Leopards, Jackals, and Sheep

Netflix has released a new adaptation of Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), the 1958 novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa about a noble Sicilian family living through the tumultuous era of Italian unification. The first and most famous depiction of The Leopard was Luchino Visconti’s 1963 film, starring Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon.

This new version, a 6-episode series, makes a simultaneously ostentatious yet somewhat disappointing effort to reach the standard of Visconti, and of the novel itself. However, it has some redeeming qualities.

Given that this is a Netflix production, the complete absence of black actors in the cast is a happenstance as rare and marvellous as a total solar eclipse. Some might say that for a series based on a story set during the Risorgimento, having no non-European actors is the least audiences should expect and is in no way worthy of praise; and they’d be right, but such are the times we live in that it is a refreshing relief to be able to watch a film or series without being jolted by “diversity” casting. Putting aside the jokes and misconceptions about Sicilians peddled by those who believe the True Romance version of history, Tomasi di Lampedusa’s characters are all portrayed as they ought to be, more or less—that is to say, they are all Europeans mostly from Italy, alongside a handful of Italian-speaking actors from elsewhere.

The main characters are the members of the aristocratic Salina family, led by their patriarch and eponymous “Leopard”: Prince Fabrizio Corbera di Salina. In the 1963 film, Burt Lancaster played Don Fabrizio. Now he is played by Italo-Scottish actor Kim Rossi Stuart. It was a good casting choice. Both Rossi Stuart and Lancaster stand over 6 feet tall and have the same grey-blue eyes to match Tomasi di Lampedusa’s original description of his towering, formidable principe. Rossi Stuart exceeds Lancaster in a way because he is better able to capture certain Italian mannerisms. In a few scenes from the 1963 movie, Lancaster waves his hand in salutation in an accurate manner, but little else apart from that. In the Italian version of Visconti’s The Leopard, Burt Lancaster’s voice is dubbed over by an Italian voice actor, so while the intonation of Lancaster’s Fabrizio might be a bit more authentic, the physical elements of facial expressions and gesticulation are less so, which can create a sense of incongruity.

Don Fabrizio has a cherished nephew, named Tancredi Falconeri. Here, both the portrayal of their relationship and the casting choice are superior in the 1963 version. Alain Delon played Tancredi, and there is simply no one on Earth, neither in Delon’s own time, nor after, who can match his looks. This is no minor detail, no vanity. Tancredi is meant to be so handsome, so debonair, and so charming, that to be with him is like tasting marsala wine, and to be with any man after him is like tasting water. Saul Nanni, who plays Tancredi in the Netflix adaptation, is not a bad actor and from certain angles and in certain lighting, does manage to recall a bit of the dashing Delon (something that was probably done intentionally on the part of the director and cinematographer). Delon, however, managed to reflect his character’s passion and youthful idealism in a more captivating way. Delon’s Tancredi flashes a mischievous smile more often, and Visconti shows us Delon’s Tancredi rallying his comrades and running bravely into battle during Garibaldi’s sack of Palermo.

Showing, not telling, is a skill that seems to be increasingly lost amongst today’s film-makers. Let’s compare the way Visconti’s film and the Netflix series introduce the supremely important relationship between Prince Fabrizio and Tancredi. In the Netflix series, there are several scenes in which the characters talk about how much Fabrizio loves Tancredi. They talk about how Fabrizio adores the lad despite the fact that his nephew has sided with Garibaldi’s camicie rosse, even though they pose a direct threat to Bourbon loyalists like the Salina family (the unification of Italy was…complicated). We don’t actually see Fabrizio and Tancredi together until the second episode, when the Leopard finds his nephew in a jail cell along with other garibaldini.

This is an immense departure from the way Visconti first shows us these two. In the film, the vibrant dandy Tancredi walks into the prince’s luminous washing room while he is shaving and greets him with a cheerful “Buongiorno zione!”, an affectionate term for uncle that reveals an informal and close relationship.

We see Tancredi’s face reflected in Fabrizio’s mirror, their blue eyes looking back at each other. Tancredi is Fabrizio and Fabrizio is Tancredi, or at least that is what Fabrizio hopes for and feels in his heart. As the scene progresses, Tancredi lingers in the washing room, talking with his uncle and always looking at him, like a little boy curiously watches and innocently pesters his father while he is shaving. Rather than expository dialogue telling us, we can see for ourselves the father-son, mentor-ward, prince-heir relationship. Film is a visual medium, and in Visconti’sThe Leopard, there is no shortage of meaningful and sumptuous visuals.

Which brings us to the look of the film versus the look of the series. Netflix’s The Leopard is full of sweeping drone shots that certainly give it an epic air, but something is missing.

This new version was recorded using digital cameras, and although there have been many improvements in digital photography, Netflix’s The Leopard still has too much of “the video look”. Moreover, too many scenes are doused in soft-focus and sunshine backlighting. Everywhere begins to look and feel the same. There is literally no contrast, neither in setting nor in colours and lighting.

Visconti, on the other hand, shot on Technirama film. He and cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno were true film-makers. They were true photo-graphers. They told stories with light and shadow.

1963’s The Leopard is ablaze with the full force of the Sicilian sun. Interiors smoulder in warm gold and stunning red. All of this is either lacking or much more muted in the Netflix digital version.

