il gattopardo
One of the best books I have ever read is The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. And by many accounts, the film of the book, directed by Visconti, is one of the greatest spectacles ever committed to celluloid.
So maybe I should get the DVD.
But, a dilemma. Do I get the soon-to-be-released Criterion Collection edition of the butchered American version with overdubbed English? Or the Italian restored edition with original dialogue and English subtitles? Both versions don’t seem to be complete (the original Italian version was 205 minutes, complete with a one hour long ballroom scene; but neither DVD version seems longer than about three hours).
Luckily, Arovideo to the rescue! What haven’t they got? And… they’ve got the recent Italian version. So I’ll have to rent it and see whether it’s worth spending any time on.
And that’s the beginning and end of my time as a film nerd. Hopefully.
Sam
17 March 2004, 10:00 #
What's it about?
Alan
17 March 2004, 10:51 #
Superficially it doesn't sound very promising: The Leopard is a Sicilian nobleman at the time of the Risorgimento (Italian Unification - Italy only became its own country in the 1860s, would you believe) and it's about how he is seeing the loss of an old way of life. But it's written very beautifully indeed, and is very affecting and involving. It's all explained much better than I can manage in the many links above.
Issa
7 May 2004, 04:16 #
We're going to have both the 187 minute Italian and the 161 minute English versions on the Criterion release. The 187 minute version is from the original camera negative -- as far as I can tell the 205 minute version is from a rough cut that was never released.