustrating what he felt was a general principle of accommodation and adaptation, what was true of the s was true too of and and all the rest. If you are view spoiler [ or will be or could be hide spoiler ] convinced by the novel's sultry insistence that climate is destiny and Terroir is all, I don't know, my own climate inclines me to be sceptical, while from my terroir I am compelled by the voice of this masterpiece. View all 13 comments. Sep 06, K. Shelves: , history , core , europe. You have a stable job. You own your house. You drive your own car. Your daughter is studying in an exclusive school. You can buy any book you take fancy on. You can dine at any restaurant anytime. You can buy any clothes you want. In short, you have a comfortable life. What if all these are taken away from you? What if you are stricken with cancer and you have to spend millions for your operation? What if you run over a man who is crossing the street on one ra You have a stable job. Then insurance company declares bankruptcy? A rich man's downfall. It tells about the fall of the nobles and aristocrats in Sicily during the latter part of the 19th century. The fall may not be due to a split-second incident like running over a man crossing the street. It is painful and slow and it due to transfer of political power. The reunification resulted to the adoption of the Tricolor in their national flag. The writing is deft and glorious. Each of his characters contribute to the plot and the sending of his message: that nothing in this world is permanent; even kings cannot be saved by their golds. However, the fall of the noble Salinas family did not stop when its prince, Don Fabrizio Corbera died in Even this falling action has its own theme: that what our forefathers did have some impact or influence to who we are now: as a nation, a community, a family or even as individuals. If you love dogs, the prince has a dog called Bendico who symbolizes the nobility of the family. He is cute and loyal to the prince. To preserve his memory, when he dies, the surviving daughters of the prince take his skin and make a rug out of it. In the later part of the book, one of them throws the rug away. Just like in many transfer of power, it was just from one kind of hand to another: from the hands of the aristocrats to the hands of the middle class, many of whom got new-rich status afterwards. We should always be thankful of what we have. Cherish the people we love. Take care of the things we currently enjoy. For as they say, some good things never last. Even ourselves, we are all just passing through. View all 20 comments. Shelves: Over the next fifty years, The Leopard looks on as some of his family sink and some swim. Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in the flesh The book is accused of snobbery. Possibly the actual coat of arms I can't find a primary source here but who cares, it's a fightin' leopard! Top Five Dogs In Literature 5. Bendico, The Leopard "almost the key to the novel," Lampedusa wrote, more or less kidding 4. Buck, Call of the Wild 3. Laska, Anna Karenina 2. Karenin, The Unbearable Lightness of Being 1. It has a Victorian feel. Tancredi may be scheming to keep things the same, but Don Fabrizio is ready to be over. He wrote it in his old age; he had barely time to hear it described as "unpublishable" before kicking off himself, leaving his descendants to find a publisher who recognized it as the masterpiece it is. Say it with me: Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. What a tremendous wave of syllables. It's the name of an aristocrat. They don't make 'em like that anymore. View all 8 comments. Dec 29, Mir rated it liked it. The Leopard. One of the four "big cats," it is a fierce predator: fast, voracious, strong enough to crush a skull with its jaws and to drag an animal almost as heavy as itself into a tree. Do these long stretches of dormancy make the leopard lazy? Would it, free from the demands of hunger, wile away day after day i The Leopard. Would it, free from the demands of hunger, wile away day after day in slumber? Of course not. Anyone who has visited a zoo and witnessed the miserable, restless pacing of the great cats knows that they crave physical action and mental stimulation as much as they crave food and rest. Humans may be better at accustoming themselves to inactivity, distracting themselves from the emptiness of their lives with petty, time-filling concerns, but we too crave meaningful activity. The ideal for the Roman gentleman was otium -- leisure. But not an empty, inert leisure; otium was rather the "leisure" of having free time to read, write, and converse intelligently with friends about intellectually stimulating topics. It was assumed that otium would be balanced by the substantial demands of negotiis , the daily demands of business, home, political life, et alia. Larger amounts of otium might be the dutiful Roman's reward after a long career of military or civil service. In Lampedusa's The Leopard we see what happens when the