There was great anticipation for the presentation of The gotopardothe new Netflix series taken from the Tomasi di Lampedusa novel of the same name. The press conference was held in Rome and to be precise at the Grand Hotel Plaza in via del Corso, one of the places where the series was shot. In fact, it is here that one of the most important scenes of the novel and therefore of his transposition was shot, that of the Grand Ball where the Prince of Salina “passes the witness” to the new and most unscrupulous generation, the one that will make Italy, represented by Grandus Tancredi and his girlfriend Angelica.
At the press conference where the protagonists Kim Rossi Stuart, Benedetta Porcaroli, Deva Cassel and Saul Nanni participated. On stage with them also the director Tom Shankland, who directed the episodes 1-2-3-6, with Richard Warlow (creator of the series and screenwriter, together with Benji Walters), Tinny Andreatta (vice president for the Italian content of Netflix ), Fabrizio Donvito (producer and Co-Cei Indiana Production) and Will Gould (producer Moonage Pictures).
A series with great ambitions
The presentations was Tinny Andreatta who did not hide the ambitious objectives of the series: “The gotopardo For Netflix Italia represents the artistic and productive ambition we have for our country. We made a sumptuous and exciting series that captures the topicality of a novel that, when it came out, shook the literary world and which today has become a great classic outside the time “. The budget was not revealed but Andreatta there He kept to emphasize that he is up to the ambitions of this project: “We wanted the splendor of this story and the beauty of locations and customs were up to excellence and the Talent used to create the series “explained Andreatta.
The series was shot between Palermo, Syracuse, Catania, Turin and Rome. And as is evident from the trailer and from the first images shared by Netflix, the deployment of the vehicles has been imposing to say the least.
To those of Andreatta were added the words of Fabrizio Donvito, producer and co-cer Indiana Production, who produced the series together with Moonage Pictures: “The idea came to me on a set. I bored myself and I thought of a series on AR
Italian histocracy, a kind of downon Abbey. And it was at that point that the Leopard came to mind and I discovered that there would be a rod on the rights of the book that we won thanks to our vision shortly, not for economic reasons “kept to clarify Donvito.
The Gattopardo, the cast and the first images of the Netflix series on the novel by Tomasi di Lampedusa
The inevitable comparison with the Visconti film
The whole artistic cast intervened at the press conference. Kim Rossi Stuart said he worked a lot on the character starting from his physicality: “When I read the screenplay I confronted the mammoth image of a man who with his steps made the furniture tremble. But then I read the book, I approached the inner world of the prince and I had access to his fragility.
If Stuart as well as Deva Cassel, Saul Nanni and the other interpreters were able to work on the book, the same cannot be said of Benedetta Porcaroli, given that the character she played, that of Concetta, was very remodeled by the screenwriters Richard Warlow and Benji Walters. “Compared to the novel I was the only one who had to work with imagination – said Porcaroli – because the character in the book happen to things, but there is no real development for this young woman. I imagined what could mean For her to live with a figure like that of her father. not for a question feminist, but for a human question.
While technical and artistic cast told the series, it seemed to hear a spectrum that was wandering in the Hotel Plaza. That of Luchino Visconti. The director signed the homonymous film based on The Gattopardo considered unanimously, one of the greatest masterpieces of world cinema. The recent disappearance of Alain Delon, who had also collaborated with the Gattopardo with the director, did only revive in the collective memory the memory of that film with which it is almost inevitable to make comparisons.
Alain Delon, young and beautiful in The Leopard. Claudia Cardinale remembers him like this
Asked by journalists on the inevitable combination with the film, Andreatta said: “The starting point is always the novel, but each translation is unique and each transposition is personal. We are talking about the current affairs of this novel and today we can, through ours look, to reread it in a unique way. Adaptations of the great classics that have been adapted numerous times and each reading has been unique “.
A goal Made in UK?
The show runner of the series is Richard Warlow, to direct most of the episodes and therefore give a very personal vision of the series was the director Tom Shankland. Giuseppe Capotondi shot the fourth episode and Laura Luchetti the fifth. Shankland said he had a particular relationship with Sicily since his father was a professor of Italian literature and that he often followed him on his journey around the peninsula as a child. But among all the places he visited, Sicily remained in his heart: “Here I smoked my first cigarette at 6 years old. I still remember the image of some kids who ran at sunset after having fished polyps. I come from England of the North East which is not London, it is a world in black and white and when I returned to Sicily for me that was a world in Technicolor “.
Warlow also said he was honored to have been able to contribute to the project: “Thirty years after studying the book and the film, sitting to work for this TV series was a challenge but positive. Think of this world full of sun, dust , natural beauty, all things we don’t have in London, was a privilege “.
The fact that the creators of the series were all British and that their vision of Sicily was that of a magical place, full of dust and sun, made some eyebrow raise. Now that we speak so much of cultural appropriation, who asked for a journalist, why not employ Italian writers or directors? “The project that was brought to us was that of Richard – explained Andreatta – was the best talent that could write this story, I was struck by his vision. All the rest is immersed in Italian, from the cast to Paolo’s music Bonvino (Sicilian, he kept us himself to clarify it, NDA) “.
For its part, the showrunner kept us to clarify that during the whole realization he and the whole creative team made use of historical consultants, one Italian and an English one, to be able to tell the historical period to the best and to build likely characters and credible. Another critical point was the work done on the temporal jumps of the book on which the screenwriters took some creative freedoms, but always with the supervision of the effects.
The word now belongs to the public, who will be able to see the series starting from March 5 on Netflix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hddimry-shq
