“Every little thing should change for every little thing to stay the identical,” Tancredi, Prince Fabrizio Salina’s beloved nephew, says in a now-famous line from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s novel “The Leopard.” The identical philosophy applies to the appear and feel of the Sicily-set traditional’s Netflix miniseries adaptation, which launched globally Wednesday and marks the streamer’s most bold Italian authentic to this point.
“The Leopard” chronicles the modifications in Sicilian life and society in the course of the Nineteenth-century unification of Italy, often known as the Risorgimento. When tasked with telling the story in 2025, the lavish present’s manufacturing and costume groups confronted a monumental problem in envisioning a contemporary tackle the sensual Sicilian saga. There would even be inevitable comparisons to “The Leopard’s” first adaptation — Luchino Visconti’s 1963 cinema traditional starring Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon and Burt Lancaster, which received the Palme d’Or at Cannes Movie Competition.
Netflix’s six-episode epic stars high mannequin Deva Cassel — who’s Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel’s daughter — as Angelica Sedara, the younger, gorgeous center class lady performed by Cardinale within the authentic. Benedetta Porcaroli (“Child”) performs Concetta, the prince’s daughter who’s the opposite feminine lead, whereas Kim Rossi Stewart performs Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina, who within the film was performed by Lancaster. The present’s key solid additionally consists of Saul Nanni (“Love & Gelato”) because the prince’s nephew Tancredi Falconeri, performed by Delon within the movie.
On the subject of setting the 2 variations aside, manufacturing designer Dimitri Capuani says the workforce averted all of the areas the place Visconti’s “The Leopard” was shot. The a number of David di Donatello Award winner, recognized for his work with Matteo Garrone on “Story of Tales and “Pinocchio,” additionally notes that the manufacturing workforce “went for a considerably lighter contact” through the use of a much less “formal” aesthetic.
That stated, identical to within the movie, Sicily — with its sun-scorched landscapes, crumbling palaces and gilded ballrooms — options prominently within the present, although one of many ballroom scenes was really shot in Rome.
Capuani says that in early conferences with the present’s lead director Tom Shankland (“The Serpent”) and cinematographer Nicolaj Brüel (“Pinocchio”), they determined to immerse viewers “as a lot as attainable into the truth” of Nineteenth century Sicily. They strove for realism within the general environment, but in addition in capturing “the decadence of native the Aristocracy throughout that interval.” As reference, Capuani drew inspiration from Nineteenth century Sicilian panorama painter Francesco Lojacono. This led him to a desert space within the coronary heart of Sicily often known as the Gullies of Cannizzola. It’s a “lunar panorama,” as he places it, by which the prince and his household journey by way of horse-drawn carriage to their summer time palace in a city referred to as Donnafugata. The scene concerned a whole bunch of staff placing in tons of grime paving in order that the carriage’s wheels might spin.
Costume designer Carlo Poggioli additionally felt the stress of dwelling as much as the Visconti movie, particularly when it got here to comparisons with the work of his mentor Piero Tosi, who did the costumes for the film masterpiece. He additionally confronted a extra sensible downside: Poggioli had to offer some 6,000 Nineteenth-century costumes, together with 350 night robes and greater than 500 army outfits.
“I used to be fairly scared,” he says. “I knew there was hardly something left of the costumes Visconti used greater than 60 years in the past, except for the long-lasting ones. And you’ll’t simply make every little thing from scratch. Plus, this time round, it was one thing like 5 instances as many scenes!”
So Poggioli and Indiana Manufacturing arrange a costume-making lab in Rome with as much as 25 seamstresses toiling away. They used greater than 11,000 ft of cloth simply to make new costumes for feminine solid and extras. On the identical time, his workforce scoured costume homes in Italy, London and Madrid for each repertoire costumes and to provoke collaborations on new ones. Their standout companion was Rome’s Tirelli-Trappetti home, which has contributed to greater than a dozen Oscar wins.
Among the many present’s key costumes is the primary ballgown worn by Cassell as Angelica Sedara, who turns into a catalyst of social disruption.
Netflix
“It’s a shade of fuchsia, nearly purple, that utterly distinguishes her from all the opposite characters, particularly the opposite girls,” Poggioli says.
Typically, Poggioli and director Shankland went for a colour palette that was true to the interval, primarily based on meticulous analysis, however that additionally outlined the characters. Against this, Porcaroli as Concetta, who’s head over heels in love along with her cousin Tancredi, wears “far more subdued colours” which might be “extra congenial to a lady whom we first see in a convent,” Poggioli notes.
“Each character had their colour, their kind of embroidery and their particular cloth,” Poggioli factors out. Within the case of Rossi Stewart because the prince, Poggioli “tried to assist him battle the warmth by dressing him in beautiful linens, whereas sustaining his princely class.”
And finally, Poggioli overcame the worry that his work can be in contrast with that of his maestro. “There was this large diatribe with a few of my colleagues who instructed me, ‘How are you going to take it on when the unique is such a masterpiece?’ However I do know that Piero would have pushed me to do it,” he says. “I knew that I needed to be true to the novel and on the identical time that I might make a departure from Visconti’s aesthetic, by giving it extra lightness and perhaps a bit extra reality.”
Provides the present’s lead producer, Fabrizio Donvito: “Our aim was to create a sequence that paid homage to the tradition and immense fame of Tomasi di Lampedusa’s masterpiece. We aimed to inform a narrative that got here from afar and, regardless of being set in one other period, felt related as we speak.”
Italy’s Indiana Manufacturing shingle, which is a part of Vuelta Group, produced “The Leopard” in tandem with Moonage Footage, the U.Ok. shingle headed by the producers behind “Peaky Blinders.” The present is produced by Donvito, Daniel Campos Pavoncelli, Marco Cohen and Benedetto Habib for Indiana Manufacturing and by Will Gould, Frith Tiplady and Matthew Learn for Moonage Footage.