idealization of leisure is retained without the demands of work and duty: neglect, stagnation, decay. Emptied of purpose and meaning, life becomes empty of pleasure as well, losing its savor when it no longer has has limits or contrasts. Otio qui nescit uti. Jan 11, Hanneke rated it it was amazing. A book full of the deepest melancholy and feelings of loss, poetic language and irony. I loved this book. Other people have written beautiful reviews about it, to which I have nothing to add. I refer in particular to the review of Jeffrey Keeten or the review in Dutch of Sini. Both reflect my sentiments completely. Nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Now, and in the hour of our death. Sensuous, insightful, subtle, The Leopard is a work of absolute beauty. In Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, is watching the lifeblood seep from his world: the power and the prestige, the unquestioned honors are all fading away, being bled out by revolution. He simply watches it go. He is resigned to it as he is resigned to his own nature. Sated ease tinged with I. Sated ease tinged with disgust. His one constant joy in life, where he can escape this sense of himself, is the stars. There is no false revolution there. In the limitlessness of the sky there are no worries, only the reassurance that none of the rest matters because nothing ever really changes. Forster said The Leopard is not a historical novel, but a novel which happens to take place in history. The real story is something else. Somewhere between the characters — drawn too well to be forgotten — and the very fiber of Sicilians themselves. All Sicilian expression, even the most violent, is really wish-fulfillment: our sensuality is a hankering for oblivion, our shooting and knifing a hankering for death; our languor, our exotic vices, a hankering for voluptuous immobility, that is for death again. Fingering the rosary beads in the very first sentence. Young lovers discovering ways of satisfying dark desires lost to the consciousness; beneath the conscious, the house, the gardens, the very air exhales it. Blackmail through beauty, redemption through blood. A dying man: A long open wagon came by stacked with bulls killed shortly before at the slaughterhouse, already quartered and exhibiting their intimate mechanism with the shamelessness of death. At intervals a big thick red drop fell onto the pavement. At a crossroad he glimpsed the sky to the west, above the sea. There was Venus, wrapped in her turban of autumn mist. She was always faithful, always waiting for Don Fabrizio on his early morning outings, at Donnafugata before a shoot, now after a ball. Don Fabrizio sighed. When would she decide to give him an appointment less ephemeral, far from carcasses and blood, in her own region of perennial certitude? Floating above this longing for oblivion there is a story. Parts of it parallel the politics of Italy. Parts of it made my heart ache. There are sly bits that made me laugh. Restless and domineering, the Princess dropped her rosary brusquely into her jet- fringed bag, while her fine crazy eyes glanced around at her slaves of children and her tyrant of a husband, over whom her diminutive body vainly yearned for loving dominion. From the back cover: Set in the s, The Leopard tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution. The dramatic sweep and richness of observation, the seamless intertwining of public and private worlds, and the grasp of human frailty imbue The Leopard with its particular melancholy beauty and power, and place it among the greatest historical novels of our time. View all 11 comments. In Italian this figurative language may be impossibly smooth. What I love in this novel is its morbid and pessimistic sensuality, its Gotho-Baudelairean heritage. I laughed so loud. The really febrile elements are held at an distance, in the stately realist integrity of a historical novel that also concerns itself with democracy and nationalism, clerical disestablishment and the rise of the middle classes. What do I think of this? On one hand I want to laud it as being a classic of Italian literature, imbued with the essence of Lermontov and breadth of Tolstoy. However, on the other hand, this is essentially just one long episode of Downton Abbey but with less Maggie Smith and more Garibaldi. I'm conflicted about this one a bit because it does have some really boring parts but then it has some just magical passages. Eh, I liked it, but it's barely clinging on to those three stars. View all 6 comments. May 09, Gabrielle Dubois rated it it was amazing Shelves: 20th-century. In Italy, in , a decadent and impoverished aristocracy, deaf to the upheavals of the world, still reigns over Sicily. But the disembarkation of the troops of the republican Giuseppe Garibaldi who wants to reunify Italy divided into several kingdoms, initiates the overthrow of a secular social order. We enter the intimacy of the thought and the life of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, great