“THE BEAUTY OF DECADENCE”

By Raymond Benson

The year 2020 is the 100th anniversary of Federico Fellini’s birth, and the home video world is seeing many restored and re-released titles from the maestro’s catalog. The Criterion Collection has just released a 14-movie box set, for example, but that exquisite package does not contain many of Fellini’s post-1973 titles because of rights issues.

Enter Kino Lorber. Their Kino Classics imprint has released on Blu-ray a gorgeously restored edition of Fellini’s Casanova (1976; released in the U.S. in early 1977). It was a big budget extravaganza capitalizing on the success of Fellini’s masterpiece, Amarcord (1973; released in the U.S. in 1974), which won the Oscar for Foreign Film of 1974 and was nominated for Best Director for ’75—yes, those eligibility rules are complicated.

Casanova was immediately a curiosity because Fellini cast none other than Donald Sutherland in the role of the notorious womanizer, artist, and writer. The film is loosely based on Giacomo Casanova’s Story of My Life, his autobiography published posthumously in, it is believed, 1822 in a censored version. Between then and today, the book has been published numerous times with additions and deletions.

Casanova lived between 1725 and 1798 and was well known in Italian society as a libertine and adventurer, but he was more infamous as a lothario. The film is an episodic journey through some of the more interesting escapades that we know about, although these are, of course, filtered through the visionary lens of Fellini. In many ways, Casanova is a film that resembles Fellini Satyricon (1969), a picture that could be called “Ancient Rome on Acid.” It’s rather obvious that Fellini was attempting to duplicate that picture’s success with the same kind of surreal, grotesque, and decadent—but beautiful—imagery. Once we get to the point when Casanova is bedding a female automaton who becomes the one “woman” who satisfies him more than living ones, we know we’re deep within Fellini’s universe.

Suffice it to say that the movie is breathtaking to look at. The sets and costumes (the latter won an Oscar) are marvels. The whole thing feels like a dream-story, and Sutherland, as the protagonist, floats through the picture with an uncomfortable presence. Fellini probably cast the actor because he does resemble the real man (from paintings). Sutherland is good enough, although he might be the first among many to wonder why he was cast.

That said, Casanova is a mixed bag. It’s at least a half-hour too long (it clocks in at two hours and thirty-five minutes), and it depends entirely too much on the visuals to keep an audience in seats. The story, as it is, is nothing too compelling. Nevertheless, Nino Rota’s musical score is lovely, as always, and other technical aspects are top-notch. Is it sexy? Yes, in a weird Cirque du Soleil kind of way. The depiction of Casanova “doing it” is more like an acrobatic circus-act than any resemblance to actual lovemaking.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray looks darned good. You have a choice whether to view the film in English with no subtitles (as it was released in the West), or in the original Italian with subtitles. It was filmed with Sutherland and certain other English-speaking actors reciting dialogue in their native language. If you go with the English version, you’ll hear Sutherland’s real voice, and the Italian actors are dubbed. In the Italian version, Sutherland’s voice is dubbed by an Italian actor. While normally this reviewer would champion viewing a film in its original language, for Casanova I recommend the English version. It’s like the Sergio Leone westerns with Clint Eastwood—we’d all rather view the dubbed versions so we can hear Eastwood’s voice (or Van Cleef’s or Wallach’s). The same is true for Casanova.

There are no supplements save for an audio commentary by film critic Nick Pinkerton and the theatrical trailer. The accompanying booklet contains an essay by film scholar Alberto Zambenedetti, PhD.

Fellini’s Casanova is for the Fellini completists and enthusiasts who want to celebrate the filmmaker’s centenary and for anyone looking for a surreal trip into an 18th Century European never-never land.

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