Netflix’s The Leopard: A Prince and a Princess in a battle of wills

The Leopard Episode 4 Recap and Review

This episode was bookended by two Salina family occasions, a wedding and a funeral, both of them carrying their own share of relief and grief. Angelica’s marriage to Tancredi was a triumph of the over two decade long quest by Don Calogero Sedara to reach the highest echelons of society. The money came to him first, via a series of unethical business deals that saw him rise as the lords of yesteryears began their financial descent. With his daughter now married to a Count, the nephew of the Prince of Salina, Don Calogero had successfully merged his new money with the oldest of blood. 

The character of Don Calogero was not a celebration of grit and the triumph of hard work, rather, an indictment of unchecked capitalism. There was never going to be an enough for him. That his daughter had married relatively well (relatively, because Tancredi had no money of his own) was just another step in an unending climb. With Angelica and Tancredi in Turin, where Tancredi worked a government post in the new Italy, Don Calogero just went on to his next moneymaking scheme. 

It was disturbing to watch Don Calogero so casually lie to Paolo when the latter caught the former with Russo, who was supposed to be Don Fabrizio’s man. Don Fabrizio had sent Paolo with Russo to survey their lands, a father trying to train his heir on his future duties. Don Fabrizio, of course, had no idea that the man he thought he had treated kindly despite discovering his theft had gone on to betray him. Don Fabrizio thought he had a loyal servant; without him noticing, Russo had gone on to search for a wealthier master, one with no scruples, one who was freer with bounty, one who could raise him in ways an old fashioned aristocrat like Don Fabrizio never would. 

Don Calogero had come to Don Fabrizio with a proposal, to invest in land that belonged to the church, one that bordered Don Fabrizio’s own property. Don Calogero wanted to purchase the church’s land, for pennies, of course, then mine it for sulphur. Don Fabrizio refused to aid this scheme.

When Paolo found Russo kneeling for Don Calogero, Angelica’s father smoothly lied about the land. He claimed he had not yet told Don Fabrizio about it. He presented it as an investment opportunity to Paolo. He did mention the bandits that were already taking sulphur, but his carefully chosen words were meant to manipulate Paolo, to touch that part of him that just wanted to make his father proud. 

Did Don Calogero intend for Paolo to get in trouble with the bandits? Paolo rode there thinking his father’s name would protect him. He had no idea of the danger, and Don Calogero, outside of telling him of the bandits, did not warn him. Don Calogero even claimed weak lungs as an excuse not to get closer to the boundary the bandits erected. 

Proud and innocent, Paolo demanded that they be allowed through to inspect the mine. One of the bandits shot his rifle in the air. The sound agitated Tancredi’s horse, which Paolo had ridden with his father’s permission. 

Just like that, a prince, a future ruler of an ancient family, was dead. Russo never mentioned Don Calogero’s involvement in Paolo’s death. When the Salina family started receiving mourners, Don Calogero was there, kissing the Princess’s hand, the mother of the son he led to his death. 

Don Calogero’s scheming was the through line from the wedding to the funeral, but it was the battle of wills between Don Fabrizio and his daughter Concetta that powered the episode. The Leopard started with Don Fabrizio’s dangerous journey to fetch his daughter Concetta from the convent, at the behest of his worried wife. As much as Don Fabrizio doted on his nephew Tancredi, Concetta was the clear apple of his eye. Paolo was heir by birth, but Concetta was his heir in spirit. As strong willed as her father, when Concetta decided to take her broken heart back to the convent that she had in the past wanted to escape, no intervention could change her mind. 

What was Concetta’s purpose in trying to get to know her father’s mistress? Was it curiosity over her father’s sin? Was she trying to understand men and their desires? Was she trying to minister to a lost member of the flock as part of her journey toward taking her vows as a nun? Was she simply trying to rile her father, to show him that she knew of his disrespect, that he did not have the high road in their fight?

