Clarisse Loughrey’s Show of the Week column spotlights a new show to watch or skip. This week: Political Italian historical drama The Leopard.
With Netflix’s The Leopard, Italy now has its own The Crown: a lavishly budgeted monarchical drama that’s not sure what to do with the decline at its very centre. Both series, too, are made by Brits—here, screenwriters Benji Walters and Richard Warlow, alongside Ripper Street’s Tom Shankland as lead director, though this is Italian language with an Italian cast.
The Crown, as it hobbled through the 20th century history of the British royal family, was forced to square its rosy portrait of jewels, reserved manners, and corgis with, not only a string of scandals, but the increasing tide of republicanism in the British consciousness. The Leopard starts with this problem. It’s set during the period of the Risorgimento in the 1860s, otherwise known as the unification of Italy. And though it ended with proclamation of Victor Emmanuel II as king, this was still a time of increasing republican fervour, spearheaded by the politician and activist Giuseppe Mazzini.
The Leopard is based on the novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, himself the last in a line of minor Sicilian princes. It focuses on the Salina clan, headed by Prince Fabrizio (played in the series by Kim Rossi Stuart). In the background of events, General Giuseppe Garibaldi, and his army of “Redshirts”, are sweeping through the island. Fabrizio knows his days of unparalleled influence are numbered. And yet, he bristles at how swiftly his favoured nephew Prince Tancredi Falconeri (Saul Nanni) has joined the Redshirts and embraced their inevitable future.
It’s a book that sparked heated discussions after its posthumous publication in 1958. The competing viewpoints of its characters led some to lambast it as conservative, others to insist it was a ruthless attack on the upper classes.
Primarily, this is a story rife with decay, whatever position you take on the Salinas’s fate. Luchino Visconti captured that mood to a tee in his 1963 adaptation, starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, and Alain Delon. It’s a pre-ghost story, a velvet cloak of melancholy. And, presumably, with the luxury of Netflix’s six-episode run, there should be even more room to revel in that misery. Yet, it’s hard to grasp much of that feeling when the series seems far more concerned with pillars of Italian excellence, rich food and intimidatingly beautiful women.
That’s all I really took away from The Leopard. The tensions between Fabrizio and Tancredi are so inconsistent that their emotions seem sometimes erratic, but there’s plenty of time to contemplate the way the sun beams down on the gently curving steps of their villa residence (why do I feel like, if I were to log on to Airbnb, I might conveniently find that property available to book?), the perfect ringlets of an actress’s hair, or the way someone always seems to intrude on an actor when they’re butt naked. The sex is there but sporadic—just enough to make sure people stop scrolling on their phones. And, when a new beautiful woman is introduced, it’s always with same tight mid shot, as she draws her eyes up through fluttering eyelashes to confront the viewer.
One of those women is Angelica Sedara, played by the daughter of Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci, Deva Cassel. And, yes, she really is the spitting image of her mother. Angelica is the daughter of the newly wealthy mayor, who catches the eye of both Fabrizio and Tancredi, despite the latter seemingly only having eyes for Concetta (Benedetta Porcaroli). Concetta’s part is somewhat expanded here, but not to take advantage of a feminine perspective on regime changes, but to move the love pentangle to the very centre of the show’s story. “I’m not sure if this world of politics fascinates or repels me,” Fabrizio muses. That’s pretty much the thesis of Netflix’s The Leopard, too.
