A ravishing Netflix adaptation of Italian literary masterpiece The Leopard brings a fresh dimension to period drama. Matthew Bell soaks up the Sicilian sunshine
It is among Italy’s most treasured novels and was memorably filmed by the revered director Luchino Visconti. You would have to be brave, foolhardy even, to make The Leopard for TV, especially if you’re not Italian.
But that’s exactly what UK producers Moonage Pictures have done with a superlative new version for Netflix of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s masterpiece. What’s more, the sumptuous six-part drama – set in mid-19th-century Sicily as Italy becomes a nation – was shot entirely in Italian.
“We started in English, which was the norm at the time with dramas like War and Peace and Chernobyl,” explains Moonage co-founder and producer Will Gould, “but brilliant shows like Netflix’s Squid Game, Money Heist and Lupin have changed the way we watch and what we watch.”
The decision to “go all Italian” – in casting and language – was reached in December 2022 before filming began the following spring. By then, The Leopard had been in development with Moonage since 2018 – and with Italian co-producer, Indiana Production, which owned the rights to the novel, for a couple of years before.
“Casting is all about cohesion, building a world through your cast, and using [a mix of] Brits, Italians and Americans wasn’t going to work,” says Gould. “Later, when we started watching rushes, I thought, ‘How could this have been any other way?’ It felt so good to see this absolutely pure version of the material.”
Fortuitously, but unknown to Gould, director Tom Shankland speaks more than passable Italian, thanks to a father who lectured in the language and a Sicilian wife.
(Credit: Netflix)
“Tom is lab-built to direct this show. He’s a Brit, but he knew the book well. I took him out to see Netflix in Italy, and he did an amazing pitch, all in Italian. He’s so enthusiastic. He gets people to do their best work, and we needed that for something as ambitious as The Leopard.”
Gould continues: “Tom was clear that there was a modern audience for [a series] which would not be drawn to Visconti’s film. I think of the film as a beautiful poem, but not everyone likes poetry. And, in terms of language, it is a bit of a mess. Burt Lancaster [the eponymous Leopard, the Prince of Salina] is amazing but it’s such a mash of dubbing and original dialogue. That’s [another] reason to do a pure Italian version.”
So, Italian it was, yet writer Richard Warlow had penned the script in English. That was no problem, thanks to an expert translation by Luca Briasco, the Italian voice of Stephen King, and his team of linguists.
Gould had sent Warlow a first edition of The Leopard to tempt him but he needed no persuasion, having read the novel in a single sitting. “It’s endlessly rewarding; the more you dig, the more you discover,” recalls Warlow.
“Whatever reputation I have comes from writing crime dramas, and [the producers] were excited by the idea of someone who is comfortable with genre coming to a classical drama.”
The screenwriter is being far too modest, having created the critically lauded BBC dramas Ripper Street and The Serpent, working with Gould on the former and Shankland on both.
Warlow’s approach to adapting The Leopard was to flesh out the under-explored characters, including the prince’s daughter Concetta, who he felt would have real resonance now. He also needed to add pace: “The film is almost funereal in pace… it had to have snap, otherwise contemporary audiences wouldn’t watch it. It needed a sense of peril to make the characters’ lives feel urgent.”
We had full respect for both the novel and the film, but being outsiders helped
When Television spoke to Warlow, he had just finished tweaking subtitles: “You can see your lines on the screen and that felt exposing as a writer – I wanted to make sure they were right. It’s been an amazing process: I write something in English, it’s translated into Italian, the actors and directors do their version of the translation, the Netflix subtitles team translate it back into English and then I go back over that. But I’m really pleased we made it in Italian.”
The British input to The Leopard was crucial for Indiana. “Collaborating with production companies from different countries brings enormous advantages,” says Indiana producer Daniel Campos Pavoncelli. “Being firmly rooted in Italy allowed us to deeply understand The Leopard, while having a British partner provided us with a global perspective.
“Nowadays, with an increasingly international audience, having different points of views is not just useful but essential to create content that resonates everywhere.”
Warlow, who was assisted by a co-writer, Benji Walters, adds: “If it’s successful, one of the reasons will be that we are not Italian. There’s so much freight over there about the book and the director. We came at it with full respect for both the novel and the film, but being outsiders was helpful.”
Whether viewers choose to watch it with English subtitles or in an excellent dubbed version, they will be drawn to a gripping family saga, gorgeous baroque palaces and a brutal but stunning Sicilian landscape. “The family story at the centre is so compelling, especially the father-daughter relationship. If you can invest in that, you’ll have a lovely time. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s in these extraordinary locations – you can almost taste the lemons,” says Gould.
Perhaps surprisingly, though, the politics of Italian unification are still relevant today. “When I first took on The Leopard, we were only a year and a half out from Brexit. This is a novel about an island choosing to join a unification process… while we were actually leaving a union,” says Warlow.