landowner, aware of the threat of disappearance that hangs over his caste and his family, but wh In Italy, in , a decadent and impoverished aristocracy, deaf to the upheavals of the world, still reigns over Sicily. We enter the intimacy of the thought and the life of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, great landowner, aware of the threat of disappearance that hangs over his caste and his family, but who thinks more than he acts, unlike his nephew, the handsome, clever and lively Tancredi, who will fight alongside Garibaldi after announcing to his uncle and guardian: "If we want everything to remain as it is, everything has to change. But the book is wonderfully written by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. It is built, limpid and deep. From the first page, although many things happen, in the thought of the Prince, his actions and those of the characters around him, the pace adopts a torpor as heavy as the land of Sicily, as dry as its air, as overwhelming and blinding as its burning sun. First excerpt to make you want to read this masterpiece: One night, the Prince descends from his property to the city of Palermo. In this very Catholic Italy, landscape, countryside and cities are dotted with monasteries and convents of all orders. In the surrounding mountains, the revolutionaries of Garibaldi are organizing themselves: "Soon it would be dark, the convents and monasteries became the despots of the panorama. It was against them, in fact, that the fires in the mountains were kindled, fanned by men who were entirely like those who lived in convents, equally fanatical, equally closed-minded, just as eager to power, that is to say, as usual, idleness. We live in a mobile reality to which we seek to adapt as seaweeds bend under the pressure of the sea. For us, a palliative that promises to last a hundred years is equivalent to eternity. Jun 10, Alice Poon rated it really liked it Shelves: historical-fiction. The story is set in s Sicily and accounts for the personal trajectory of a Sicilian aristocrat Fabrizio Salina as he gets caught up in the social and political storm that would bring democracy and irrevocable changes to the various disparate Italian states. In face of imminent upheavals instigated by revolutionaries led by Giuseppe Garibaldi who aims at uniting the Kingdoms of Sicily and Naples ruled by the French Bourbons with the Kingdom of Sardinia ruled by the State of Savoy , the protagonist, who belongs to the old ruling class, adopts a pragmatic attitude by persuading his Sicilian people to lend support to the new democratic regime. He also encourages his ambitious nephew Tancredi in his scheme to marry Angelica, the dazzling daughter of a nouveau riche from the peasant class, even though he is aware that his youngest daughter is madly in love with Tancredi. For the significance of a noble family lies entirely in its traditions, that is in its vital memories; and he was the last to have any unusual memories, anything different from those of other families. View all 9 comments. Jun 23, Piyangie rated it really liked it Shelves: historical-fiction , european-lit. In the wake of Risorgimento Italian Unification , the aristocratic nobility was threatened with the possible decline of their feudal power. They had to contemplate a future where their power was ripped off and passed on to the commoners who have now acquired wealth and power almost equal to them. The change is inevitable yet is it easy to face it? Could the proud nobles mix themselves with the commoners thus depriving them of their elite status or was this necessary to preserve their wealth, th In the wake of Risorgimento Italian Unification , the aristocratic nobility was threatened with the possible decline of their feudal power. Could the proud nobles mix themselves with the commoners thus depriving them of their elite status or was this necessary to preserve their wealth, their power and authority in albeit an altered way? These are the questions Lampedusa tries to address in his semi-autobiographic work - The Leopard. Don Fabrizio, the Prince of Salina whose power and authority is threatened comprehends that if they are to survive they must move with the flow. His dictum is " everything must change so that everything must stay the same". However unwelcome and irksome the change is, it is necessary, and this the Prince understands. Yet it is not easy to suppress the years of noble pride, to reduce them to the equal status of the newly rich and powerful commoners. Don Fabriozi struggles to reconcile himself with these new realities a little consciously but more unconsciously. However, he doesn't waver from his dictum and consents his penniless nephew Tancredi, the Prince of Falconeri, to marry the daughter of a common unsophisticated wealthy man who wealds power in the new regime. Don Fabriozi's design is that his young and ambitious nephew should climb up in the social and political ladder and help preserve some form of authority to the Selina family. To achieve