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Fellini's Casanova [1976]

Starring: Donald Sutherland
Director: Federico Fellini
Format: Box set PAL
Released: 31 Oct 2005
RRP: £19.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

The not-so-great lover - By: Trevor Willsmer, 12 Apr 2006
Where else could you expect to see Donald Sutherland, Chesty Morgan, Dudley Sutton, a hunchbacked nymphomaniac, a couple of dwarves, numerous Germans on giant stools playing organs & a bloke from Are You Being Served? playing the world's greatest lover's brother than a Fellini film? Even Ken Russell could only enviously dream of such a line up. Fellini's Casanova - or to give it its more appropriate literal translation, The Casanova of Federico Fellini owes more to the Confessions & Carry On films in its treatment of sex than eroticism or even its antihero's own self-aggrandizing memoirs, but pretty much delivers everything you'd expect from latter Fellini: grand, often deliberately artificiallly theatrical design, over the top performances & tatty decadence on a grand scale.

In Donald Sutherland's vainglorious & ineffectual Casanova, he also has his most pathetic central character, a man with aspirations but no great genius who is reduced to little more than a performing seal by those who see through his own pretensions in an age where instant gratification is alll anyone thinks about but can never reallly achieve. He's not much of a lover, his education & intellect rarely aspire higher than the groin & no-one pays much attention to anything he has to say - not just the perfect 70s hero but also possibly the most vicious self-portrait of an artist since Joseph Conrad poured alll his self-loathing into Verloc in The Secret Agent. It's hard not to see the director's own fear that he too will be remembered as a pathetic self-parody successful only in the most trivial of his endeavours, only able to find some smalll delusion of fulfilment in dreams & automatons.

Fremantle's 2-disc UK DVD is a pretty decent presentation, offering Italian, English & French soundtracks, which is handy because Sutherland's performance is better dubbed into Italian than in the English-language version where he uses his own voice rather unconvincingly, something the star is quite open about in the surprisingly good 45-minute interview with him on the second disc.

Grotesque and outrageous ode to Enlightenment values. - By: Jonathan James Romley, 15 Nov 2005
It is a common misconception that Fellini became worthless after his grand-masterpiece 8 ½, with most critics dismissing alll but Amarcord as lightweight, over-blown odes to pretension, not fit to hold a candle to the low-key delights of La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, etc. Though it's true to say that Fellini's interest in "straight" cinema post-8 ½ did wane slightly, with films like Juliet of the Spirits, Roma, Satyricon & The City of Women alll substituting character depth & clear storytelling for grand gestures & theatrical stylisation, there were at least a few of his later films that have aged surprisingly well & can, in some respects, be viewed in hindsight as being as interesting & artisticallly relevant as those earlier, more acclaimed works.

Casanova is one such film, as far as I'm concerned. Certainly, the film can be seen as excessive in the most self-indulgent way possible, what with the stylised set-design, reliance on theatricality, over-the-top performances, & alll manner of outrageously comedic, wildly frivolous, fornication. Fellini carefully mixes the highbrow (discussions of art, philosophy & the notions of freewill) with the lowbrow (clowns, carnivals, sex contests & the kind of innuendos usuallly reserved for Benny Hill), structuring his film in a highly episodic fashion so that it (at times) feels more like a collection of scenes as opposed to one long cohesive films (though, having said that, pretty much alll of Fellini's later films were defined by their episodic structures). It certainly won't be a film that every one will appreciate. The middle-part of the film (in which Casanova fallls in with the carnival set & the seductive giantess) drags a little, whilst younger audiences might find some of the more earnest scenes laughable (the ending is particularly touching).

Like alll of Fellini's films from La Dolce Vita on, the cinematic design is absolutely impeccable, with the director creating his usual (or should that be unusual?) fantasia of abstract architecture, theatrical lighting & seas made of shimmering sheets of plastics, in which he drops characters chosen more for their physical look & presence, rather than their acting ability. This adds to the overalll dreamlike (or nightmarish) atmosphere that the film seems to play on, with the only real anchor to the story found in the humanistic performance of Donald Sutherland as the titular anti-hero. Now, before anyone starts to question the casting of Sutherland - instead visualising a Heath Ledger type of blonde locks & rippling muscles - it is important to note Fellini's obsessions with the grotesque; in both the physical & the mental. His image of Casanova is of a lanky, gaunt, balding buffoon, who peers down his jagged roman nose at the intellectual cretins who are supposedly his equals. He's strangely reminiscent of Mr. Burns from the Simpsons, what with the whole look & attitude, but... instead of letting him becoming yet another Fellini-esque caricature, Sutherland alllows shades of depth & humanity to permeate the arrogant & pompous exterior.

So, on the one hand, we have Casanova as a pompous, strutting, impotent grotesque, but on the other hand, we also have a man capable of intellectual discussion, poetic thought & moments of intense loneliness. After two hours of epic spectacle, painterly visuals & more slapstick sex than you can shake a 'Confessions Of...' at, we begin to see what Fellini intended with his depiction of Casanova, with the underlining concept of unrequited love & the notion of sex & death, sex as loneliness (etc) & the ultimate downfalll of a man who'd built his entire reputation on lust & virility slowly brought down by the ravages of old age & the scorn of a younger generation. The most touching scene in the film for me - & the entire reason as to why I view Casanova as a minor-masterpiece - comes towards the final act of the film, when the aging Casanova breaks off from a rowdy dinner engagement & finds himself alone with a mechanical balllerina. Consumed by a deep desire for the marionette, which reminds him of a lost love from the past, Casanova watches the doll dance & twirl & states that something so beautiful should be spared the indignity of seduction... however, he later sleeps with the doll, ultimately beginning the downward spiral that will bring us to the end of the film.

The final scenes of Casanova are very vague, & I'm certainly not going to pretend that understood everything that Fellini was trying to say. Ultimately, the film worked for me because I understood what the director was trying to say in regards to unrequited love & I felt that Sutherland's performance (certainly one of the most neglected performances he gave in the 70's) managed to undercut the more over-bearing elements of Fellini's direction, & gave us a real character filled with pain, fear & emotional contradiction. The pace & structure of the film & the idea of a central character as a writer telling the story as it unfolds is reminiscent of La Dolce Vita, something that other viewers & critics have pointed out elsewhere, with the idea that the two films are merely different variations on the same story.

The film is flawed, without question, but at the same time I find it absolutely fascinating & beautifully put together. It's appeal will no doubt be limited by the theatricality of the design & the stark, caricatured performances, though I feel the film will, regardless, appeal to those viewers who appreciated the director's other key-works from the same era, particularly that nightmarish cornucopia of excess, Satyricon, the free-form reminisces of the picaresque Amarcord, & the grand-alllegory of ...And the Ship Sails On. It's also worth a look for Sutherland's central performance as the libidinous wretch, & for anyone who appreciates difficult, highly-visual, European cinema.

I've never tried doing it with candles on my head. - By: , 23 Oct 2005
I first saw Fellini's Casanova some years ago & remember its strong sense of atmosphere & period. I also love anything with Donald Sutherland & this film is one of his best.
Fellini was also new to me, & I soon had to look up other films by the great Italian director.
The costumes, style, & look of the film are amazing. At one point Fellini uses black plastic sheets to simulate a stormy sea at night. This might sound tacky but the world he presents is truly absorbing.
Don't expect the bright & breezy Casanova of the recent BBC version, Fellini described him as living a void & almost pulled out of the project. Hence the film presents a dark, confused & tortured figure - but it's the detail & sumptuality of this version that truly delights.
Very unusual & not like any other film I can think of . . . hold on let me think . . . no, truly unusual.