Fellini's last masterpiece?

I LOVE this movie…Donald Sutherland looks like a plucked chicken but somehow it all works…

Jaspar : Your description of Sutherland alone should persuade many to watch!!

Casanova is absolutely insane. A masterpiece? Yeah, it could quite well be. It is certainly a great exercise in excess.

totally agree on the excess….reading a bio on Fellini…he spent nearly a year (with a break while he fought with A Grimaldi) filiming it…the art direction alone is astounding

never really connected with it.

i much prefer As The Ship Sails On.

A very underrated film, it deserves to be better known. A Criterion release would help fix that. Maybe when they’ve finished giving Whit Stillman’s work such undeserved attention…

The Donald Sutherland description has convinced me to watch it.

i like it but it wasn’t as good as his early masterpieces like bicycle thieves and l’aaventura

“i like it but it wasn’t as good as his early masterpieces like bicycle thieves and l’aaventura.”

The quote of the year.

^ LOL

It’s an exceedingly dynmic film because it’s a project he didn’t want to do. Fellini wanted to make a film and the producers he was dealign with said he should do Casanova. Fellini didn’t like Casanova. His preening narcicissism worked against his gran. And oviously Marcello couldn’t play him. So he got the one international star who has Casanova’s profile — and set to work.

The opening scene of the raising of the head of the statue is truly remarkable — as is the ending. In between all sorts of stuff .

The project ran into a seriosu snag when a grouyp of fascists broke into the lab where the film was stored tryign to steal — and destroy — Pasolini’s “Salo.” They got a few bits of “Salo” (which pasolini easily reshot) and some bits of “Casanova” too. As a result Fellini had to reconfigure the production and cancel the sequence he had planned featuring the great Barbara Steele.

I suspect he was inspired by THIS

Watching SATYRICON tonight, and it’s BONKERS. Makes me really want to see CASANOVA, though there’s no decent Region 1, right? At least I’ll always have the soundtrack…one of the best ever.

One of my students posited a theory that he thinks with Casanova Fellini was just giving shot after shot to Visconti. When you watch it with that in mind it does tend to raise an eyebrow or two. Thoughts?

No, not his last one. La Citta Delle Donne is a wonder too, made on the ashes of Il viaggio di G. Mastorna and it’s the same kind of crazy, dreamy, weird mood as Toby Dammit or Casanova. You should try the blu-ray

I would nominate E La Nave Va. La Citta Delle Donne is very good, and I like Casanova but consider it more a lovably flawed piece from a great master rather than an actual masterwork. Have never seen La Voce Delle Luna but hope to sometime.