Word: fellinis
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Fellini's penchant for detail is no laughing matter. Filming a Venice canal sequence in an outdoor tank, the maestro ordered 200 rats into the water. "Stop!" he shouted after noticing that half the rats were white: "Paint them brown." His hard-pressed casting staff is often given a sketch of a type of face he wants and ordered off to the back alleys of Rome in search of their prey. For Fellini, the right face is everything. "I chose Sutherland because he is completely alien to the conventional idea of Casanova-the dark-eyed Italian, magnetic, raven locks...
Sutherland's metamorphosis into Casanova begins each day with 3½ hours of makeup application, which supplies him with a Romanesque nose and jutting jaw (Fellini has filmed him almost entirely in profile). These details resemble those in portraits of the real man. But as usual, Fellini goes further. Sutherland's scalp has been shaved clean for three inches up from the hairline and his eyes lined into a definite slant. The result is a highly stylized, almost Kabuki look that conforms amazingly to a sketch of Casanova drawn by Fellini-who was once a cartoonist -months before...
...first, Sutherland bridled at being treated like a puppet. "But why resist?" he concluded. "The man's a genius." Says Fellini: "I don't have problems with actors-they have problems with me. 'Donaldino' has done very well...
Skitter Bed. Tacked to Sutherland's dressing-room wall is another Fellini cartoon showing the director and his star running for their lives, pointing the finger of blame at each other, while from the clouds, a furious Casanova is brandishing a sword and screaming at them: "Bastards...
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...