> “I belong to an unfortunate generation, straddling two worlds, and ill at ease in both.
Me love this line, because it something me think about often. Gen X is another unfortunate generation, caught between analog and digital eras, and born into massive upheaval in terms of romantic relationships and family structure. In both cases, me think generation or two hence, we will settle on new models for these things, but for right now we caught in middle.
Just to pick on example, there no longer enough money in print media to support career, but there not yet enough money in digital media to not have to hop from one web site to next trying to stay one step ahead of equity firms.
A wonderful conversation about one of the Great films. I especially appreciate the comparisons with Age of Innocence, one of my personal faves. I think the whole genre of “lamentable upper-class period piece” is really one of the best when you think about films like these and Barry Lyndon.
This is also one of those films where I’m hesitant to buy the Criterion because I feel like it might get a 4K release as soon as I grab the Blu. What a beautiful looking film.
As I think I've said on here before, I'm a pretty half-assed, middlebrow movie fan---for me, the canon is AFI's 100 Years, 100 Movies list from 1998 (I can't remember if that was explicitly just English-language Hollywood movies or if it just shook out that way). So far, this feature has covered eleven films, of which I'd previously heard of three and seen one, and this is...emphatically not the one.
It's tempting to feel like some kind of philistine when you find out you've spent your whole life watching, reading, writing about movies, and there's a whole canon you've never heard of. But it's also heartening to know that, actually, there are better movies than GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER - so much more to experience and enjoy. THE LEOPARD sounds great, even if it's not about an escaped leopard menacing some townsfolk. So thanks for opening my eyes to some stuff I wouldn't have otherwise sought out!
The next installment (THE SHINING) is more in my wheelhouse. Excited for that one!
The AFI is explicitly English (I think explicitly non-documentary, or fictional?), and I think also supposed to be American (this gets complicated with a number of British films, if the studio making them is American, is the film American or not).
(There's also structural things of, voters chose their top 100 instead of 10 (still unordered/unranked), and the choicea were out of a list of 400 movies the AFI provided, with a section to fill out a top 5 that would be used for tie-breakers, this subset of the top 5, is, IIRC, still unordered and unranked).
So, technically not forced to be literally Hollywood (e.g. A Woman Under the Influence was on the ballot, though it didn't place in the list).
I never looked closely enough at the 98 version vs the 2007 (2008?) version to make note of the differences.
It's worth noting the structure of how these lists are compiled sometimes, because, while the voting demographic matters a lot (e.g. this S&S list. Or even the critic's poll vs the director's poll), the structure of the ballot and how they're counted also provide a lot of context of how they end up the way they do. (I guess for the AFI poll, while I've seen the general heuristics of what movies made it into the 400 movie list ballot, I don't know who or how it was ultimately decided which movies or how many of them should have been on the ballot).
Thanks to a book of film reviews I read as a teenager, I have always conflated The Leopard with a 1943 Val Lewton horror flick called The Leopard Man. I am not proud of this, and it's time I finally watch this (and that) and get the two films straight in my head.
I've never read the novel, but it sounds a whole lot like the tremendously good "Buddenbrooks" by Thomas Mann. I BELIEVE Visconti was familiar with Mann...
We all have some classic movies that when checking off lists of movies we've seen, we go, "well, I definitely watched this once 20 years ago, but I honestly don't remember that much." The Leopard is one of those movies for me. I just remember it introducing me to the line, "the higher they climb, the more they show their tails." But, truthfully, the movie didn't make that much of an impression on me back then (not bad, but didn't stand out in my mind either).
There's a number of things that might have contributed to that impression (youth; for mentions of the visual lushness, let's just say, I didn't watch it on the best viewing system).
Absolutely give it another shot. I've had plenty of those experiences, too, because I devoured so many classics in college in the early '90s, most off VHS copies on a small monitor in the school library, and it would be a revelation to see them looking like they should and perhaps also at an age where I'd appreciate them more. (The Leopard is nothing if not a movie about getting old.)
Was recently brought to this film by Will Menaker’s (of Chapo fame) Movie Mindset podcast. They did a Lancaster ep, and this was one of the films, so ofc I watched it. Can’t believe I had never heard of it before. Such a deep, luxurious movie.
I was a bit surprised to see Burt Lancaster speaking Italian. Realized later he was dubbed
That's what's crazy about Lancaster's performance. Even dubbed, he towers over this thing with a fully felt and impactful performance. I can't think of an equally powerful performance that's been dubbed.
> “I belong to an unfortunate generation, straddling two worlds, and ill at ease in both.