this end, Tancredi needs money - a lot of it. Therefore this otherwise socially unthinkable and undesirable match has to be encouraged and made. But even so, though he admires the beautiful girl who would soon be his niece, he cannot help the utter loathing he feels for her commoner wealthy father. Don Fabrizio is the leopard the official symbol of the House of Salina - strong and powerful yet also graceful. How the proud leopard is to live equally with the "jackals and hyenas" who have usurped the leopard's power and authority is Don Fabriozi's dilemma. And his inner struggle to come to terms with this new predicament flows beautifully throughout the story. But Don Fabriozi's struggle doesn't end there. He has to fight against another more formidable change, and that is the change in himself as he slowly nears death. Change and how to adapt to the change is the key theme of the story. Don Fabrizio accommodates the change grudgingly because it is inevitable and also because it is necessary. But the young Tancredi, also of noble blood, yields more easily and voluntarily. He has no difficulty in joining hands with the revolutionaries and taking part in the revolution. The change comes more naturally to him. Lampedusa quite intelligently draws the contrast between the attitudes of the younger and older generation of the nobility. The Leopard brings us some memorable characters. But the unique and dominating is Don Fabrizio, the sensual, the powerful, the graceful "leopard". Lampedusa's poetic writing, subtle symbology, and suitable satire narrate a heartfelt story of an end of an era. I didn't know what to expect when I began the reading. There was a lot of history behind the story that I was compelled to read up. But it was quite worth it, for the book was very rewarding. View 2 comments. Jul 14, Paul rated it really liked it Shelves: european-novels. A rich and luscious novel about a decaying aristocratic family in nineteenth century Sicily. The main protagonists are the Salina family and especially Don Fabrizio the Leopard of the title the head of the family. Most of the novel takes place in the early s and there is great descriptive detail throughout capturing the heat and dust of the Sicilian countryside. Lampedusa's descriptions of scents and smells and a decaying grand house are sublime. Religion and the ritual of the Catholic chu A rich and luscious novel about a decaying aristocratic family in nineteenth century Sicily. Religion and the ritual of the Catholic church runs throughout the book as a theme and backdrop, dominating some characters. The events leading up to the unification of Italy and the exploits of Garibaldi are also part of the background and illustrate how the aristocracy adapted to the new order. Don Fabrizio dominates the book and his thoughts and feelings about the advent of modernity and the idionsyncracies of his rather repressed family and subtly and cleverly expressed. The other strand of the plot is the courtship and eventual marraige of Tancredi Don Fabrizio's nephew and the beautiful Angelica. There is a delicious passage where the courting couple are exploring the palace of Don Fabrizio at Donnafugata. There are hundreds of empty and abandoned rooms, not used for years. The walls are covered in mirrors, some broken, strategically placed beds and several whips 50 shades of Sicilian Grey no doubt. Nearby they find another room; smaller and much more sparse. There is a cross on the wall and I think a prie-dieux for prayer. On the wall is another whip; for self flagellation during prayer; only this time there are small lead balls fixed into the ends of the leather thongs; the church is so much more imaginative when it comes to pain and bondage 50 shades darker? The last two chapters change the tone. We move to the s and the death bed of Don Fabrizio. As death bed scenes go this one isn't bad; but the cliches of a generally peaceful death with family around are still there; as is the mandatory priest to pronounce the last rites. The sand running out description is interesting because it is taken to a different level and the fading of the noise in the room is cleverly described. The aloneness in a crowd feeling of the dying man is a little reminiscent of Beckett in Malone Dies. It is certainly different to Dickens' death bed scenes I think it was Wilde who said that anyone who could read the death bed scene of Little Nell Old Curiosity Shop without laughing has to have a heart of stone. Having been at a number of death beds as a result of two of my former occupations; there is a little accuracy here. For a better description of death beds see Keizer's excellent Dancing with Mister D. However in this novel it works well. The last chapter takes us into the early twentieth century and Don Fabrizio's three unmarried daughters are still living in increasingly decaying circumstances; the gradual destruction of a way of life is almost complete. Worth a read; it captures a long gone way of life. Jun 07, Teresa rated it it was amazing. Unlike