Netflix's The Leopard: Turin
- Cherish
- Jun 6
- 7 min read
Updated: Jun 6
The Leopard Episode 5 Recap and Review
Turin, the capital of the new Italy, focused the great divide between the more traditional aristocracy (Don Fabrizio, Concetta, Count Bombello) and the upwardly mobile new political class (Tancredi, Angelica, Don Calogero). Don Fabrizio came to Turin because he considered quite seriously the offer to join the Senate. He left because after a mere two days, he knew he did not belong there. Something inside him broke when he found out what had become of Tancredi and Angelica, what this young married couple had been doing to facilitate their rise amongst the power circles of the fledgling nation. He could not wait to return to Sicily, the land that he knew, and to a limited extent still ruled. The chaos of nation and career building were not for him.
From the outside looking in, Tancredi and Angelica were the it couple of Turin. Angelica’s dowry provided them with more than enough money to spend as they pleased. Tancredi fit in well with the new political class, and was angling to become the new representative to France. As smooth as one of his father in law’s lies, he had shifted his allegiance from General Garibaldi to the King.
For her part, Angelica put her beauty and education to good use. She was a charming hostess, the perfect wife to a rising politician, able to conduct conversation and diffuse potential tension. She and Tancredi were a good match, their ambitions were aligned, as were their values.
Why did Angelica start sleeping with the French ambassador? Was it just to advance Tancredi’s career? Was it to get back at him for all his cheating? It was a good decision to include Don Calogero in this episode, to have him come to Turin as well, because Angelica was what Don Calogero made her. The charming perfection at parties was a weapon forged for his own advancement by a ruthless man; once she married, once she became a Countess, she got to decide how to deploy, and did.
When Angelica spoke of men talking about her since she was a child, I took that to mean an awareness of how men had always desired her. Her beauty was one she knew, has always known, she had. Her beauty was the focus of attention of nearly every man she has known since childhood. Perhaps her father loved her, in his own way, but he also shaped her to be useful. Her beauty and refinement opened doors to him that would have remained closed despite his nauseating wealth. Why couldn’t they open doors to what she wanted, for a change?
That was the tragedy of Angelica, that she was raised to think of her beauty not just as a fact, but a pathway. I do wonder, if Tancredi were not the ambitious strider that he was, would Angelica have bothered with the French ambassador? If what she had was a faithless husband without ambition, would she have been satisfied with ordering her gowns and attending her parties and living the life of wealth without finding ways to please powerful old men? Yet, Tancredi’s ambition, apart from his soldier good looks and blue blood, was probably what attracted Angelica in the first place. She saw, far more clearly than Concetta, that they were a good fit, and she was right.
They were a good fit, despite Tancredi’s eyes wandering back to Concetta the moment they laid eyes on each other again. Angelica had tearfully mentioned to Don Fabrizio that Tancredi started cheating two months into their marriage. Tancredi’s discontent was not about Angelica nor even Concetta; he was not a man forced by circumstances to marry one whilst he longed for another, and ended up severely unhappy. I don’t believe Tancredi would have been faithful to any woman, not even Concetta. The lingering fondness of their shared childhood would always be there — and this could feel as powerful as the romantic kind of love — but Tancredi did not appear to have the emotional bandwidth for the kind of loyalty required in a marriage. He chased passion where passion pointed, to the extent that he had his convent bred princess cousin meet him at his friend’s apartment, the very same place he had been using for his liaisons with various women. The disrespect was as astounding as the audacity.
Tancredi’s boorish behaviour toward his wife and his cousin was highlighted by the presence of Colonel, now Count, Bombello. It has been over two years since he first saw Concetta at her father’s house, the beauty that stopped his heart to the point where he, eventually, turned his back on principle to allow Don Fabrizio’s request, out of desperation to hold her for a few borrowed moments. Like Concetta, Bombello was a stickler for propriety. When he asked to see her, and she appeared unchaperoned, as pleased as he looked, he was also uncomfortable, and he asked where her father was. Their meeting was a short turn in the garden, filled with bashful looks and awkward chuckles. The one time Bombello appeared to momentarily forget his nervousness was when Concetta noticed his reaction to the possibility of the Prince accepting a role in the Senate, and asked him how he felt about the government. ‘I’m not sure it isn’t a…a compromise, that’s all. Not a new dawn, though. Not what I fight for or believed in.’ From my notes: An idealist with spectacles? Marry him Concetta!
