Fellinis Casanova

A beautiful and melancholic film. I've seen it only now, in a special exhibition on cinema, for the first time. Worth the while. Funny, I also used to prefer the earliest Fellini, but this film makes me, at least in this case, rethink my position. It is clear, anyway, that after 8 1/2 he could only go this way - towards a progressive abandonment of any kind of mimetic "realism".

For those that find this film "strange", I suggest to start with the early Fellini (Lo Sceicco Bianco, La Strada. Cabiria) and go more or less in order, it will probably make more sense. Or not.

I think this movie has been misunderstood. I have only seen it once and that was in 1978 or so. I had to write a paper about it for an art class so I paid very good attention. I think the theme had to do with loss. He lost every woman he loved starting with the statue that sank in the river. The odd circus woman, and the circus, vanished. The film was most unusual but beautiful - each scene a painting. The scenes and even the story line linger still in my mind. I have not been able to see the film again but would love to to get more insight into the many and various subtleties. The metronome for one was interesting. To me one gage of a good film is one that lingers on in your mind for years. This one qualifies.

Fellini needs no recommendations. He's the Magician. And Sutherland is one of a few. Plus, he diaries of Casanova are on of the most inspirational literature works of the last centuries. These alone are sufficient. But Casanova of Fellini is something more. As Fellini feels awe (fear and worship at the same time) for women, he degrades men. From Satyricon to the City of Women men appear to surrender, give up their role and the force they once exerted over the other sex. As he deals with the story of his compatriot, Giacomo Casanova, the emblematic womanizer, he lets emerge a tragic figure, a man prisoner of his dubious reputation, a solitary creature that crawls on patios and lounges of prerevolutionary Europe, among degenerated monarchs and nobles who don't understand what is to come and have fun until boredom, The wretched Fellini hero tries to survive sometimes as stallion, sometimes as metaphysical guru and . Trying to ascend socially, he keeps falling, ending his days in a kitchen of a German lord having dinner with the servants who taunt him. He, the greater lover, finally makes love with a doll. (amazing scene). Fellini stays faithful to the text, far away from the beautification of those who grappled with this story, and Sutherland interprets one of the most tragic heroes in the cinema of the 20th century.

Fellini's cinematic vitality was undeniably on the ebb in his later years of filmmaking, and when a director's name can blatantly headline in the film's title, a common demonstration is that he has the autocratic power over his work without any compromise, so it is a good sign for the director's devotees, but sometimes, it is also prone to backfire often due to the auteur's unbridled ego. And FELLINI'S CASANOVA is an exemplar of both cases.

Fellini is quite antipathetic towards his center figure, the Venetian gadabout Giacomo Casanova, maybe partly originates from jealousy, it is a man who is an emblem of libidinal licentiousness (with women), any heterosexual man has the right to be envious.

So loosely based on Casanova's autobiography HISTOIRE DE MA VIE, Fellini unleashes his uncurbed visual creativity to conjure up a series of spectacular mise-en-scène with a hankering for irony and symbolism, often in the form of a theatric piece. The opening gambit, a Carnival in Venice, is onerously undertook to be stupendous and eye-opening, and it is really hard to resist the enthralling allure in Casanova's each and every episode, sex activity is presumably the norm in it, but his on-screen virility brings some visual fatigue pretty soon (due to an R rating) and his action fades into mechanical repetition (certainly, the change of head-wear is a great diversion). After all, the avant-garde production design (using plastic bags to imitate a choppy sea), the 18th Century exquisite art decoration (whether accurate or not), the outlandish period costumes and flamboyant make-up (especially during the lavish banquet set) usurp the crown as the legitimate attention-grabber. With garnishment like Nino Rota's stirring score and literature reference such as Tonino Guerra's La Grande Mouna, 2 hour and 35 minutes is not that long at all.

It is also a career-defining role for Donald Sutherland, although never really being heralded (so does his lengthy and unceasing career), under some visage alteration (a fake nose and a shaved head) his Casanova is not devilishly handsome, may not even physically resemble his character, but he exerts his devotion thoroughly through his bulged eyes, which fixate on his preys with torrid resolution, simultaneously sinister and passionate. Fellini is in no mood to give Casanova a hagiography treatment, so chiefly, Sutherland's effort has been unfairly debased to ridicule and grandstanding, Casanova is much more than a womanizer who is unable to love, willfully, Fellini refuses to disclose the other side of his life, such as a bold adventurer and a luminous writer.

Female objects are never the focal point of the film, they are the objects of desire in the menagerie for our hormone-driven protagonist to conquer with intercourse, only the Angelina the giantess (Sandra Elaine Allen) and Rosalba the mechanical doll (Leda Lojodice) shed dim light on certain pathos for the fate of Casanova besides their eye-popping presence.

Altogether, FELLINI'S CASANOVA is majestic on scale, burlesque on appearance, biased in its stance, but never an awkward anomaly in Fellin's absurdist cannon.

I totally disagree with the critical trend of discrediting Fellini's later films as symptomatic of his decline. Instead, I believe that Fellini's last films were actually his best. And Casanova, by far Fellin's worst reviewed film, is Fellin's masterpiece-- a sad, funny, wistful, grotesque, Rabelisian epic of a film.

In a way, Casanova is a foil to Fellini's earlier classic La Dolce Vita-- the main difference being that the former is more pessimistic in tone, while the latter is enfused with a youthful optimism. In a way, that's how the films of Fellini have progressed; his earlier films were filled with an almost child-like love for life (albeit with some very dark edges), while his later films became increasingly darker and more depressing. Strangely enough, Fellini's later films were also his best, both on a technical level, and in terms of thematic depth.

Casanova is not only the story of a man, it is also about a whole era-- an era of grand opulence and grand waste. Like in many of Fellini's other films, the protagonist of Casanova serves as a guide for us through a phantasmagoric carnival-like world. Casanova is depicted as a sexually-ravenuous, and deeply cynical man. He is constantly searching for some kind of image of the perfect woman-- an ideal which eventually leads to his own destruction.

Casanova is not a film for everyone-- despite having the usual Fellinisque scenes of ribaldry, Casanova is for the most part slowly paced (it reminds me of Kubrick's Barry Lyndon). Ultimately, Casanova, like Fellini's And the Ship Sails On, is about the passing of a golden age into oblivion. One leaves Casanova feeling both depressed, and yet somehow hopeful. Why?

Perhaps because like all great artists, Fellini realizes that in our darkest hours, we still can hold on to our memories of happier times.