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 have but one question: Why in the name of all that we call the cosmos is this film not available on DVD (or even VHS)? It is far superior and reflects much more the times and life of Casanova than the Chamberlain film that trudged its way from start to finish. Casanova was an eighteenth-century intellectual, an intellectual with very definite proclivities for womanizing. Fellini knew his subject and the many places where his subject found himself in a lifetime of incredible sights, sounds and adventures. Get this film out of the closet, dust it off and let us have the very positive experience of enjoying it in the sanctity of our own homes. It has been too long on ice. Someone "out there", get off your duff and let us have one of Fellini's best works.

What happens when an extravagant filmmaker makes a movie about an extravagant individual? Well, you obviously reach the height of extravaganza… but is there anything obvious with Fellini?

It starts with the title: why this juxtaposition of the two men's names? "Fellini Roma" made sense as it was the vision of a city from one of his sons, Fellini, not Visconti, De Sica or Risi. But Giacomo Casanova is a historical figure, a literate adventurer who wrote exhaustive memoirs (of undisputed authenticity) that became remarkable accounts of the 18th century customs whether in court or… intercourse, why should Casanova then be linked to Fellini as if he was belonging to him?

The reason is actually startling, Fellini didn't like Casanova, he took him as a self-centered pompous aristocrat who disguised his crass appetites under an efficient mask of sophistication… so the Casanova we see is the Casanova according to Fellini's vision and Fellini is such a larger-than-life figure that he's entitled to portray whoever he wants however he likes. But this argument doesn't hold up very well because 'Casanova' isn't just a name, it became an adjective defining a womanizer, so when the director who expressed to the fullest his lust for women and life's pleasures, makes a film about Casanova, maybe it's because there's something of Casanova in il Maestro, if he doesn't mind.

Indeed, for all his nobility, Casanova is a sex-addict, with a constant craving for the weirdest and most grotesquely unusual performances. Donald Sutherland, with his high stature, his shaven forehead, his false nose and chin and fancy clothes looks like a giant turkey, but within this weird appearance, he stands above his peers, as if his aura elevated him despite himself. He's a complex and paradoxical figure. There's a sort of running-gag where he keeps praising his intellectual and scientific merits, and he was a versatile fellow indeed, but no one ever cares for this aspect. His reputation always precedes him. Am I going too far by thinking that Fellini would share a similar frustration, being constantly associated with his baroque universe made of parties and voluptuousness? A way to show that even the brightest minds embraced sex, as a form of expression?

Now, how about women? The film is as full of sexuality as you would expect from a "Casanova" biopic, but there is something deliberately mechanical and playful in the treatment (one of the most passionate encounters is with a doll actually) as if Casanova's sexual appetites were more driven by a disinterested quest for prowess and games than one of the ideal woman. The visit of the belly of the whale could be seen as Freudian symbolism, but I don't think Casanova had such oedipal impulses as he's not even tempted to join the tourists. We all have one mother, but we can have as many women as we want; they can have motherly roles, but that doesn't seem like what Casanova is looking forward to discovering, diversity is the key.

And as to illustrate this diversity, the film is built on the picaresque episodic structure where Casanova makes many encounters with every kind of women: young, sensual, depraved, weak, fainting, chanting, pretty, freakish, ugly, the film is very repulsive but appealing in an appalling way. And maybe the greatest trick Fellini ever pulled was to confront men with the hypocrisy of monogamy, as Casanova, the Fellinian, is proved right through one simple thing: pornography. The lust for sex has reached such maturity that men aren't aroused by pretty faces and perfect bodies anymore, the uglier, the older, the dirtier sometimes, the better. Fellini and Casanove reconcile men with their polygamist nature.

And this is why I recommend not only the film, but the DVD Bonus Features. In a little documentary made before the shooting, many Italian actors were interviewed about Casanova. Ugo Tognazzi said that in the pre-Revolution period, some dishes were left deliberately rotten in order to have an extra taste or smell, appealing to gourmet tastes. A classic beauty is revered and praised, but that's not what men are looking for. The documentary is followed by a visit to a nightclub and many 'Casanovas' explain their tricks: feigning indifference, being genuinely shy, showing that they care for women, they might not all act like Casanova but they have one thing in common, they know how to create desire, and more than anything, to satisfy it. You just don't earn a womanizing reputation by being impotent. The secret is to be aroused and excited by everything, it's a discipline.