“What is a nation state? Are we better together? Who are the losers and winners? These questions have echoes in the novel – The Leopard grants you wisdom about a lot of these things."
On the shoot…
Tom Shankland was born to direct The Leopard. As the son of a Durham University Italian lecturer, he travelled around Italy as a child. ‘We’d pile into this ropey old Ford Transit van,’ he recalls. ‘Dad was passionate about Italian cinema, so he would get prints of movies and VHS tapes to show his students. I was a big Visconti fan – Death in Venice and Rocco and His Brothers are amazing films.’
Shankland’s wife, Leila Mauro, is Catania-born and has relatives on the island; he had already been on a road trip around Sicily, re-reading The Leopard. So he jumped at directing the Netflix series and ‘leapt for joy’ at the decision to make it in Italian. ‘It meant it could be authentic. We could embrace Sicilian slang,’ he says, adding, laughing: ‘It could sound like The Godfather Part II.’
Shankland decamped with his family to Italy for the eight-month shoot in Sicily (principally Palermo, Catania and Syracuse), Rome (doubling for Sicily) and Turin. ‘We shot as much as we could in the gloriously baroque and wonderfully shabby, decadent parts of Palermo,’ he says, praising the local authority. ‘As soon as they knew we were doing The Leopard – the crown jewels of Sicilian literature – they did so much. They closed down the Quattro Canti area in Palermo for four days, which had never been done before.’
on location with director Tom Shankland
(Credit: Lucia Iuorio/Netflix)
Interior scenes were shot in magnificent palazzi, including Palazzo Biscari in Catania and Palermo’s Palazzo Comitini. ‘We wanted to show the opulence of the Sicilian nobility’s lives, so audiences know what the prince is fighting for.’
Shankland and cinematographer Nicolaj Brüel were the only two non-Italian crew. ‘Nic has three words of Italian, which he speaks with great passion and marvellous imprecision.’
Brüel, though, had experience of shooting in Italy on Dogman with Gomorrah director Matteo Garrone. ‘Bringing in Nic from Denmark, which has a tradition of cinema that’s a little grittier than southern Europe, was good. It’s a beautiful world but people are also going to sweat; there’s dust and crumbling stonework.’
The duo used anamorphic lenses for a ‘classically widescreen [effect] – it’s an epic story on a big landscape. It also gives it a vintage vibe, although we never wanted to go super-nostalgic.’
The music, eschewing the pounding modern soundtrack Shankland used on SAS Rogue Heroes, was composed by Paulo Buonvino. ‘It’s not only posh people in the novel – you also get poor, rustic Sicily.’ So there’s Verdi and classical themes for the Salina family, but also a soundtrack for the timeless Sicilian landscape. ‘I love what he did with the music – our tastes were similar, even though he was born in Catania and I was born in rainy County Durham.’
Shankland, who now lives in London, is dismissive of his excellent Italian: ‘I spoke on set in what became known as “Itomliano”, not quite “Italiano”.’ But he says his Italian improved hugely, and his children benefited too. ‘The kids are hopefully going to be bilingual. We’re trying to make Italian the language of the house, although I slip into my lazy Walthamstow ways quite often.’
On the page…
The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) is Italy’s War and Peace in scope and renown, albeit over many fewer pages. Set amid the Risorgimento, Italy’s mid-19th-century unification, it focuses on a Sicilian aristocratic family at the centre of a maelstrom of change.
As Lampedusa’s novel (published posthumously in 1958) begins, Garibaldi’s Redshirts have invaded Sicily, determined to unify Italy. Among their number are Tancredi Falconeri (Saul Nanni), nephew of the Leopard, Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina (Kim Rossi Stuart). While Falconeri stands for modern Italy, the prince is of the old order, determined to preserve his family’s and Sicily’s traditions.
The threat, though, is not just from mainland Italy: Calogero Sedàra (Francesco Colella) – a ruthless, corrupt mayor, a prototype for the nascent mafia – is also out to topple Sicily’s ancien régime. And his daughter Angelica (Deva Cassel), like the prince’s daughter Concetta (Benedetta Porcaroli), is in love with Falconeri.
The Leopard is producer Will Gould’s favourite novel: ‘An uncle gave me a copy years ago. When I eventually read it, I discovered a masterpiece, and I’ve re-read it many times. After setting up Moonage Pictures seven years ago, [co-founder] Matthew [Read] and I were talking about bucket-list projects and this was mine. I thought, “If it works for me, it will work for a lot of people.”
‘The idea was to adapt the book, not the Visconti film. The film is obviously a masterpiece but it’s not the book, which has so much more in it. It’s one of the biggest small books; it’s slim but packed with [incident].’
