Word: casanovas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...CASANOVA" and fantasize. An irresistible cock, glitter, a leopard voice, suave and strong--these fragments make a fantasy character out of adult fairy tale. Casanova stands for the Prince Charming of sex, the man whom all women can have but none can hold, the supreme stud who infallibly provides the ultimate fuck. Everybody knows just enough about the courtly playboy to create such a puppet; few have enough information to flesh out a human individual, Giacomo Casanova of Venice. For art and imagination's sake, so much the better; a real person is too eccentric to be the plaything...
Federico Fellini's Casanova is a fantastic puppet-show. Loosely structured on Casanova's autobiography, the film relates his amorous adventures in an anecdotal style similar to that of Fellini's earlier film, Roma. Episodes succeed each other in a vaguely chronological order, but there is no plot, no continuum of theme, no development of character or emotions. One woman is followed by another woman, and another woman, one court, another court, one spectacle, another spectacle, another spectacle. One fuck, another fuck, another fuck...
...canal. Suddenly--a rope breaks, poles fall, masquers scream and the vast shape sinks back under the dark green water. The camera focuses in on one costumed mannequin, dressed in white, with his hair pulled back off an amazingly high forehead. The stage is set for Casanova...
Indeed the film is shorn of any sense of reality, historical or otherwise. Though it is hard to draw many conclusions about a movie that is not yet edited, Casanova will hardly be a picture to recommend to students interested in 18th century Venice. Fellini likes to present psychic rather than objective reality. He uses any material-literary, political, personal-and bends it to his will, makes it part of his powerful fantasies. One cannot imagine his boasting that Casanova is a meticulous biographical creation. On the contrary he says: "There is no historical slant, no ideology. There is nothing...
...Fellini filmed the movie's final scene. On a set as large as a football field (cost: $500,000), the city lay frozen -its Grand Canal solid ice (constructed from sheets of white plastic), the Rialto Bridge sagging under layers of snow. The scene represents the dying Casanova's final thoughts about the city of his youth. On signal from the director ("Go, Donald"), Casanova moves slowly across the ice, his black cloak fanned open by the night wind. He pauses, kneels down on the ice, his beaked nose like that of a bird of prey...