While both versions feature several memorable compositions, the new adaptation smacks of vainglorious technicians trying too hard. The 1963 adaptation looks like the work of genuine artists; the beauty comes much easier and doesn’t feel so pretentious.

Another major difference in the way movies and series are made today is the editing of scenes. Like most films of its time, watching the 1963 Leopard is like lounging on a comfortable sofa. The camera holds its position for long spells, but actors move as if on a stage. There is one scene where Fabrizio and his wife Maria Stella are lying in bed arguing. The camera is positioned quite some distance away from the foot of their bed. We can barely see them, actually. The scene lasts a few minutes. At no point do we cut to close-ups. The camera doesn’t even zoom in to fill the frame with a two-shot. We just stay there, some several paces away from their bed, watching, or more like listening, as they argue.

In the Netflix version, there is a scene wherein a woman approaches the door of a convent. We see her frontally, walking towards the door. Then there is a cut to a profile shot as she continues walking. Then there is a cut back to the frontal view, but this time from a downward angle. Then there is one more cut so we can see from the character’s perspective as she reaches the door and knocks on it. All this jumping about in a scene that lasts 4 seconds.

This is not to say that one method is better than the other. Some might find the static, languid style of old films boring. Others might find that the constant cuts and changes of perspective in films since the 90s gives them a headache.

As for the narrative itself, the creators of the Netflix version made some rather predictable decisions. The character Concetta, Don Fabrizio’s eldest daughter, becomes essentially the main character and much of the story is told from her point-of-view. This is such a common trope nowadays: take a story about a man and either outright replace him with a woman, or find a female character in his story and make her the protagonist. In the novel, Concetta is indeed an important character, so it isn’t entirely inexcusable that the Netflix production gives her more prominence than she received in Visconti’s version. However, the Netflix version almost makes the whole story revolve around her and her unrequited feelings for Tancredi. A story that groans under the weight of such heavy themes as the passing of time, mortality, the extinction of a noble house, social upheaval, and the oblivious naïveté of Europe’s aristocracy, in the Netflix version turns into little more than a Turkish telenovela.

To its credit, the Netflix version retains the classic line from both the novel and the 1963 movie: Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga com’è, bisogna che tutto cambi. If we want everything to remain as it is, everything will have to change. Just before he leaves to join Garibaldi’s revolutionary army, Tancredi says these words, almost flippantly, to his uncle, who ponders them intensely.

It really is a profound line and it highlights the complexity of the the Risorgimento. It wasn’t exactly class warfare. Many well-to-do members of the Italian upper class supported unification, and not just for survival or opportunistic motives. When Italy did become a united, independent nation, it did so under a monarchy. It wasn’t until after World War Two that the last vestiges of nobility would expire and the country would become a republic. Staggering to think that in less than two centuries, Italy went from being the name of a peninsula ruled by the French, the Austrians, and the Pope, to the name of an independent, united nation-state ruled by its own king, to then becoming the home of a highly modernized, industrialized dictatorship, and finally transforming into a democratic republic. “Nothing ever happens”—three words that surely were not oft-repeated during those times.

However, apart from Il Gattopardo‘s famous line, the Netflix version lacks memorable dialogue, and this is precisely because it spends too much time on the hormonal passions of dear young Concetta. The Netflix writers don’t come up with anything near lines like this, from both the book and the film:

We were the leopards, the lions. Those who take our place will be jackals and sheep, and the whole lot of us – leopards, lions, jackals and sheep – will continue to think ourselves the salt of the earth.

Centuries of Italian dignity, hypocrisy, triumph, failure, pride, and shame, summed up in one short, brutally honest phrase uttered by Sicily’s last great prince.

This is the story’s greatness. Tomasi di Lampedusa created characters and touched wounds that divided Italy’s literary circles and the population in general.

Leftists saw The Leopard as too reactionary, too conservative. Is the author saying he’s against unification? Does he pine for the days of the aristocracy, himself being one of its members? On the right, conservatives complained that the story was too harsh on the old Italy. Is the author lampooning the nobility? Is he insulting all of us Italians?

Both the 1963 film and the new series do an admirable job of maintaining the author’s ambiguity. This was also a relief. In the Netflix version, there are some early scenes that threaten to bore the audience with a sanctimonious lecture on the evils of inequality and self-centered posh people, but these are mere rumbles that settle down as the series goes on. In fact, the series is objective enough to show that the soldiers of Garibaldi weren’t exactly saints either.

Despite its faults, Netflix’s The Leopard has some merit. A selection of diversions from the original narrative do pay off. It’s also a pleasure to hear the Sicilian language spoken in several scenes. This does not occur often (or at all, if memory serves) in the 1963 film, which is a shame. A single, unifying tongue had not yet been decided, formalized, and imposed on all citizens of the “new Italy”, so many if not most of the Sicilian people, especially the country folk and townspeople, would have spoken their provincial dialect. The fact that the Sicilia Film Commission had a backing role in this project probably helped ensure that some of the island’s native tongue was spoken.

At just 6 episodes, the series doesn’t require a significant investment from the audience. It’s an intriguing tale, adapted in a sleek, 21st century style, that is worth a watch on a rainy day.