When Concetta and Bombello next saw each other, it was at the political club, where Don Fabrizio politely and self-deprecatingly turned down the Senate post. Bombello told Concetta that he would travel to Sicily to ask her father a question. Like true blue aristocrats, they spoke without words. Concetta looked happy when they met, and Bombello took that to mean she was not opposed to him. Bombello said he would travel to her home to speak to her father; Concetta knew that meant an offer of marriage.
Bombello lost his heart to Concetta two summers ago in Sicily. But Concetta lost her heart to her cousin years before that. When her father told her that she would marry a Sicilian so she could stay close and help out her mother and her brother Francesco, who was now heir, Concetta snapped. She loved her father, but she also wanted to get away from his control. The loss of Tancredi still hurt. Even knowing his unfaithfulness to his wife, the longing for him has not left Concetta. She did not sleep with him, but that did not mean that his nearness had ceased to shatter her. Bombello offered a respectable marriage, a man who thought the world of her, but most of all, he offered distance, for Milan was quite a way from Sicily. She told her father that when the Count made an offer of marriage, he should accept it.
Concetta’s little rebellion — little, because Count Bombello was a suitable match, and more to the point, he adored her to distraction — capped what was an emotionally exhausting visit to Turin for the Prince. Concetta did not even want to go with him to Turin, primarily because she did not feel ready enough to see Tancredi again. Her mother Princess Stella prevailed upon her, however. Don Fabrizio has not been the same since Paolo’s death. The Prince did look careworn; he cheered up considerably when Concetta told him she would accompany him.
At first, Don Fabrizio was happy at how well Tancredi was doing amidst the new politics of unified Italy. He was angry when he followed Angelica to the hotel where she had her liaison with the French ambassador, but he was still in control and was willing to move on if she had only promised that it would not happen again. Yet, when he revealed to Tancredi what he thought was a secret, when he realised that Tancredi knew all along, that his wife was sleeping for his career with his knowledge if not his blessing, that broke him. Don Fabrizio doted on Tancredi all his life. Tancredi, just by existing, had his affection, something which his heir Paolo had to fight for. Yet this was what Tancredi grew up to be, a man who would see his wife take on lovers for his advancement. Weakly, Tancredi pointed out that the Prince has always had a lover.
The next day, his eyes red with recent tears, an exhausted Don Fabrizio told Concetta that it was difficult, ‘Arriving at my age to find you got almost everything wrong’. He blamed himself for Paolo’s death. He felt that everyone else did, though no one had the courage to tell him. The boy he ignored tried hard to win his affection; the boy he loved with no condition grew up with no conviction of right and wrong.
At the political club, Don Fabrizio put on the mask of a Prince and held the attention of the room as he gave a surprising speech. Everyone expected that he would accept the position as Senator. He knew he could not, not with the mud he had uncovered in the past couple of days. He already had this distaste for the new kingdom; discovering Tancredi and Angelica’s method of climbing just made him realise that this was not a world he belonged to.
Chevalley, the man who tried to recruit him, told him with sincere heaviness that if honest men like him withdrew, it would open the door to men with no scruples. What hope would their young nation have? Don Fabrizio liked Chevalley, but not enough to join him in his quest for a new Italy. As another sign of his disdain, he recommended Don Calogero to the post. That was what Don Fabrizio thought of the new nation, that it deserved a corrupt grasping man as one of its leaders.
To return to Sicily and a quiet life he still recognised, that was all Don Fabrizio wanted. But Concetta wrecked his vision of calm final days with her announcement of her intention to marry Bombello and build a life for herself away from her family, from her father. With the world moving on, Don Fabrizio decided to step backwards, to what was comforting and familiar, not knowing that his beloved daughter had no intention of joining him.
Strays
👑The early scene of Concetta telling her father that she was joining him in Turin reinforced how similar they were. No one could force them to do something they did not want to do.
👑Garibaldi’s army of 4000 men that marched to France-backed Rome was defeated by the King’s soldiers.
👑Tancredi was going to Paris as the Italian representative, something which he and the French-speaking Angelica both wanted.
👑Bombello caught side of Concetta at the opera. Concetta did not even notice him, poor lad.
👑The apartment of Tancredi’s marital sins belonged to Tassoni.
👑Don Calogero went to Turin supposedly to investigate his noble lineage.
👑Don Calogero bringing up Paolo’s death to Concetta and feeling badly for the expensive horse Don Fabrizio shot was a small but very good character moment.
👑When Don Fabrizio and Concetta alighted from their marriage back at home, they walked toward their castle with noticeable space. The look on Princess Stella’s face showed she knew something had happened.
Rating: A-