But The Leopard was first a novel and then a film. It's not just a novel, and calling it an Italian literary gem doesn't detract from it. Movies adapted from famous novels are actually difficult to satisfy people's tastes: do the selected actors match the characters in the readers' hearts, and can a film of more than two hours reflect one-tenth of the content and depth of the famous novel? ...Using food as an analogy, the famous book itself is a big meal with complicated procedures, while the movie is to make the big meal into compressed food so that you can swallow it in two to fill your stomach. The difference in taste is self-evident. For "Leopard", I watched the movie first, and I was so amazed that I googled it and found out that it was adapted from a novel. So after watching the movie, I went to buy the book. If you love to read famous works, you must not miss this good book. The Italian version of a miniature version of A Dream of Red Mansions.
The content of the film is briefly as follows: the background is the Italian bourgeois revolution, and the protagonist, the Prince of Salina, is a feudal nobleman in Sicily. The theme of the film is how Prince Salina faced this historical torrent. In short, it is the choice and destiny of people in the context of history. This subject is extremely difficult to comprehend without a rich literary accomplishment. I saw a lot of reviews saying that the content of the film is empty and verbose. This is really not a problem with the film. The literary accomplishment is not enough, and I cannot understand the feelings of the characters. It is like reading a book from heaven. You're welcome, some audiences are only for fast food movies.
I just finished reading the novel in the past two days, which is very rare. The film basically completely refers to the original book without any changes. Only the three chapters of the priest's return to his hometown, the death of the prince and the epilogue have been removed. The death of the prince is 20 years after the film, and the end time is nearly 50 years after the film. Chopping off the little chapter about the priest returning to his hometown has no effect at all. One of the changes is unexpected - the love between the prince's nephew Don Claudio and the mayor's daughter Angelica.
Judging from the movie, it seems that the two are truly in love. They are also a good match, with good looks and good looks. It can only be seen from some clues that their beautiful love may have some shadows - one is the prince's general judgment that love will dissipate. The second is the wealth of the mayor's family as an emerging bourgeoisie, and the humbleness and vulgarity of the mayor's daughter. But the role of financial interests behind this marriage is really not easy to show in the film. At that time, I judged that if it had any influence, it would also be ranked after the love of these two young people. This is not the case in the novel, where the author does not reserve preferences at all. The love between the talented and beautiful two people is not simple at all. One wants the money of the emerging class as capital to devote himself to politics, and the other wants to use the title of the aristocrat to enter the upper class. And the prince's daughter Goncheda, her love was sacrificed under this torrent. The prince ignored his daughter's love and chose to help his beloved nephew marry the mayor's daughter to fulfill his nephew's wish. The prince himself stayed out of the torrent, watching all the changes with a cold eye. He knew there was no such thing as change, everything would stay the same. It's just that the ruling people have changed from the old nobles (leopards) to the emerging bourgeoisie (jackals, hyenas).
Prince Salina is an uncompromising spiritual aristocrat. Why is the dance party in the second half of the film more than an hour long - the drunken life and death of the people in the dance party and the prince's sobriety and pain are a perfect contrast. To borrow a Chinese verse, "the crown covers the capital, and the people of Sri Lanka are alone and haggard." The prince has a philosophical loneliness, and he has long surpassed the vulgarity of the world. To borrow Schopenhauer's words again: either vulgarity or loneliness. At the end of the ball he longed for death, because the noble panther had long hated the dirty world.
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