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In the spring of 1860, Italy's movement
for unification reaches its peak as Garibaldi's Redshirts invade
Sicily and crush the Bourbon monarchy. Plebiscites are set up
in which Sicilians vote in favor of joining the rest of the
peninsula in forming the United Kingdom of Italy.
Most strongly affected by the political
upheaval is Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, who realizes that the
inevitable change will mean the end of the privileged class.
Aware that he must endure certain changes to preserve vestiges of
the dying aristocracy, he accepts the rising middle class.
Consequently, when his favorite nephew,
Tancredi, falls in love with Angelica Sedara, the daughter of a
wealthy bourgeois, Don Fabrizio resolves to support the match,
despite the fact that Concetta, one of his three daughters, loves
Tancredi. To restore wealth to the Fabrizio family and provide
dowries for his other daughters, Don Fabrizio arranges for Concetta
to marry Angelica's wealthy tradesman father, Don Calogero Sedara.
He refuses, however, to take a senate seat in the newly-formed
government, explaining that he is a man caught between the old and
the new, and ill at ease in both.
Tancredi introduces Angelica to Sicilian
society at a lavish ball. After watching the ambitious girl
relax in this new life of luxury and beauty, Don Fabrizio leaves the
ball and strolls quietly in the gathering dawn--a proud but lonely
figure in a changing world.
Notes
The film is based on the novel Il gattopardo by Giuseppe
Tomasi di Lampedusa (Milan, 1958). Location scenes filmed in
Sicily. Opened in Paris in Jun 1963 as Le guépard ; running
time: 185 min; in Rome in Mar 1963 as Il gattopardo ; running
time: 205 min.
Music includes Waltz by Giuseppe Verdi,
performed by Symphony Orchestra of Santa Cecilia. |
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