Federico Fellini
Il Casanova

Finally, a truly psychedelic Fellini! The continuous dreamlike excess of all his previous work (and even later films) finds redemption in Giovanni Giacomo. And in this entity that is "Il Casanova di Federico Fellini," the director for the first time abandons poses, discriminations, indulgences, does not chase psychoanalytic salvations that in previous works represented the "everything that is not here," a maramalda vision of things that are nowhere to be found, and Fellini knew it about his soap bubbles. Soap with which he has washed away that artist's stench of commonplace dreams dictated by vanity: "I am very sensitive, there is no doubt," says Casanova-Fellini at a certain point in the film, comforting us that impersonal courage has finally surfaced.

Thus, Federico's knees with Giacomo no longer go giacomo-giacomo from that intellectual-bourgeois black hole he had got himself into; here the contest is no longer a whim, here the Romagnolo concretely slaps himself in front of the mirror, abandoning the dualism of competition. And indeed it is surprising how with "Il Casanova" not only did he pull himself out of those analytical games, but he literally did himself in. He turns his circus lies into gold by having Czech spoken at the beginning of the acrobats' scene, no longer giving consideration, and the most golden achievement is that there is no longer any wink, inflicting blindness to the organ(ic).

And here he manages to reach the disappearances that true art requires: the artist is the author of nothing. In fact, in his filmography, this 1976 work has always been pointed out as denying previous visionary stereotypes that were so popular with the intellectual masses, which were nothing but consolations, adorned with slightly more sophisticated cotillions to hide elitist conformism. Here, for the outside, Fellini was no longer "that" Fellini, having eliminated, which is very difficult, the complicity of caste and sycophantic proselytism, and with this cleanliness he conquers the true solitude that allows exploration of the impersonal. Helping him greatly is the inner oblivion of Casanova. Fellini makes us see his personal hidden need for what it is: an epilepsy of love like the one that seizes Casanova at the moment of orgasm, triggered by the fear that love might miss our target.

More a staging than a performance, authenticated by those garbage bags used to simulate the sea. The pseudo depth cloaked in anemic essence is surpassed in the non-representation of the Venetian's life, in trying to film, and succeeding, the moods and sensations of such a total confession. The sexual burden is delegated to the robot "uccel di bosco," and the deception of the ego is personified with those pumpkins suggesting continuous vulvae spinning in a perpetuum mobile on that record at the center of the lavishly set table.

The purity of Casanova's solitude is so moving that at the end of the film it is almost difficult to bear. A poignant emptiness opens in each of us in the embrace with the mechanical woman, trying with that spinning, projected into an infinite continuation, to commune with the celestial movements. Fellini captures in Casanova the self-annihilation in giving oneself, managing to escape the limbo of his selfishness, managing to understand the real abandonment of the seducer who realized the fierce nature of women.

The past whimsical elitist aesthetics are cleansed also with the help of Nino Rota's music, never so esoteric. There is no longer the cinematic shot for effect, the onanistic mist clears, one has entered an invisible zone, no longer playing with art, trying to be directly "masterpieces." The care Gigi Proietti put into dubbing the "cicisbeo" corroborates the evanescent seduction of the ensemble.

The soulful connection I have with the film is sealed by three funny episodes in my life: the first from meeting a beautiful Finnish woman, with whom I had a relationship, discovering at a certain point that she had participated as an extra in the scene of the Roman patrician villa. There she is, sitting on a table, swinging her leg smiling, my dear friend from the land of a thousand lakes. The second was when I found myself working at the Cinecittà studios and there in a warehouse that housed old sets, I saw them: those chandeliers with a thousand candles from the Dresden theater were hanging. The third, dulcis in fundo, is of having met Donald Sutherland in Prague, in a central bar in the morning, and having spoken briefly with him, complimenting him on his career and highlighting his masterful interpretation of Casanova, having further opportunity to still catch in him, besides his disarming kindness and availability, that sparkle in the eyes that we enjoy in various parts of the film.

Sutherland remembers being always treated coolly by Federico, throughout the entire filming. At the end of the last take, Fellini approached him, embracing him for a long time and thanking him devotedly, bringing Donald to tears. Free from the expectation of a boomerang of momentary external approval, Federico here implodes in sincere evanescence, where the ephemeral endures and crystallizes into a miraculous ointment, making the decay of being his temple columns. In the déjà vu of the end, there is darkness, yes, but there is no word "end" at the film's conclusion. In the delirium for the wonder of reality, finally the tears, many...

Orphaned of life is dear Giacomo... forever: "Will I ever return to Venice?"