The score of Nino Rota has something mechanical about it, or experimental, but it fits the tone because Casanova took sex seriously, like an accomplished athlete looking for self-improvement, so a sensual music couldn't have worked. But I less enjoyed the sex, a bit outdated even if the treatment was deliberate, than the enigma of Casanova, a man who was ahead of his time because he understood, before everyone, one of the main drivers of society, sex and desire, and he expressed it to the fullest, and we somewhat envy him, although the word 'Casanova' has something pejorative about it, but in Italy, the perception is different, it's a part of the Italian psyche, and like Mastroianni said in the documentary, a psyche symbolized in the film's opening with a giant Venus' statue emerging its head in Venice before plunging again, as if it was all a dream.

The Venus metaphor seems to indicate some guilt behind the 'Casanova' heritage, there's a little of Casanova in every Italian man, in every men, but maybe that's nothing to be proud of. Anyway, like Macchiavelli, the man became an adjective, something our mind can relate to with more or less shame, it's only fitting that the director who made a movie about him, also inspired an adjective. Indeed, there was something Fellinian about Casanova... so the title sounds a bit like a pleonasm.

Casanova is bawdy historical speculation, metaphysical farce, sensual overload, ironic critique of Enlightenment values. It has everything you expect from Fellini - visual clutter; dislocated tonal shifts; childish slapstick in an epic framework; Dionysian outbursts; gaudy sets; ludicrous costumes; messy gags; philosophical ruminations; European picaresque; unforgiving seas; dwarves; arm-wrestling giant princesses; aristocratic orgies; butlers and their catamites; mechanical dolls; hunchbacks and nuns in heat; mocking, otherworldly Nino Rota music; squalid grandeur; sex contests; mists of abyss; noise; the terrifying silences behind the noise. The defiance of realism is total. Just because a film isn't very original, doesn't mean it isn't worthy. Or, more importantly, great fun.

Anyone expecting, from the title, Tinto Brass 70s-style Euro-art-porn, will be very disappointed. There is precious little nudity, and the sex is ludicrous. This farcical treatment is in keeping with one of Fellini's main themes. Casanova is among the most famous names in history, a readily recognisable identity, the epitome of male endeavour and virility. And yet Fellini's concern is with the dissolution of identity, the loss of power in masculinity, the subsuming of the (usually artistic) individual in the crowd and chaos. From I Vitelloni on, and especially in the Mastroianni films, the male hero is passive, powerless, a pinball to fate. Many Fellini films burst into confusing crowd activity, the audience lost without a point of identification.

Unlike Mosjoukine's amiable and active 1928 Casanova, Donald Sutherland's is not the stud of reputation, but a pompous, long-winded bore, whose sexual technique is uninventive and monotonous. Like Don Giovanni, another legend who fails to live up to it, Casanova uses sex to ward off death, only to realise that the two are terminally linked. Forever hoping to dine with great men of letters, he is always caught in the straitjacket of his myth, and of history's sexual representations. He is the embodiment of the Enlightenment, a multifaceted Renaissance man - poet, philosopher, chemist, inventor etc - but Fellini profoundly mistrusts Enlightment values. His 18th century is not that of Diderot and Voltaire, but a continuation of Satyricon - a bestial murk where appetite, confusion and cruelty reign. History doesn't change: there is no progress, man is unimprovable - the Enlightenment was wrong.

Casanova, despite his idealistic assertions, is not a being ruled by mind, controlling his destiny, but a puppet tossed about by whim and chance. There is very little light here, much shadow and fog. Casanova's accomplishments are mocked - his poetry is ridiculous; his aphorisms banal. His intellect cannot triumph over the age so he must go mad. And, appropriately, he finds a little happiness in insanity.

Casanova is a very messy film - frustrating, sloppy, continually denying momentum. Scenes often seem not to fit, actors in key moments lack synchronicity. Yet this confusion fits the film's theme, which rejects Casanova's ironical asceticism in favour of life in all its repulsive, topsy-turvy variety. It is a melancholy film, but also very, very funny.

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.