Fellini's Casanova

     Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (The Casanova By Federico Fellini) from 1976 can be understood simply from the title: it's Fellini's vision applied to an historical and literary figure whose name became a noun meaning "a man notorious for seducing women."  

     Giovanni Jacopo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-1798) was a man with many interests; economics, politics, literature (his memoirs are considered classics illuminating eighteenth century European society), but he's best known as a prolific fucker of women.  Fellini's film emphasizes this last aspect of Casanova's life.  The voiceovers by Donald Sutherland in the eponymous role (the film's in English) hint at his inner life, that deep down he was a serious man, but his taste for bedroom adventures consumed him for most of his life, getting him into trouble with the law sometimes, too.

     The movie's mix of theatrical moments, like showing a roiling seascape as literal black plastic stretched out across a soundstage, buffeting Casanova's boat, along with sumptuous rooms and real Venice backdrops, demonstrate Fellini's willingness to allow fantasy and reality to combine.  The entire film exists in Casanova's head, that is to say, Fellini's, who wrote the screenplay based on the extensive memoirs.  

     From encounter to encounter with a variety of high society women, to lower class broads, Casanova seems more and more desperate to find the ideal mate.  He believes a German woman, who heals him of an illness using acupuncture, is the fulfillment of his dreams (though she's really just the latest female for whom he's felt that way).  She gives him an indication she'll go away with him, but leaves him hanging, prompting him to engage in his wildest sex party.  

     As the film progresses, Casanova's conquests seem more and more like desperation born of trying to satisfy society's expectations of his prowess as a ferocious sexual tiger, a kind of monster of carnality.  He's become famous for his seductions, but no one cares about his intellectual accomplishments.  Once he's aged and sex is no longer a pursuit, he's set up as a librarian in a German court, the garrison's soldiers regarding him as a joke.  

     Left with his dreams and his memories, he finds comfort in a fantasy of dancing with a mechanical woman he danced with and bedded years before in a different German court.  The two spin endlessly counter-clockwise (direction of the past) on the ice of a Venice canal.  His life comes to this vision of a man locked into a mechanical pursuit of love, his deeply unfulfilled serious nature overshadowed by a round of parties, seductions, and dashed expectations.

     The film's colorful settings register as very Fellini.  Grotesque costumes, makeup, tall wigs abound.  His films of the sixties and later decades utilize hosts of people as space, a very minor character given a line or two of dialogue, or a close-up.  His films are pageants of humanity.  This whirl of activity in many of his movies makes them bewildering at times, but focusing on a central character helps the viewer navigate the plot.  

     Donald Sutherland's performance is quite good.  Fitting into weird eighteenth century costumes, his hairline starting at the top of his head, he looks alien to modern eyes.  His stance, walk, and the way he holds his mouth shut at all times except when speaking create a genuine look for the character.  

     As much as I found some of the film difficult to sit through--one set piece involving a performance of a rather shitty opera scene, for example--I found myself increasingly haunted by the downfall of this man.  The final ten minutes, showing his fantasy of Venice and the mechanical woman, are powerful as they bring down the heated temperatures of much of the film to dwell upon Casanova's dilemma; that of a man at the end of his days, forgotten, left only with memories of a lost sensual world, gone forever except in his book.

Vic Neptune