Word: casanovas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...visual dramatics are alternately hilarious, grotesque or ritualistic. Every situation, every object, every character is extreme. One court is full of unbelievably rich, unbelievably ugly old duchesses, another revolves around a loathsome insect-like homosexual, the epitome of perversion. A third is the scene of bear-pit debauchery; here Casanova wins this contest: how many times can you came in an hour of fucking...
...Casanova contains more screwing than most porno flicks, more derogatory statements about women, gays, the French, the English, the afflicted and freaks than any chauvinism. But the film's operatics and unreality make it unoffensive and asexual. Casanova does not move, frighten, or arouse us, because it does not take place in our world...
Effect substitues for reality. From the initial credits on, one is not permitted to forget that the infinite number of European courts in which the action takes place were all constructed in Cinecitta ("movie city") just outside of Rome. In one sequence, Casanova rows a boat across the Venetian lagoon in a thunderstorm; he holds no oars, sits in no boat, and the wildly surging waves are obviously green plastic. The stock sound of water-in-a-storm fills the air... or is it the sound of plastic bags in a gale? Nature blurs into artifice. Casanova is first seen...
Fellini's Casanova is not a person, but the sex puppet of fantasy. He makes love as though he were doing push-ups; it is a mechanical performance, a physical feat. Only once does this figure meet a female from whom he appears to take pleasure. She is a miracle of art, a mechanical doll made of china. Casanova screws her differently, with a new harmony. They are two freaks of a kind. Casnova's lovemaking is artifice, aptly symbolized by the mechanical golden cock he carries into each bedroom, winds, and sets going to accompany his pulsations with...
...Fellini's marionette show the music-box bird rusts among busts of Homer, and the aged Casanova dreams surrounded by books in a northern court. His dreams are the stuff his myth has been made out of: Venetian splendour, glittering women coming towards him, or running coquettishly away. But in his dream he dances with only one lady, on a frozen Grand Canal under the Rialto; the porcelain doll and Casanova revolve to the music of his golden cock, in a world made only of illusion, creations of self-conscious...