235 The Leopard

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Isn't that a cheetah?

The film in French actually means cheetah not leopard. I know coz I went to the zoo last week and made the same mistake when I saw cheetah cubs labelled 'Guépards" and thought they must be Leopards because of the film but was soon put straight by a zoo-keeper

[StevenJ0001]

Isn't that a cheetah?

The film in French actually means cheetah not leopard. I know coz I went to the zoo last week and made the same mistake when I saw cheetah cubs labelled 'Guépards" and thought they must be Leopards because of the film but was soon put straight by a zoo-keeper

Interesting!

[ellipsis7]

Indeed... The Italian title is IL GATTOPARDO... Looking in to it, 'Ghepardo' is the Italian word for 'Cheetah', while 'Leopardo' is the usage for 'Leopard'... 'Gattopardo' pans out as 'Serval' in English, described as a medium sized African cat, neither Leopard nor Cheetah, but with the longest legs of any cat... Is this a Serval in the Cannes photo then, like so?... I guess not...



And...

The serval (Italian gattopardo) was the symbol of the Tomasi family, princes of Lampedusa, whose best-known member was Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, author of one of the most famous Italian novels of the 20th century, Il Gattopardo.

But I guess THE SERVAL (or inded THE CHEETAH) is not as resonant and catching an English title as THE LEOPARD, which at least phonetically resembles IL GATTOPARDO best...

[StevenJ0001]

Really interesting! I'll never call the film The Leopard again without thinking twice.

[ellipsis7]

Oh dear oh dear... I suppose it was inevitable...

[What A Disgrace]

I was so excited that a 4K release had leaked and now I'm going to invoke the elder gods instead.

[MichaelB]

Oh dear oh dear... I suppose it was inevitable...

Thanks for drawing my attention to this - director Tom Shankland is a former flatmate of mine, and so I can confirm first-hand that he knows his Italian cinema (and wider Italian culture in general). So I’ll be genuinely interested to see this.

[Matt]

I’ve looked at several articles and still can’t figure out if this is being produced in English or Italian. It has a very pretty Italian cast but am less interested if they’re all going to be speaking their lines in phonetic English. Maybe they’ll just do like the Visconti film and have everyone speak their native language on set and dub it all in post.