Rating: 
Summary: Criterion's The Leopard
Review: I am hoping someone can dispel my worry about this DVD.
This title is already available in Italy from www.dvd.it as a Region 2 disk, with a running time of 180 minutes. Its original title is IL GATTOPARDO. Is Criterion releasing the full version?
Don't forget: Paramount never released the full-length version of Bertolucci's 1900.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the best version
Review: I was extremely disappointed to read that Criterion has chosen to release the 161 minute 1963 version of The Leopard. This version was disavowed by Visconti and was printed by an inferior color process. When I saw it in 1963 I liked it but when I saw the 205 minute "European" version almost 20 years later I was overwhelmed. The forty missing minutes added greatly to the story and gave added dimensions to several of the main characters. As to hearing Burt Lancaster's own voice-this is just nonsense. Everybody else is dubbed!!! The 205 minute version does have a dubbed (Italian) voice for Burt but everybody else is speaking Italian. I thought the dubbing for Lancaster was excellent and, given that nothing in life can be exactly as one wants it,the better of two evils. Shame on Criterion for this compromise.
Rating: 
Summary: two versions on one box-set
Review: The special features listing above ("New transfer of of the 161-minute American release") is a bit confusing, and one may wonder if this new edition does not represent the 187 minute Italian release version; Visconti's original cut. This new DVD edition actually features the recently restored 187 minute version (in the full glory of Techniclor color schema, on a high-definition transfer), and the 161 minute US version is an additional feature. It is actually interesting to compare the two version (the English version supervised by Sidney Polack), the most noticable change is that the English version has a lengthy superimposed title exlaning the historical background. For non-Italian viewers who are not familiar with that country's history, it is true that the US version is actually more accessible, while Visconti's original cut presents us the complex and ironical visoions Visconti tried to exlore in this...probably his most autobiographical (he himself being from a respected aristocratic family) and largest production in his career.
Rating:
Summary: Visconti's Masterpiece
Review: I won't be redundant to what others have said - no need. However, I want to point out that the upcoming Criterion release contains both the 187-minute Italian language version and the 161-minute American version. The details Amazon provides only mention the latter. While I would love to be able to get an truly uncut version of this film (original running time was 205 minutes), I doubt such a version exists any longer. Still, what's there is magnificent.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Beautiful Film Ever Made
Review: When The Leopard arrived in our midst, in 1963, I was in my final year of high school. Fortunately, it arrived in the summer, as I and my friends went to the afternoon performance each of the six days it spent in our little, provincial town. One of those friends was studying cinematography, another later became a concert pianist, one was intent upon becoming a writer, and we were all considered ourselves critics of Italian film as only an 18-year-old could be in those dear, dead days when Visconti set the standard for the globe in beauty and creativity. Our unalterable opinion then, as now, is that The Leopard was, and remains, the most beautiful film ever made. Sadly, that conclusion is based predominately on memory. It has been enormously frustrating to try to view the film during the past 40 years, as it, unlike Visconti's other magnificent efforts, has been singularly unavailable. I have been chiding everyone who would listen to create a DVD of this film, and now it has been done. I profoundly hope mine is one of the earliest orders in, as I have an incredible desire not only to see this wonderful film again, but to own a copy which I can enjoy at my leisure. Salutations to all who have participated in this effort!
Rating:
Summary: Fifty dollars is too much !!!
Review: When hollywood distributors cut 40 minutes from this film before releasing it in America in 1963, they continued a tradition of selecting at least one masterwork from a bonafide film genius every decade and destroying it. Fortunately, unlike the other hatchet jobs (Lola Montez in the 50s, The Magnificent Ambersons in the 40s, etc) this one can still be seen in something close to its original form (approximately 20 of the missing 40 minutes have been restored). ...>Is it worth it? Well, where else can you see any version of The Leopard?... The restored version, although still not complete, may be a movie you will admire and watch many times over the years. Its companion catastrophe is not.... Criterion, this is a poor way to make a little extra money.
Rating: 
Summary: The Leopard
Review: I've seen this movie in the sixties, the one of most beautiful movies I've ever seen, and I never forgot it since. I consider The Leopard the best role of Burt Lancaster's. I don't understand how this could happened that it is unknown to many US viewers of my generation?
I cannot wait to buy The Leopard recorded on DVD, hopefully, in its original length (possibly close to 225 minutes it had in original) with all other original features kept reasonably unchanged.
Rating:
Summary: The real Gattopardo, a masterpiece
Review: First of all we must separate Visconti's Il Gattopardo, all the 225 minutes of it, from the mess recut, recolored, re-dubbed by 20th Century Fox and distributed as a sort of Burt Lancaster vehicle.
I speak of the original.
Under Count Lucchino Visconti di Modrone's direction and with the aid of 263 technicians, 4300 candles, 500 pairs of white gloves, 5113 costumes, real food, wine, 6 tailors with 56 seamsters, a laundry service, 4 bootmakers and 644 meters of track on which three cameras rolled, Burt Lancaster, Rina Morelli, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale and other magnificent actors transport us to a time of revolutonary change, destruction and renewal in Sicily, 1860.
Neither opulence nor poverty become so obtrusive that we forget what is going on with the Prince of Salina. The sets are magnificent: the villa at San Lorenzo is in real life Villa Boscogrande and the palazzo of the Princes Ponteleone where the great 44 1/2 minute ballroom scene takes place is none other than Palazzo Gangi in Palermo.
Amid all this splendor Prince Salina, the Leopard, senses the end of his world, of his own class. Actually he contributes to it by encouraging his penniless but charming nephew Tancredi (Delon) to marry the vulgar but extremely rich and beautiful Angelica, daughter of Calogero Sedara, one of the "up and coming" men of the post revolutionary world, a resident of the Prince's fief of Donnafugatta.
The Prince tries to make sense of this new world but the events leave a bitter taste in his mouth. He even repeats Tancredi's maxim, " things have got to change if we want them to stay as they are," but he does so without much conviction and he thinks of the family tomb at the Capuchins when the rest of Parlemitan society dances the evening away through the magnificent Baroque and Rococco rooms of the great Palazzzo Gangi.
It took 48 nights to film the ball scene and the results are apparent. It and the rest of the film are sheer perfection.
I hope the new version being released is based as much as possible on the original Visconti cut. Anything else is clearly not good enough.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating film of Lampedusa's great novel
Review: A DVD release of this flawed but fascinating film needs to happen. Lampedusa's epochal novel is likely not to have another cinematic presentation any time soon. This one, with Burt Lancaster miscast but nevertheless remarkable in the title role, should be available to film students and the film-going public.
Rating:
Summary: Can't WAIT for the DVD!!
Review: I saw this film as a child when it first came out, having read the excellent book on which it was based. It was on TV this weekend and I must say it's one of the best films I've ever seen -- on a number of different levels. As a costume historian, it's got some of the best, most accurate mid 19th costuming I've ever seen in film -- amazing considering how long ago it was made, at a time when Hollywood never seemed to get this right. (not that they do nowadays!) The ball dresses and hair are straight out of a Winterhalter painting. All of the actors -- Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale and especially Burt Lancaster give excellent, nuanced performances and the plot itself is very well crafted -- showing the Prince's inner issues/demons against the backcloth of a changing social order in the Garibaldi era. It's incomprehensible that this excellent, classic film isn't yet out on DVD. I can't wait -- I've got several friends who also want a copy.
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