Fellini’s Casanova

Donald Sutherland plays Casanova in a film that scholar Albert Johnson called “Fellini’s most extravagant and courageous dream.” Johnson wrote, “Fellini’s version of the life of Casanova is similar to an effulgent carnival. The film is permeated with a grandiose style, so brilliant in visual effects that the sexuality of the hero becomes more comic than concupiscent. Although Fellini had read most, if not all, of Casanova’s autobiography (twelve volumes!), he makes the episodes of seduction a showcase for his own philosophies of life from youth to old age. The casting, mostly from open calls, exhibits the director’s quest for unusual faces; Casanova is a gallery of grotesques. There seems to be some conjecture about how Donald Sutherland was cast as Casanova, because his enactment of the role is strictly symbolic. The opening sequence of the film, with its stunning imagery of Venice at carnival time, the gigantic head of Venus rising from the Grand Canal, prepares one for an onslaught of memorable images.”