Whatever her reasons may be, it was Don Fabrizio’s unnamed mistress who came closest to verbalising the complex feelings that drove Concetta to the sanctuary of the convent. ‘How close you came to touching that ecstasy, and to feeling your first moment of desire.’ That was it. A princess like Concetta would have been raised to be consistently under control of her emotions. Her love for Tancredi was a safe kind of love, at first, when she could pass it off as the love of one cousin to another. But the both of them grew up. When Tancredi returned an experienced soldier, he was already a man to Concetta’s growing woman. That they had known each other all their lives made Concetta feel safe enough to lower the usual aristocratic girl’s guard. Yes, she said no to running away with him, but she made moves to get her father to consider marrying them. She told him she loved him. That would have been monumental enough to any young woman, but to a woman like Concetta, to have a love that she opened herself to be suddenly shut down, in her grief she must have thought that she would never again have that opportunity. Her father’s lover told her that was not the case.

From Don Fabrizio’s point of view, Concetta and Tancredi were not right for each other. What Concetta felt for Tancredi was an infatuation. He could be right, but a sheltered princess like Concetta would not know that. How could she understand the varying degrees of feeling when she has not had the opportunity to feel them? Concetta did not feel free enough to search for another love, but she did feel free enough to unleash her anger on her father, through her silence and the protection of the convent walls. She ran away from the pain she did not know how to process. 

On the day of the wedding, a glowing Angelica and a heartbroken Concetta were left alone briefly, there in the garden where Concetta had run to let her tears flow. Angelica gently told her she had not been beaten, to remember who she was. From Angelica’s point of view, a penniless handsome aristocrat was the best she could hope for; despite her father’s massive wealth, her low birth would still be taken against her in most circles. Concetta had no such restrictions. She was a beautiful princess. All she needed was to want a husband, and she would find one. That was logical in their society, not in Concetta’s broken heart. And so she ignored her family and did manual labour inside the convent, and did not come home until tragedy forced her to.

The fourth episode of The Leopard did not reach the heights of the third, but it continued to be a solid meditation on aristocratic loss, made even more heartbreaking by the death of young Paolo. Two more episodes to go! 

Strays

👑The Prince gave Angelica a wedding gift, a necklace that was given to his mother by Ferdinand I in Naples. Don Calogero’s gift to the groom was a horse from the stud farm of Queen Isabel of Spain. Tancredi left this horse in the Salina house because it would have been too cold for the horse in Turin. This was the same horse that Paolo used when he went surveying the land with Russo, the horse that Russo blamed for his death, the horse that Don Fabrizio shot instead of Russo. 

👑Why on earth did Angelica give Concetta a handkerchief embroidered with A and T (for Angelica and Tancredi)? Was that to give her a constant reminder that Tancredi was married, to help her accept, slowly, that she needed to move on?

👑Poor Father Pirrone was tasked with giving Concetta her birthday present, a telescope.

👑Governor Leonforte came to the Prince and asked him if Russo could be trusted; Argivocale was not yielding profit. Given that Don Fabrizio tasked Russo in a fit of anger to steal from the Governor, the Prince knew the Governor could not trust Russo, but he thought he could. The Governor warned the Prince that men like Russo would seek to profit from the chaos that followed the unification. 

👑Paolo, too, noticed the poor yield from their own lands, though he did not suspect Russo. Remember that Don Fabrizio knew that Russo had been stealing from him, and still gave him another chance. Russo, it seemed, did not cease his thievery. 

👑There were children working in the sulphur mine that Paolo wanted to inspect.

👑Don Fabrizio found Concetta’s prayer book with the embroidered handkerchief in his mistress’s home, and was mad both at his daughter and his mistress. For most of The Leopard, Don Fabrizio was portrayed as a fair-minded, kind master, but he was still a master, and it offended his aristocratic sensibility that his mistress even briefly thought of herself as more than a woman he paid for sex. He complained that she was not adequately amorous. When asked why she talked to his daughter, and she answered that she just wanted to help, he harshly told her she helped him on one thing only. That conversation was the end of their relationship. That was a good scene to add in a series that was very much on the side of the fading aristocracy, a potent reminder that even with those they shared the most intimate moments, from their point of view, there was a divide that must never be crossed. His mistress forgot her place, her utility to him, and paid the price of a lost client.  

👑Tancredi wrote to Don Fabrizio about a government official who would come to him from Turin with a proposal. Cavaliere Chevalley di Monterzuolo asked the Prince to join the Senate in the new Italy. 

Rating: B