Word: casanovas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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FELLINI'S CASANOVA...
What a brilliant subject for a Fellini movie-and what a disappointing treatment of it. Seducer, charlatan, scribbler, dabbler in black magic, Giacomo Casanova was that most magnetic of figures, the legend with nothing lofty about him. Born in a glittering Venice that was rife with disease and intrigue, he was equally at home in scenes of Watteau-like elegance or Hogarthian stench. He roamed the capitals of Europe, living by his wits, his nerve and a nice instinct for when to get out of town. He dreamed up mining schemes and lotteries, supported himself at the card table, survived...
Chilly Fop. "Having had all," a friend said of him late in life, "he sees that he has lost all." His only recourse was to have it all again vicariously, by writing his memoirs. This twelve-volume work made Casanova a classic instead of a footnote, for even in its most suspect and self-serving pages, the 18th century throbs with life and color...
...Casanova is Fellini's latest statement on a theme he is constantly exploring: the problem of the creator, the man who tries to restructure experience to make it art. Casanova of Fellini's imagining, who has tried to make his life's pursuit the transforming of the ultimate natural experience into art, who wants to transform the phrase "to make love" into an exact description, is a figure of the artist. Casanova has given up his humanity for art; lovemaking is something he must control and design. As a result, he succeeds in giving pleasure to others...
Like Yeats' bird, Casanova does not relate to the present world. A vast space remains present between audience and screen, an acute consciousness of the gap between the work of art and any possible reality. By keeping us at this distance from the dream which Freud proved to be man's fundamental reality--sex--Fellini captures our sole potentially uninhibited creative fantasy. And then he shows us it is no more than show...