Visconti has tried to encompass the whole of Lampedusa's novel in [The Leopard] and to include all its incidents and all its characters. He has succeeded in doing so. However, even three and a half hours aren't sufficient for such a task, and the result is that events and characters are sketchy. The American spectator unfamiliar with the details of the Italian Risorgimento [the movement for the liberation and unification of Italy between 1750 and 1870] is going to be a bit lost. This will not trouble the Italian spectator, who is fully acquainted with these characters, but for the rest of us they remain only puppet figures….

Many of what seem at first to be faults in the film can be justified, or at least explained, by the novel itself. As the camera travels interminably up the walls of Palermo palazzi, lovingly scrutinizing gilded cherubs, frescoes, and damask draperies...