Winner of the Cannes Palme d’Or, Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) recounts the political upheaval and generational sea change in reunification-era Italy. Burt Lancaster is the patriarch of a ruling-class Bourbon family in the last gasps of its dominance as Garibaldi and his redshirts upend social order and a new spirit ascends—embodied by beautiful people Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale.
“I have a very high opinion of ‘decadence,’ just as, for example, Thomas Mann did. Mann was a decadent of German culture, I of Italian formation. What has always interested me is the analysis of a sick society.” —Luchino Visconti