The disappointment of seeing The Leopard is in direct proportion to the promises of the project…. [The] film had everything to make it a smashing success, even the excellent photography of [Giuseppe] Rotunno….

[Unlike] most films made in this part of the world, [The Leopard] is not a producer's film. It is a director's film…. And, what's more, it is the film of a man with great experience in working from literary sources; also, this man is an aristocrat himself, coming from a most distinguished Italian family. (p. 35)

Visconti is a director whose films have largely derived from literary works; but he approached these works as a pretext, as it were, to make films that stand on their own feet and not to make films as mere illustrations or adaptations of the books. In viewing The Leopard one is astonished by the faithfulness with which the director follows...