Word: puppeteer
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...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 of a world's fantasy. But the marionette Casanova, everyone makes and manipulates...
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...
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...
...enough before achieving his dream of becoming a flesh-and-blood boy. Their objections focus on the book's two ne'er-do-wells, the Fox and the Cat, shiftless schemers posing as mendicants who are lame (the Fox) and blind (the Cat), while merrily fleecing the gullible young puppet. By the end of the tale, the Cat is truly sightless and minus a paw, while the Fox does not fare too well either?he ends up thin, almost hairless and without a tail...
Suppressed Eroticism. With a canny mix of showmanship and a keen instinct for his craft, Baryshnikov has devised solutions that infuse his Nutcracker with logic as well as magic. There is the traditional Christmas tree that grows onstage, a puppet show and a pretty pink and white sleigh to transport Clara and her prince. But there is no Sugar Plum Fairy and the cast is entirely adult. Clara, danced by Marianna Tcherkassky, hovers somewhere between child and woman. Her godfather Drosselmeyer, brilliantly portrayed by Alexander Minz, is both fatherly and aboil with suppressed eroticism. Baryshnikov accents mystery and the paradox...