#and it only gained him visconti's respect and friendship

[burtlancster]

“I'll tell you who I found a very difficult man—a very strong man in the way he works—Visconti. Now working with Visconti on The Leopard, well, you recognise that the values are pretty much what you'd like them to be, and even better than you would hope for them to be. So the tendency then is to go along. I didn't for one moment pretend that I could do what he was doing better than Visconti could do it himself: in the framework of the film, in the set-up of the camera, in terms of the style. He understood the nature of the story so well, as compared to myself—an American playing an Italian nobleman.

But as far as my acting was concerned, Visconti gave me complete freedom—regarding the way I wanted to move, the whole acting aspect of it. There was only one time on the set when we had a long talk—about three hours—about the approach to one scene. And the ideas he wanted me to get across were brilliant. They were far superior to anything I had in mind. But in the main, if he thinks you're a good thorough professional and you know what you're doing, then he'll let you go straight ahead and do whatever you want to do. And after that, you see, he'll refine the things you've done. I was very happy with The Leopard. I think it was some of my best work,” Burt Lancaster in an interview with Gordon Gow for Films and Filming Magazine, 1970.