Me love this line, because it something me think about often. Gen X is another unfortunate generation, caught between analog and digital eras, and born into massive upheaval in terms of romantic relationships and family structure. In both cases, me think generation or two hence, we will settle on new models for these things, but for right now we caught in middle.
Just to pick on example, there no longer enough money in print media to support career, but there not yet enough money in digital media to not have to hop from one web site to next trying to stay one step ahead of equity firms.
A wonderful conversation about one of the Great films. I especially appreciate the comparisons with Age of Innocence, one of my personal faves. I think the whole genre of “lamentable upper-class period piece” is really one of the best when you think about films like these and Barry Lyndon.
This is also one of those films where I’m hesitant to buy the Criterion because I feel like it might get a 4K release as soon as I grab the Blu. What a beautiful looking film.
As I think I've said on here before, I'm a pretty half-assed, middlebrow movie fan---for me, the canon is AFI's 100 Years, 100 Movies list from 1998 (I can't remember if that was explicitly just English-language Hollywood movies or if it just shook out that way). So far, this feature has covered eleven films, of which I'd previously heard of three and seen one, and this is...emphatically not the one.
It's tempting to feel like some kind of philistine when you find out you've spent your whole life watching, reading, writing about movies, and there's a whole canon you've never heard of. But it's also heartening to know that, actually, there are better movies than GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER - so much more to experience and enjoy. THE LEOPARD sounds great, even if it's not about an escaped leopard menacing some townsfolk. So thanks for opening my eyes to some stuff I wouldn't have otherwise sought out!
The next installment (THE SHINING) is more in my wheelhouse. Excited for that one!
Sounds like you were thinking of Val Lewton too!
The AFI is explicitly English (I think explicitly non-documentary, or fictional?), and I think also supposed to be American (this gets complicated with a number of British films, if the studio making them is American, is the film American or not).
(There's also structural things of, voters chose their top 100 instead of 10 (still unordered/unranked), and the choicea were out of a list of 400 movies the AFI provided, with a section to fill out a top 5 that would be used for tie-breakers, this subset of the top 5, is, IIRC, still unordered and unranked).
So, technically not forced to be literally Hollywood (e.g. A Woman Under the Influence was on the ballot, though it didn't place in the list).
I never looked closely enough at the 98 version vs the 2007 (2008?) version to make note of the differences.
It's worth noting the structure of how these lists are compiled sometimes, because, while the voting demographic matters a lot (e.g. this S&S list. Or even the critic's poll vs the director's poll), the structure of the ballot and how they're counted also provide a lot of context of how they end up the way they do. (I guess for the AFI poll, while I've seen the general heuristics of what movies made it into the 400 movie list ballot, I don't know who or how it was ultimately decided which movies or how many of them should have been on the ballot).
Thanks to a book of film reviews I read as a teenager, I have always conflated The Leopard with a 1943 Val Lewton horror flick called The Leopard Man. I am not proud of this, and it's time I finally watch this (and that) and get the two films straight in my head.
Each great in their own way.
Someone be honest - is this movie as slow as it looks?
I've never read the novel, but it sounds a whole lot like the tremendously good "Buddenbrooks" by Thomas Mann. I BELIEVE Visconti was familiar with Mann...
Consider me intrigued by this movie.
We all have some classic movies that when checking off lists of movies we've seen, we go, "well, I definitely watched this once 20 years ago, but I honestly don't remember that much." The Leopard is one of those movies for me. I just remember it introducing me to the line, "the higher they climb, the more they show their tails." But, truthfully, the movie didn't make that much of an impression on me back then (not bad, but didn't stand out in my mind either).
There's a number of things that might have contributed to that impression (youth; for mentions of the visual lushness, let's just say, I didn't watch it on the best viewing system).
I probably owe it a rewatch at some point.
Absolutely give it another shot. I've had plenty of those experiences, too, because I devoured so many classics in college in the early '90s, most off VHS copies on a small monitor in the school library, and it would be a revelation to see them looking like they should and perhaps also at an age where I'd appreciate them more. (The Leopard is nothing if not a movie about getting old.)
Was recently brought to this film by Will Menaker’s (of Chapo fame) Movie Mindset podcast. They did a Lancaster ep, and this was one of the films, so ofc I watched it. Can’t believe I had never heard of it before. Such a deep, luxurious movie.
I was a bit surprised to see Burt Lancaster speaking Italian. Realized later he was dubbed
That's what's crazy about Lancaster's performance. Even dubbed, he towers over this thing with a fully felt and impactful performance. I can't think of an equally powerful performance that's been dubbed.