in many other novels of historical fiction, Tomasi makes no secret of the fact that he is writing from the vantage of hindsight. And though they were few, I enjoyed his narratorial asides, some ironic, some sobering. But what I loved more than anything else is the elegant writing; you are in a dream as the sentences flow by. Two sections stand out as especially beautiful: the young couple playing amongst the closed-off ruins of rooms in the palace and the main character facing death -- su Unlike in many other novels of historical fiction, Tomasi makes no secret of the fact that he is writing from the vantage of hindsight. Two sections stand out as especially beautiful: the young couple playing amongst the closed-off ruins of rooms in the palace and the main character facing death -- such haunting, effective images throughout! The ending rests on one of my favorite themes as a new layer of soil fell on the tumulus of truth. I am also pleased to have finally read this as my books-read list is lacking in Italian writers. This is especially egregious considering I am of Sicilian descent. And the answer to my sort-of rhetorical question above is a resounding NO. Due to a memory jog by Michael see comments 18 and 20 , I realized that I have read more Italian writers than I originally thought! View all 79 comments. As is well-known, the bulk of the novel is set in Sicily in the s. The central character, Prince Fabrizio Salina, exercises a paternalistic rule over the tenants of his vast estates, across a Sicily that seems timeless but which is now faced with change, or, as the Prince views it, with decay. A subplot featuring the Salina family priest, Father Pirrone, provides the reader with an insight into Sicilian peasant society. I could only read the English translation, but it seems a high quality one, conveying a fine sense of the richness of the writing. For me, the dominant theme of the novel is one of sadness, one might say hopelessness. This rather broke up my enjoyment of the book. View all 12 comments. Aug 10, Marc rated it really liked it Shelves: italian-literature , sicily. I tremendously enjoyed reading this book. The first chapter is a bit difficult to read because it was left unfinished by the author and had to be posthumously composed from unfinished material by Giorgio Bassani nota bene. But then the Leopard turns into a lovely 19th century society novel full of psychology, awesome landscapes and social realism. You not only get a beautiful description of Sicily and the Sicilians in the middle of the 19th Century, it is above all a study in political and soc I tremendously enjoyed reading this book. You not only get a beautiful description of Sicily and the Sicilians in the middle of the 19th Century, it is above all a study in political and social shifts and how people cope with them. Don Fabrizio, the towering aristocrat must give way to his upcoming, modern but short-sighted bourgeois neighbour, and he does so with pain in his heart, but also with a combination of very pragmatic fatalism and some slight cunning " everything must change, so that everything can stay the same ". I cannot but recommend this book, and also the very long and slow film by Visconti with a fabulous Burt Lancaster remains impressive! View 1 comment. Mar 04, [P] rated it it was amazing Shelves: bitchin. The other day I found a grey hair, by which I mean on my own head, of course, not on the floor. Yet there it was, gesturing to me in an offensive manner; it was like staring at a crowd of people and suddenly spotting, deep in their midst, a child looking my way and insouciantly giving me the finger. This is, and always has been, my worst fear. Decline, old age, and their tyrannical father: death. How on earth do you face up to that? How awful! There have been many fine novels about all of this — Samuel Beckett, for example, wrote reams of them — but I think my favourite is Il Gattopardo , or The Leopard , by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Prince Fabrizio, the main character, is conscious of human limits as he lives through the ages of mankind: youth and sex, midlife, old age and death, a succession of 60 years. And he develops a stoical attitude, a frame within which he moves through the changes of life with a clearer insight. It is a novel where the temporal limits of human nature are always present, melancholic, touching and wise. At the end of the Forties, he bought part of a Palazzo on via Butera 28 , in the historic centre of Palermo, in the Kalsa neighborhood, where he would live until his death in July In the midth century the palazzo had belonged to his great-grandfather, Prince Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi di Lampedusa , an amateur astronomer. Giuseppe Tomasi was childless and had adopted a young cousin, Gioacchino Lanza di Mazzarino, to be his heir. Part of the Palazzo hosts now Butera 28 Apartments. The Leopard — Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

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