Blu-Ray Review - Fellini's Casanova (1976)

Fellini at this point in his career is at his most self-indulgent and has already made his timeless masterpieces 8½, La Dolca Vita and La Strada but his surrealist tendencies are in full flow in his ’70s films as well as his ’80s ones.Fellini considered Fellini’s Casanova his best film which is a frankly ludicrous claim and it stars Donald Sutherland at the height of his solid run of interesting films he did in the ’70s such as Don’t Look Now, M*A*S*H and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

The film is loosely based on the autobiography of the real-life autobiography of Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova. Fellini however paints the world that Casanova inhabits in an almost science fiction fashion with its grotesque imagery and stylised costume and set design, the costume design won a well deserved Academy Award. It does however unlike the film he considered his “science fiction” film Satyricon has a narrative arc that many of his late ’60s/’70s films lack and despite its surrealistic nature it contains a fundamentally linear narrative.

Sutherland performance perfect captures the narcissistic title character. Fellini sticks a fake nose and chin onto Sutherland which gives him into a textbook grotesque Fellini creation. Casanova is depicted as a man who is both “the greatest lover” who ever lived but despite his love-making ability he can show no emotion and is bound to end in a desolate state. Fellini’s original script was even more critical of Casanova but during the production he gradually began to sympathize with the character. Robert Redford was wanted by the producers but Fellini wisely refused to cast him in the title role.

The imagery of the film will be hard to shake out of the viewer’s memory for a long time. The film begins with an extraordinary scene of a carnival which was an almost a common feature of Fellini’s films, the carnival is often used as a metaphor for life. The plastic world of Casanova is perfectly embodied by the use of plastic bin liners as the sea when we are introduced to Sutherland’s Casanova in the opening. Casanova’s plasticity meets his match when falls in love and makes love to a literally plastic woman.

Fellini’s Casanova has been one of Fellini’s most decisive films over the years, Terry Gilliam one of Fellini’s biggest fans has said numerous times he has very mixed feelings about the film but overall think’s it’s one of his most imaginative. Fellini himself was extremely disappointed by the US reaction where it was savaged by the critics. It may be revel in its orgy of imagery and ridiculous sex scenes but the fall of Casanova is strangely moving despite being truly awful self-absorbed man so it should be re-considered as an important highlight of his later work.

The disc is sadly barebones but it importantly has both the English Dub and Italian Dub. Almost all Italian films till the ’80s were almost exclusively over-dubbed even if the film were shot in Italian and the English Dub includes dubbing by Donald Sutherland so some may prefer the English Dub, it’s the version I watched.