Word: casanovas
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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...
Fellini has kept the color-indeed, heightened it-but drained away the life. He seems to have fastened on the legend only to repudiate it. Seen through his hostile lens, Casanova is a chilly fop whose salon manner is alternately tongue-tied and bombastic. How such a creature manages to charm so many women into the bedroom remains a mystery. Nor, once he gets them there, is it easy to see how they can derive much fun from the groaning calisthenics he puts them through. This is a film that earns its R rating not by making sin enticing...
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...