Slow and stately are the perfect words for Luchino Visconti's masterpiece. It is one of those movies where not a great deal happens but it is incredibly atmospheric and you are left feeling you really know these people. At the centre of the film is Burt Lancaster who was never better, his performance is deep and subtle, the sequence where a tear falls down his face sums up the film's theme of a generation left behind both because of age and new political realities. This is indeed a leopard that will not change his stripes or spots.

Visconti wanted Laurence Olivier for the part but had to accept Lancaster because his producers wanted a big box office star.

One of the most moving meditations on individual mortality in the history of the cinema. David Kehr

DVD available from the Criterion Collection :
http://www.amazon.com/