Word: fellinis
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When he was 23 and waiting for the Italian movie industry to rise from the ashes of World War II, Federico Fellini earned his living in Rome by drawing droll sidewalk portraits of Allied soldiers. He got so good at it that he even opened a little studio called the Funny Face Shop. In the quarter-century since La Strada made him famous, Fellini has never stopped "doodling," as he calls it -turning out thousands of sketches of his actors' faces, costumes and wigs. Unbeknownst to him, some friends organized a show at Zurich's Galerie Daniel Keel...
Directed by FEDERICO FELLINI Screenplay by FEDERICO FELLINI and BERNARDINO ZAPPONI...
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...
...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...
...meditation peopled by Fellini's patented galleries of grotesques -hunchbacks, dwarfs, crazed aristocrats, a giant strong woman in a circus and a particularly loony occultist (Cicely Browne). But the presentation of most of these figures is so inert that they constitute a series of waxworks, tableaux morts. The film's only burst of real energy, a tumultuous Venetian festival at the beginning, is quickly dissipated. Its loveliest image is completely gratuitous: the candle-laden chandeliers of a theater are lowered to the floor and extinguished by footmen wielding long fans...