Fellini's Casanova

Director: Federico Fellini

1976 / 155min / DCP

Working entirely on the vast soundstages of Rome’s Cinecittà Studios, Fellini would construct a flagrantly artificial fantasia of the capitals of 18th-century Europe as described by the Venice-born philanderer and adventurer Giacomo Casanova in his infamous memoirs, Histoire de ma vie. With a putty nose and a half-shaved head, Sutherland’s Casanova is a rather grotesque creation, which suits Fellini’s critical approach to Casanova and the myth of the Italian super-seducer; famously, he described Sutherland in the role as “a sperm-filled waxwork with the eyes of a masturbator.” A haunting film of cold, baleful beauty and loveless sex, mounted on a super-production scale that beggars belief today.