Every year at Festival time the whole town of Locarno ends up decked out in the spotted black and yellow coat of the leopard. So much so that, watching the colorful transformation take place, it’s hard to believe that the big cat hasn’t always been the Festival emblem. And yet… until the 1960s the prize awarded to competition winners was completely different: a sail – a little sailboat in fact, picked to represent the lakeside resort. It was only in 1968 that the Festival gave up the sail and replaced it with a new statuette, designed by local sculptor Remo Rossi: the leopard. Why the change? For two years the competition had been suspended due to a dispute with FIPFI, the international film producers’ association. Doubtless it was to underscore the dawn of a new era, with an agreement reached and the competition up and running once again, that the Festival’s executive committee decided to inaugurate a new prize. But whose idea was it to choose a leopard – the artist’s or the Festival’s? There’s no clear historical evidence on this point, and indeed it remains an open question why a leopard should have been chosen at all. The stock answer is that the animal is the town’s own heraldic emblem. Sure enough the Locarno coat of arms features a big cat, but close examination can leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that the animal concerned is… a lion. What’s more, the Italian word Pardo used by the Festival for its prestige award doesn’t refer to the real life leopard of the high veldt, but a mythical beast – the “pard” of Shakespeare’s English.
In other words, the leopard spots that paint the town black and yellow in August – and the leopard statuettes received for almost forty years by the directors of the best films – could themselves be seen as a cinematic invention, a special effect shrouded in mystery. However, there may be an explanation for the feline iconography after all: some historians point out that, in the past, the lion on Locarno’s crest was a thin creature, lacking a mane. In fact it looked so cat-like, especially in its rampant position, that the locals began to refer to it as a pardo – and so the true identity of the lion was soon itself part of the mystery.