Yet another Fellini extravaganza, again with Danilo Donati's costumes. He won an Oscar for it. And believe me, they are something. Casanova, a strangely melancholic character played by Donald Sutherland, is surrounded with and literally swims in silk, lace, jewelry and - camp. But he is never camp and the film is never camp. It transcends camp. It's so over the top, camp runs away scared. Tina Aumont is probably one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the silver screen. She, and a bunch of other 'exotic' conquests are what Casanova thinks of in his lonely hours.

As the owner of almost all (the available ones) Fellini films - and lover of almost all of them, I would say that to enjoy his 'Casanova' you need to (in order of importance) a) Enjoy the later films of Fellini b) Be accepting of his uniquely strange psyche and film-making of this period c) Enjoy the theatric, especially of the grotesque sort d) Be a fan of Donald Sutherland and d) enjoy period costume.If you are intrigued by the film's title and the certificate 18 rating and are expecting a soft-porn or erotic movie, DON'T click on 'add to basket' - you will be disappointed and I will get upset as your one dalliance into Fellini's World will be tainted...The sex scenes are always clothed and sent up outrageously, with farcical over-humping, shall we say....Fellini is mocking his central character here. There are some bare bottoms but that's as far as the nudity goes...Much has been said and written about the problems the director faced; daily disintegration of his relationship with Sutherland, striking technicians and outside distractions, all of which made the film more fragmentary. Fellini later cited this epic sprawl as both his worst film and as his most "complete, expressive and courageous".Donald Sutherland, with his Roman nose, shaved forehead and the most elaborate of wigs, looks the very part, so much so, that his flouncing and preening are as much of a star as he is. I'm not expert in Italian (I don't understand it at all) but the delivery of his lines sound OK, but always with theatrical bravado - no subtleties here.For most, there will ultimately be times during its 2.5 hour plus running length when it gets less interesting but Fellini certainly packs an awful lot in that time. In my view, he has made lesser films, but not many, frankly but Fellini is one of my top five all-time directors, along with Bergman, Kubrick, Wilder and Kurosawa.

