Big Screen Classics: Luchino Visconti's THE LEOPARD

In honor of the 150th anniversary of il Risorgimento (the Resurgence), the historic process which forged the modern country of Italy from a collection of individual sovereign states, the Coolidge Corner Theatre presents a one-night-only screening of Luchino Visconti’s stunningly restored 1963 epic THE LEOPARD (IL GATTOPARDO).

THE LEOPARD is based on Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s fine novel, visually charting the mood of change that the cascade of social revolution brought to one aristocratic family as seen through the eyes and heart of its patriarch. In one of cinema’s great screen performances, Burt Lancaster, as Prince of Salina, reluctantly watches his beloved nephew (Alain Delon) leave to join the rebels, then makes his peace with the changing times by marrying him off to a beautiful bourgeois, played by a smoldering Claudia Cardinale. The climatic 45-minute ball scene, created with astonishing attention to detail—down to changing real candles in the chandeliers every hour during filming—is an emotional tour-de-force, described as “one of the most moving meditations on individual mortality in the history of the cinema.” Caryn James, writing for indieWIRE, declares The Leopard “ever-enthralling… at once a magnificent escape into the past and a warning about clinging to it".

The Coolidge is proud to showcase this sublime restoration, blessed by the film’s original cinematographer, the great Giuseppe Rotunno, and funded by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation and Gucci. With music by Nino Rota, this is a sensual feast movie lovers will never forget.

This screening is part of the Coolidge Corner Theatre's BIG SCREEN CLASSICS SERIES. For more information and advance tickets, visit: www.coolidge.org. Tickets are also available at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline.