Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s novel The Leopard must be counted as one of the dozen or so towering achievements of cinema. The film is a genuine epic – it is indeed long and lavish – but it is also concerned with the fate of a nation; in this case, the revolutionary upheaval of il Risorgimento. However, it is also a film of great intimacy, which singles in on the fate of one family, and one man in particular, the eponymous Sicilian aristocrat who watches as his world come to an end. Visconti was both a Marxist and a member of the Italian aristocracy, and this unusual duality perhaps accounts for his film’s complexity, as his sympathies are with both the new order and the stoical Leopard.

In order to achieve this grand vision, Visconti had to go cap in hand to 20th Century Fox and take on an American star, Burt Lancaster. The latter was a revelation. Even in Italian, Lancaster gives the performance of a lifetime. The former, however, hated the film, despite its Palme D’or at winning the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, and hastily dubbed the film into English and senselessly chopped almost thirty minutes. Upon its fortieth anniversary, the film was finally restored to its full length and original language. This second digital restoration has concentrated on returning Visconti and Giuseppe Rotunno’s Technirama images to their full glory. The result confirms that The Leopard is quite probably the most beautiful colour movie ever made.