In Fellini's Casanova, the viewer follows the legendary seducer, played by a young Donald Sutherland, jumping through several episodes in his life, in a whirlpool of memories, impressions and sex. This film is a journey that takes us to a Venetian prison, to French palaces, to a London frost fair and to the Swiss Alps. And the people Casanova meets, from a giant woman to dwarfs, from magicians to artists, are amazing. It's Federico Fellini's vision of Giacomo Casanova's life and it's completely unique.The film's themes aren't love or the art of seduction, as the name Casanova tends to evoke, but lust and desire as basic human urges. Fellini didn't like Casanova; for the Italian filmmaker he was just a soulless lover, a greedy social climber interested only in adding points to his score of amorous conquests and serving the nobility. So viewers will only find a sex machine moving from coitus to coitus, with little concern for the women he beds.The narrative, like in many of this director's films, is fragmentary, and Fellini and his co-screenwriter, Bernardino Zapponi, freely adapted Casanova's autobiography. In defense of Fellini, though, Giacomo Casanova's The Story of My Life contains around 3,500 pages, so a few cuts were necessary. Of course in a Fellini film the narrative isn't as important as the visuals and the way each scene is constructed. Visually, this is a beautiful movie. It's not only a masterful achievement by costume designer Danilo Donati, who deservedly won an Oscar for his work here; it's also unique because of the stylistic choices Fellini employs. For instance, for a scene of Casanova rowing in a little boat in the middle of a sea storm, Fellini chose to use black plastic sheets to replace the water; this choice may seem meaningless until we realize that artifice, appearances and illusions are running themes.Another interesting stylistic choice is the way Fellini shoots exterior scenes. Usually landscapes are covered in mist or snow, the sun barely visible. Our vision is limited to the foreground while the horizon remains hazy. By contrast, the interior scenes, the magnificent ballrooms, gardens and bed-chambers, where most of the action takes place, are exuberant, a sensory overload of colors, sounds, shapes and movements.Donald Sutherland, one of the most underrated living actors, shines as Casanova. He is practically unrecognizable here: with his hair cut, wearing a prosthetic chin and nose, and covered in make-up, Sutherland displays a strange, androgynous look. He's also, apart from the women he seduces, the only handsome person in the film. Fellini must have handpicked the ugliest actors in the world to populate this film, who, with their rotten and missing teeth, wrinkled faces and long, sharp noses, are in total opposition to the beautiful world that surrounds them.The action takes place during the Enlightenment, but reason doesn't make an appearance here. What for some was one of the greatest eras of human achievement, for Fellini was an era of debauchery, aloofness and superstition. Suffice to say that an aristocratic woman asks Casanova to impregnate her so she can pass her soul, through a ridiculous pagan ritual, to the fetus. Casanova and his contemporaries are vapid people who believe they're exceptional. Only Casanova, gradually, loses his illusions and the ending is a moment of epiphany for the seducer who, aged, only has his memories to keep him company.There's a small caveat: Donald Sutherland's voice was originally dubbed by Italian actor Gigi Proietti, so his fans may want to look for a version that has the English audio. I wouldn't consider this a major loss, since this is one of those films where the dialogue is practically irrelevant. Sutherland's body language expresses a lot more than the platitudes his character tends to spout. But viewers used to actors' original voices may find this off-putting.Fellini's Casanova is long and requires more patience than attention. The narrative's aimlessness may quickly induce boredom if the viewer isn't used to Fellini's style. Fellini makes up for this by giving every sequence some humour and titillation (the sex scenes may not be the best but are certainly the funniest ever filmed for cinema). In this regard this movie is very similar to Amarcord, which also seems like an endless collection of unrelated gags. Perhaps this film isn't one of Federico Fellini's essential masterworks, like 8½ and La Dolce Vita, but it's a sexy, tragicomedy still capable of entertaining and inspiring awe.

Casanova is one of my favorite films by Fellini. Besides some technical problems with dubbing Donald Sutherland's voice in Italian, the film provides an excellent portrait of the pre-French Revolution Europe. Casanova is an stallion, but is a reflective, philosophical, and critical stallion questioning the day's conventional wisdom especially when dealing with one of Fellini's favorite subjects: females and, up to a certain extinct, forcing Sutherland to do what only Marcello Mastroiani was able to do: to channel Fellini himself. I do not know the reasons why Fellini decided to give Sutherland a chance and I have to admit that Sutherland makes a great effort in playing the part. Seeing some available portraits of Casanova I can see the reasons, but one would expect Fellini to be beyond that kind of constraints. Perhaps Mastroiani was too busy (looking at was entry here in the IMDb I can see that he did 5 movies in 1976, so perhaps he was overbooked). To think of Mastroiani in this role is more intriguing when one considers the amazing rendition of the very Casanova in Ettore Scola's "La nuit de Varennes." In "La nuit..." Mastroiani plays an aging Casanova even with the odd French with a strong Italian accent that was a trademark of Casanova's charm in the may European courts where the Venetian philosopher (yes, he loved to think of himself as such). Beside these problems, the film provides a powerful critique of Europe during the 1970s, as Fellini is able to see the obvious parallelism between the 1970s and Europe in the pre-French Revolution era. The film, by the way, benefited by the then recent publication of Casanova's memoirs in a critical edition that challenged the then prevailing understanding of Casanova as a sex-pot, something that Casanova himself rejected as is possible to see in the scene of the party at the British ambassador house. After watching the movie one would think at Casanova as some sort of sex-mystic introducing in the then Enlightened West, notions about sexuality similar to those of tantric sex, although still clinging to a male-oriented understanding of sex. It is important to stress also that,despite the effort to follow Casanova's account of is life, his auto-biography is full of historical contradictions and inconsistencies.