NEW YORK (OSV News) – Currently streaming on Netflix is a new adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s classic novel “The Leopard.” A joint Italian and British production, subtitled in English, the series — mainly helmed by Tom Shankland with co-directors Giuseppe Capotondi and Laura Luchetti — is divided into six roughly hour-long episodes.
Published posthumously in 1958, a year after its author’s death, Lampedusa’s work was brought to the big screen by director Luchino Visconti five years later. The original of Visconti’s film was so masterful that it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was included on the Vatican’s list of all-time outstanding movies, issued in 1995 to mark the centennial of cinema.
The first English-language version of the film, however, was an entirely different matter. Visually downgraded and ill-advisedly edited, it also featured notoriously awkward dubbing that may have distorted U.S. critics’ assessment of the performances of its stars, including Burt Lancaster. Two much-improved anglophone editions were released in 1983 and 2004.
The story is a fictionalized meditation on the actual conundrum faced by Giuseppe’s great-grandfather, Giulio — who, like the writer himself, held the title Prince of Lampedusa — during the unification of Italy in the mid-19th century. Beginning in 1860, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, to whose ruling aristocracy Giulio belonged, was caught up in waves of turmoil.
Taking advantage of a local rebellion, revolutionary military leader Giuseppe Garibaldi launched an invasion of the kingdom that eventually led to its extinction. How is Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina — the fictitious stand-in for Giulio — to survive and maintain power amid these drastically altered circumstances?
The answer is famously articulated by Don Fabrizio’s beloved nephew, Tancredi Falconeri (Saul Nanni). “If we want things to stay as they are,” Tancredi declares, “things will have to change.” This seemingly paradoxical statement has become the basis for the so-called di Lampedusa strategy, which aims to diffuse revolutionary energy by conceding moderate amounts of reform.
Both Kim Rossi Stuart’s Don Fabrizio and his daughter Concetta (Benedetta Porcaroli) elicit pathos as they struggle to hold onto their way of life. These conservative yearnings juxtapose starkly with modern ideals of progress. Effectively questioning whether all change is necessarily for the better is one of Lampedusa’s literary achievements.
Tancredi turns out to play an ambiguous role in Lampedusa’s tale. Although Concetta dotes on him, Tancredi wavers between marrying her or allying himself with Angelica Sedara, played by Deva Cassel.
Angelica is the beautiful daughter of the local mayor, a conniving politician intent on exploiting the revolution to his own advantage. By uniting himself to Angelica, Tancredi might have the opportunity to satisfy his own desire to flourish under the new regime.
Tancredi’s decision is destined to reveal weaknesses on all sides as power and status are ruthlessly grappled over in the new Italy.
While faith was not the main theme of his work, Catholicism was an important element in the cultural milieu Lampedusa was evoking. Yet in this retelling, the church is either marginalized, misrepresented or employed as a narrative foil against which viewers are meant to react negatively.
Thus an early scene finds Concetta enduring a forced spell of confinement in a convent. It’s later insinuated, moreover, that a priest has used the sacrament of penance to obtain certain information and has then broken the seal of confession to convey it to others.
Such an incident is never depicted in the book. Indeed, on the printed page, the heritage of Christian belief is an integral aspect of the world Lampedusa’s characters perceive to be endangered.
As some Catholic viewers may know, one of Lampedusa’s collateral ancestors, liturgical scholar and church reformer Cardinal Giuseppe Maria Tomasi, is a canonized saint whose incorrupt body can be visited in Rome’s Basilica of Sant’Andrea della Valle. He renounced both the princely title and the large fortune he would otherwise have inherited to join the Theatine Order.
Along with the affronts to the faith incorporated into the script, which showrunner Richard Warlow co-wrote with Benji Walters, a few sexually explicit scenes mark this as inappropriate programming for young people. Mature TV fans willing to overlook the screenplay’s inept treatment of Catholicism, on the other hand, will find much to appreciate.
The series is superbly acted. Nicolai Bruel’s cinematography vividly showcases the picturesque landscape of Sicily while Paolo Buonvino’s score is gloriously elegiac, perfectly capturing Lampedusa’s melancholy tone. Thus, while its philosophical outlook may not always align with that of its source material, this small-screen version of “The Leopard” excels in other respects.
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