“The Leopard” (山猫 / Il Gattopardo), Original Japanese Complete-Version Re-Release Movie Poster 1981 (film 1963), B2 Size (51 × 73 cm) M100
This is an original Japanese B2 theatrical poster produced for the 1981 Japanese theatrical revival of Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard (Il Gattopardo / 山猫), starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale. The film was produced in 1963 and initially released in Japan on 18 January 1964 in a substantially shortened English-language version. This poster belongs to the important December 1981 Japanese re-release of Visconti’s Italian-language original complete version, distributed by Toho-Towa and explicitly advertised on the sheet as オリジナル完全版 — “Original Complete Version.”
Adapted from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s celebrated novel, The Leopard is set during the upheavals of the Risorgimento and the unification of Italy. Burt Lancaster plays Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, a Sicilian aristocrat who recognises that the social order which has sustained his family for generations is disappearing. His charismatic nephew Tancredi, played by Alain Delon, embraces the changing political landscape and falls in love with Angelica, played by Claudia Cardinale, the beautiful daughter of the newly wealthy bourgeois Don Calogero. The film won the Palme d’Or at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival and remains one of the great achievements of European historical cinema.
Poster design
A magnificent Japan-specific revival design celebrating the film’s extraordinary visual opulence and aristocratic world. The upper half uses a sophisticated grey ground with three oval photographic portraits: Burt Lancaster as the Prince of Salina, Alain Delon as Tancredi, and Claudia Cardinale as Angelica, presented in sumptuous period interiors and costume.
The enormous pink Japanese title 山猫 dominates the centre, while the original Italian title IL GATTOPARDO appears at upper left. Alongside it, the poster prominently announces 「1963年 カンヌ映画祭グランプリ オリジナル完全版 ルキノ・ヴィスコンティ監督作品」, celebrating the film’s Cannes triumph and, crucially, identifying this campaign as the original complete-version revival.
The lower half is given over almost entirely to the film’s legendary ballroom sequence, one of the most celebrated extended set pieces in cinema history. Lancaster and Cardinale dance beneath immense chandeliers, surrounded by an elaborately dressed aristocratic society whose splendour is inseparable from its impending decline. The image perfectly embodies the film’s central theme: a social class glowing at its most magnificent at precisely the moment it begins to disappear.
The vertical Japanese copy on the right reinforces this idea, describing the film as a grand epic by a master filmmaker depicting, with cool and penetrating observation, the magnificent twilight of aristocratic society against a land in upheaval.
This is therefore not the shortened 1964 Japanese first-release poster, but the highly desirable 1981 Japanese “Original Complete Version” theatrical revival poster, created when Japanese audiences were finally given the opportunity to see Visconti’s fuller Italian-language version.
It is over 44 years old!
Condition
Excellent. The poster retains superb colour and presentation, with the rich ballroom photography, vivid pink title and elegant grey upper field remaining exceptionally attractive. There are only very minor signs of age and handling, with no significant condition issues affecting the central artwork or typography. Please review the photo carefully—it shows the exact poster for sale.
It is not a reproduction or a reprint.
Certificate of Authenticity included.
