ROME (AP) — “The Leopard,” a new Netflix series, takes the classic Italian novel by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa and transforms it into a sumptuous period piece showing the struggles of the aristocracy in 19th-century Sicily, during tumultuous social upheavals as their way of life is crumbling around them.
Tom Shankland, who directs four of the eight episodes, had the courage to attempt his own version of what is one of the most popular films in Italian history. The 1963 movie “The Leopard,” directed by Luchino Visconti, starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale, won the Palme d’Or in Cannes.
One Italian critic said that it would be the equivalent of a director in the United States taking “Gone with the Wind” and turning it into a series, but Shankland wasn’t the least bit intimidated.
He said that he didn’t think of anything other than his own passion for the project, which grew out of his love of the book. His father was a university professor of Italian literature in England, and as a child, he loved the book and traveling to Sicily with his family.
The book tells the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, the Prince of Salina, a tall, handsome, wealthy aristocrat who owns palaces and land across Sicily.
His comfortable world is shaken with the invasion of Sicily in 1860 by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was to overthrow the Bourbon king in Naples and bring about the Unification of Italy.
The prince’s family leads an opulent life in their magnificent palaces with servants and peasants kowtowing to their every need. They spend their time at opulent banquets and lavish balls with their fellow aristocrats.
Shankland has made the series into a visual feast with tables heaped with food, elaborate gardens and sensuous costumes. He has taken advantage of drone technology to show the family traveling in coaches across the Sicilian countryside or soldiers marching through Palermo.
The series was filmed in magnificent palaces in the Sicilian cities of Palermo, Siracusa and Catania. The famed ballroom scene where the prince dances the waltz with Angelica was in the ballroom at the Grand Plaza Hotel in Rome.
The prince has taken under his wing his beloved orphaned nephew, Tancredi, who stuns the family by joining Garibaldi’s men known as the Red Shirts.
Italian actor Saul Nanni takes on the role once played by Delon. He said that he was honored to play such an “iconic character” and be able to follow in the footsteps of such an “amazing” actor as Delon.
Tancredi seems set to woo and perhaps marry the prince’s beloved eldest daughter, Concetta, which would bring him officially into the noble family and protect the line. But the stunningly beautiful Angelica, the daughter of the newly rich mayor of Donnafugata, the town where the family resides in the summer, changes everything.
Angelica is played by Deva Cassel, a model in addition to being an actor, and daughter of Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel.
“It was a real honor for me to be able to step into the shoes of Claudia Cardinale, who is such a magnificent actress, who is unreachable, untouchable,” Cassel said. “But it was really great to be able to experience such a big set. It was my second project, so it was very stressful to take on such a huge responsibility.”
Angelica and the prince’s daughter, Concetta, played by Benedetta Porcaroli, flounce through the scenes in lavish costumes, dresses with tight bodices and large skirts with cage crinolines.
Cassel noted the sharp contrast with modern clothing that “adapts to our own body shape.”
She said that squeezing herself into the bodices with tiny waists in the heat of Sicily changed her physically.
“I saw some modifications after six months of shooting,” Cassel said. “I think I lost about two centimeters on my waist because of the heat, and because of it being a very tight space.”
But she learned a new skill: “How to best dance with these clothes that control your body.”
The book, film and now series, which debuts on March 5 on Netflix, focus on the struggle of the prince with the societal changes and his realization that he is losing political and personal power.
“That is the thing that probably touched me the most,” said Kim Rossi Stuart, who perfectly slipped into the role, helped by his natural height and elegance. “It is the condition of his character, specifically the sensation of being at the end of an era, but also of his own lifetime.”
