IL GATTOPARDO (The Leopard, 1963) **1/2 Italian Gone With the Wind, bathed in the conflicting and complementary colours of Sicily. It's a beautiful film in several ways. The film is, itself, textured and contoured through an incredibly complex process that I've yet to begin to understand, but one that renders colours invoking the Dutch masters in a sun-drenched sandstorm. And there's not a dull shot: Luchino Visconti doesn't offer us a single frame, in more than three hours, that wouldn't work wonderfully as a postcard. Fields, churches, ballrooms, dogs, farms, soldiers, reception rooms, children, women, even businessmen. Much is said about the power dynamic between the interactions among the suffocating and omnipresent Catholic church, an aristocracy bereft of a compass of any kind, and readily exploited revolutionaries. Visconti assumes that the viewers already understand the history and nuances of the Garibaldi revolution in minute detail, which means that I missed out on more than a little bit, and others are likely to miss out on damn near all of it except for the aphorisms. But they're powerful, the aphorisms, alone worth far more than the requisite investment. There are several of what I, admittedly working somewhat in the dark, perceive as technical problems: several of the actors, Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale amongst them, didn't sound quite right in Italian for whatever reasons, and so their mouths stop moving yet their words continue for what sometimes seems like 15 minutes. Doesn't matter much, they both look just right for the role-he in his elegant sideburns, she of the smoldering eyes operating from miles beneath the surface of her perfect skin. Alain Delon and Paolo Stoppa are impressive as the respective faces of nuevo revolutionary Italia and old money Sicily, and Terrence Hill (billed as Mario Girotti) even shows up, but he's not funny yet. The big party that takes up nearly the entire last hour is really boring. But, is that part of the point? So you have an exquisitely physically attractive film with some dubious technical aspects, and nearly limitless but largely unrealized potential. It's an Italian film, then.