Director: Federico Fellini
Year: 1976 Country: Italy Gender: Drama / Historical Rating: 7.5/10
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Tina Aumont, Cicely Brown, Carme Scarpita, Clara Algranti, Daniela and Mario Gatti Cencelli
Giacomo Casanova (Donald Sutherland) is a old librarian at Dux castle. Immersed in the bohemian, old, lonely and desperate youth recalls his life full of love stories, adventure and exciting trips for all the capitals of Europe. Federico Fellini's filmography is, without doubt, one of the strangest that European cinema has over its history. And not only by the division between a first stage marked by the most unorthodox neo-realism, and a second doomed to exorcise personal ghosts. His inclination towards a kind of conceptualism colorful, extreme, not only provides links idiosyncratic, but it reflects on the society with a look as captivating as questionable background, seems to be the most suitable for mass acceptance. In 1976, Fellini had just won an Oscar for " Amarcord" (1973), had full power in their industries, and interest (and subsequent acclaim) that raised his work was almost unanimous, in this context is embarking on the character the literary and made this movie Casanova which proposes a complex reflection on the vanity of lust. Converts the original story, saturated with a fresh sense amoral, in a dubious moral fable, according to their ideological convictions.
This brief outline of the mood of the filmmaker is, of course, a collation of the Casanova and as a warning because you can not understand the end result and stylistic approaches to the film launches the intellect the viewer, without assuming that it is a work "of" Federico Fellini and all that it shows and events is not more than 35 mm projection radically imagery personal narratives and guidelines beyond all logic. Now, we are in an eighteenth-century Italy that the filmmaker makes his own immediately. Hyped all iconographic elements of a period marked by the rejection of the postulates baroque and classicist reinterpretation of the guidelines, Fellini (by the grace personnel) away from both styles and essentially builds a futuristic universe. Indeed, there is no return to the past in the imagery of filmmaker, far from rational elements that tie the film to a specific historical moment, not a calculated and cold reconstruction of the eighteenth century, but neither one interpretation. "The Fellini's Casanova" is a journey into another world and, therefore, a film much closer to science fiction than a hypothetical film historically accurate.
Involved in the amazing atmosphere of a nightmarish sets, the everlasting light of Giuseppe Rotunno in a state of grace appears based on antithesis, mixing the dark with transparent, rational composition of Jacques Louis David a tendency colorist to the last vestiges of the "Pop-Art , thus causing not only wonder, if not embarrassing. The embarrassment of seeing situated in a universe that is not subject to rules, but where it seems everything works with the precision of a Swiss watch. In "Fellini's Casanova", the concept of "space" no longer has its usual meaning and is forced to an unpardonable disappearance is devoid of reality, but no credibility and this is the reason that causes extreme concern the viewer. We agreed, not another dimension, if not the substance of the mind of someone who is directly responsible for the iconic parade passing before us. A universe in which we are special guests and witnesses of the doings of amoral characters, so bizarre and complex (physically and mentally) as the physical circumstances of the place that surrounds them. A rarefied universe, worse (more so the word) by the stunning costumes created by Danilo Donati, who seems to describe, with greater certainty that their actions or words, intentions or character traits of each character.
Tan visions away from the usual picaresque and gallant. The first thing is to settle accounts with Fellini's character of a double way. On the one hand, presents him as surely was, we must remember that the references we have are those which he himself gives in his memoirs and has a natural tendency to be good when reviewing his life, that is, an upstart in a world was falling apart and does not belong at any time despite his undeniable knack for social mimesis, the courtly compliment, of course, sexual seduction. On the other hand, it makes the character completely devoured the images. If anything distinguishes this film is to be a succession of fantastic scenarios by which the protagonist is drawn like an endless dream. The great inventor of plastic forms is Fellini makes a puppet with no will or initiative, condemned to serve as support the ongoing story of hallucination of a creator who staged a masked ball, sometimes fascinating, sometimes chaotic, which an inadvertent Casanova is the only guest whose identity is known to others. If Fellini uses the grotesque is by temperament, of course, also for moral antipathy. His version of Casanova is merciless, a pathos that never gives redemption, even at the last moment, when the hazardous journey ends, after which only the image of Venus trapped under the icy waters of a bleak poetry.
The pathos of the character is increased when the cynical view that inspires his amorous pursuits, the service which makes use of flattery, deception, intimidation, force or violence, according to best needs. "The Fellini's Casanova" is a work full loneliness, thoroughly theatrical and fatally ambiguous. The great Donald Sutherland, who wrote a memorable villain to Bernardo Bertolucci's epic " Novecento" (1976), plays the seductive Venetian as a tragic figure, a decent human being despite the futility of their existence. Fellini presents Sutherland effeminate, ridiculous object of admiration for the decadent European society of the time, which is whimsically like a lord or an outcast. But if there is in "Fellini's Casanova" a disturbing element that, by itself, places the work outside of time and space and closer to the exact dimension required by Fellini, it is none other than the work masterpiece composed by Nino Rota. Away from any reference classical music, the soundtrack to runs through a number of premises as closely linked to the formal aspect of the film that the union of music and image come to be indivisible, stressing the fictional context with an icy composition, fully introduced in the avant-garde century music XX, which not only complements the images created by the filmmaker, but it opens up new avenues of interpretation to it. In "Fellini's Casanova" is not only reflected all the dogmatic basis of Fellini's films since " Ocho y Medio" (1963), but it stands in the clearer the same paradigm.
Indeed, is not that director and lead actor expressing opposing views, but Fellini is so attentive to the creation of their world and the natural product Casanova as the former, which culminates a feat Sutherland to make your character a spirit quite misunderstood. Contradictory and fantastic, the film is, however, or exactly why, a real profile of its protagonist, and a notable social fresco. Also noteworthy is the presence of Tina Aumont that is singularly beautiful in the role of the mysterious Henriette. The baroque visual gives together with a massive accumulation of topics: voyeurism, solitary masturbation, public masturbation, homosexuality, sadism, masochism, group sex, exhibitionism, lust, gluttony, phallic worship, sexual frenzy, and so on. Besides URL includes irony, satire, mockery and farce in a package that is overloaded, long and rhetoric and is not without its awkward anachronisms (number of dragonflies). Clearly, Fellini can not (or will not) split their personal life experiences or his films and it is precisely in this film which best reflected these intentions, since, even without even the slightest glimmer autobiographical (unlike its previous film), this "New World" composed by Fellini, which goes beyond iconoclasm and the subjectivity of artistic standards, intellectual character defined with greater certainty than all their other films together. For better or for worse.
"Harsh, desperate and brazen tribute to the life poured"
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