Fellini Casanova
Jun. 22nd, 2024 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo So I found a version on line and watched it- Fellini Casanova, I mean.
Even those who dislike the movie (and they are many) praise the sets and the costumes, but the costumes never look anything but theatrical and the sets are habitually dwarfed by the vast studio space into which they have been inserted. Everything looks artificial and tatty and- given the vast budget Fellini was able to deploy- I have no doubt that this was fully intended. All spaces are one space and- in the flat lighting Fellini favours- equally unhomely and alienating. Fellini wasn't interested in fidelity to place and time (as Kubrick was in Barry Lyndon) but is scouring through his own imagination for all the bits of himself he most deplores, putting them in fancy dress, and hoisting them up on screen. It's a chilly film, a nasty film, even a deliberately ugly film- and none of this is exactly criticism. A chilly nasty, deliberately ugly film is exactly what Fellini meant to make- and he succeeded. It's not a flawed masterpiece, but a take-it-or-leave-it masterpiece. Felllini has realised his vision; if you don't like the vision then fair enough....
Donald Sutherland is wonderful, Nino Rota's score is wonderful, the set-pieces are unforgettable (and yes, for all my dislike of the movie when it first came out I have remembered them over a chasm of nearly fifty years.) A common complaint is that it is an empty film, but it isn't; it is a film about emptiness- which is not at all the same thing. Every so often the music and rioting stop and everything goes still and the wind blows through. Symbols of mortality abound. All that noise we make, all that relentless posturing and swiving are to keep the void at bay. Fellini's Casanova is empty of love, even, perhaps of self-love; he hopes to be remembered as an inventor, a scholar and a writer- as a great Italian novelist; instead he is remembered as a man who couldn't keep it in his pants.....
By the way, I see there is some puzzlment over the mechanical bird in a case that Casanova carries around with him and sets up in a prominent position whenever he is ready to perform. It's no no very deep mystery. Uccello, meaning bird, has the same double function in Italian as "cock" does in English.....
Even those who dislike the movie (and they are many) praise the sets and the costumes, but the costumes never look anything but theatrical and the sets are habitually dwarfed by the vast studio space into which they have been inserted. Everything looks artificial and tatty and- given the vast budget Fellini was able to deploy- I have no doubt that this was fully intended. All spaces are one space and- in the flat lighting Fellini favours- equally unhomely and alienating. Fellini wasn't interested in fidelity to place and time (as Kubrick was in Barry Lyndon) but is scouring through his own imagination for all the bits of himself he most deplores, putting them in fancy dress, and hoisting them up on screen. It's a chilly film, a nasty film, even a deliberately ugly film- and none of this is exactly criticism. A chilly nasty, deliberately ugly film is exactly what Fellini meant to make- and he succeeded. It's not a flawed masterpiece, but a take-it-or-leave-it masterpiece. Felllini has realised his vision; if you don't like the vision then fair enough....
Donald Sutherland is wonderful, Nino Rota's score is wonderful, the set-pieces are unforgettable (and yes, for all my dislike of the movie when it first came out I have remembered them over a chasm of nearly fifty years.) A common complaint is that it is an empty film, but it isn't; it is a film about emptiness- which is not at all the same thing. Every so often the music and rioting stop and everything goes still and the wind blows through. Symbols of mortality abound. All that noise we make, all that relentless posturing and swiving are to keep the void at bay. Fellini's Casanova is empty of love, even, perhaps of self-love; he hopes to be remembered as an inventor, a scholar and a writer- as a great Italian novelist; instead he is remembered as a man who couldn't keep it in his pants.....
By the way, I see there is some puzzlment over the mechanical bird in a case that Casanova carries around with him and sets up in a prominent position whenever he is ready to perform. It's no no very deep mystery. Uccello, meaning bird, has the same double function in Italian as "cock" does in English.....
