The Leopard, masterful Luchino Visconti literary adaptation starring Alain Delon, Burt Lancaster
Italian director's adaptation of Giovanni di Lampedusa's novel about an ageing Sicilian prince, played by Burt Lancaster, and featuring Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, is one of his finest films.
Giuseppe di Lampedusa's fabulous novel - said by many critics to be Italy's finest piece of historical literature - was gloriously transferred to the silver screen by master director Luchino Visconti ... and then mostly forgotten.
The story concerns an ageing man, Sicily's majestic Prince Fabrizio, who watches as the world in which he was reared slowly crumbles around him.
It's the Italy of the 1860s and Garibaldi's Red Shirts are marching through the land, tearing down the old world order. Fabrizio (played with stoic supremacy by Burt Lancaster) sees the changes - but knowingly can do little about it.
His life is one of pomp and pageantry, and this continues to go on while the rest of his world braces for change. He casts a wary eye over his beloved nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon), who has returned a war hero and now marries into the rising 'new class' (luckily for him it comes in the comely shape of Claudia Cardinale).
And, by the film's glorious conclusion, he is resigned to his fate - an ageing afterthought as time marches on.