The Leopard review

Luchino Visconti’s 1963 period masterpiece returns in all its opulent widescreen glory.

In 1860s Sicily the old order is changing: Garibaldi’s redshirts have come to overthrow the ramshackle monarchy.

Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina (Burt Lancaster at his most nobly patrician), sees the fortunes of his ancient clan in decline but knows he can do nothing to prevent it; even nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon) is on the revolutionaries’ side.

Visconti (a Marxist aristocrat) offers an elegiac meditation on the passing of a society whose feudalism he deplores but whose elegance he mourns.