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MovieMail's Review
In 1980, Fellini admitted that, of all his films, Il Casanova was the one which suffered most from critical misunderstanding and public apathy. Three years in the making and featuring a brilliant central performance from Donald Sutherland, he defended the film, claiming it was his ‘most lucid, most stylistically accomplished work’.
This latter claim can be argued, but there is no doubt that even for a director with as voluptuous a visual style as Fellini, Casanova is breathtaking, with Danilo Donati's immaculate production design beautifully captured by cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno.
The film's starting point is Casanova's 12-volume Mémoires écrits par lui-même. Fellini, despite not being enamoured with the self-glorifying chronicle of sexual adventures, weaves the basic material into a daring and ambitious film. In one of his greatest performances, Sutherland fully vindicates his director's dogged insistence on casting him in the central role. (Fellini apparently told his collaborator that Sutherland was ideal because he had the presence of a 'sperm-filled waxwork'.)
Despite its 18th century setting, Fellini's Casanova is essentially a bleak comment on modern sexual mores, a film whose visual opulence acts as a counterpoint to the emptiness and impotence of the eponymous philanderer.
Federico Fellini's typically lavish take on the life of the 18th century author, scientist and romancer Giacomo Casanova. Donald Sutherland portrays Casanova in his waning days as he travels from a bubonic-plagued Venice to a syphilitic London, engaging in various amorous and political adventures along the way with an air of bored detachment. Debunking the myth of Casanova as the great lover, the film instead presents him as an ordinary man swept along by extraordinary circumstances. Regarded as one of Fellini's best films, it also features cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno and music by Nino Rota.
At last, a chance to see Fellini's surreal and mesmerising life of the great seducer as the director intended, with all its stunning visuals given full measure on this... more >
At last, a chance to see Fellini's surreal and mesmerising life of the great seducer as the director intended, with all its stunning visuals given full measure on this sumptuous DVD. At the centre of it all is Donald Sutherlands eccentric, ambitious performance -- the perfect actor for Fellini. Not for all tastes, of course, but Fellini admirers need not hesitate. < less
