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''The Leopard'' ((イタリア語:Il Gattopardo), "The Serval"; alternate title: ''Le Guépard'') is a 1963 Italian film by director Luchino Visconti, based on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel of the same name. ==Plot== Sicily, 1860. The corpse of a Royalist soldier is found in the garden of the villa of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina (the gardener quips that these soldiers stink as much in death as they do in life). As the Prince's large family enjoys the customary comforts and privileges of an ancient and noble name, including private services with their Jesuit priest, war has broken out between the King's army and the insurgent volunteer redshirts of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Among the rebels is the Prince's remarkably handsome and dashing nephew, Tancredi, with whose romantic politics the Prince shares some whimsical sympathy (and a good deal of material support—Tancredi is a notorious spendthrift). Moved by the political uprising, the Prince departs, with his priest as cover, for a nearby town where he engages in an assignation with a local woman; he complains that, despite siring seven children upon his devout Catholic wife, he has yet to see her navel. Garibaldi's army conquers the city and Sicily from the Bourbons, but the mood is muted and the prospects murky. The Prince muses upon the inevitability of change, with the middle class displacing the hereditary ruling class while on the surface everything remains the same. His priest worries about the future of the church under the Garibaldini, but the Prince assures him that it is only his class who has anything to lose. Refusing to bend to the tide of necessity, the Prince departs from Palermo for his summer villa in Donnafugata. The glamour of his name is still such as to lift roadblocks and allow passage to his family across disputed terrain. Arriving in the hilltop town, the Prince establishes his life just as it was always lived—hunting, social visits, etc.—despite the fact that a new national assembly has called a plebiscite which (thanks to the corrupt zealotry of the town's leading citizen, the incorrigibly bourgeois Don Calogero Sedara), the nationalists win 512-0. Sedara's grip on power and property in the region is matched only by his fawning sycophancy toward the Prince, whose incontestable nobility of character and ancestry leave Sedara looking distinctly plebeian. The Prince learns from his hunting companion, the town organist, that Sedara's wife is never seen publicly, as Sedara jealously guards her rare loveliness; furthermore she is an illiterate peasant he keeps merely as a breeding stock. Their only progeny, the exquisitely beautiful Angelica, on the other hand, Sedara clearly sees as a ticket of admittance to the high-class soirées of the nobility. Bringing her with him to the villa of the Salinas, he watches as both the Prince and Tancredi fall abjectly in love with her. Realizing his chance, he effectively pimps his daughter to the aristocracy; and Tancredi, as the only unmarried eligible member of the clan, offers his hand. This devastates the Prince's daughter, Concetta, who had formed a passionate attachment to her cousin, not unreasonably based on his florid demonstrations of affection; which he now forgoes in an instant. The Prince sees the wisdom of the match, since he knows his nephew's vaulting ambition and need for ready cash, which Angelica's father, greedy for familial prestige, will happily make available. So, with the mutual blessing of the Prince of Salina and Don Calogero, Tancredi and Angelica become engaged. During the lull after this notable event, a visitor from the constituent assembly comes to the villa, hoping for a private interview with the Prince. When his chance comes, he begs the great scholar and nobleman to join the senate and help direct the ship of state; particularly he hopes that the Prince's great compassion and wisdom will help alleviate the poverty and ignorance to be seen everywhere on the streets of Sicily. But the Prince demurs and refuses this invitation, claiming that Sicily prefers its sleep to the agitations of modernity. He sees a future when the leopards and the lions, along with the sheep and the jackals, will all live according to the same law, but he does not want to be a part of this democratic vision. He notes that Tancredi has shifted allegiances from the insurgent Garibaldini to the King's army, and wistfully recognizes in his nephew the kind of opportunist and time-server who will flourish in the new Italy. A great ball is held at the villa of a neighboring Prince, and the Salinas attend, along with a large troop from the King's army, and Tancredi, who uses this occasion to introduce his fiancée to society. Afflicted by a combination of melancholia, dyspepsia, and age, the Prince wanders forlornly from chamber to chamber, increasingly disaffected by the entire edifice of the society he so gallantly represents; until, at his nadir, the inestimable Angelica approaches and asks him to dance. Stirred and momentarily released from his cares, the great Prince accepts and for three minutes he is once more the elegant and dashing figure of his past, as he holds in his arms the inordinate beauty of the Italy to come, but which he will never inhabit. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Leopard (1963 film)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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