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Das ewig Weibliche out of Venetian waters, a gargantuan statue noggin playing peekaboo during a swarm of jack-in-the-box masks. Peruked and ruffled, with padded beak and looming forehead, the legendary libertine (Donald Sutherland) from conquest to conquest, "he looks like a turkey." He rows across a plastic sea for a rendezvous with a bogus nun (Margareth Clémenti) and gets incarcerated as a heretic for his trouble, the wan swooner (Clarissa Mary Roll) requires frequent bloodletting and the aged courtier (Cicely Browne) yearns for transgender reincarnation. "The love of my life" (Tina Aumont) disappears like morning dew, the sight of the giant princess (Sandra Elaine Allen) is enough to halt his suicide. Mondo delle donne, "to understand them and to love them, one must suffer at their hands." A masterwork around a void, an aching sadness peering through layer upon layer of ornate sterility—Federico Fellini sets out to bathe Casanova in scorn and instead delivers him in pity. The tragic farce of the lecher who fancies himself a scholar, the would-be bard perpetually guided by "that rotten worm between your legs." Ribald slide shows in the belly of the whale, raucous humping battles and oversized pipe organs, the putrefying music box of 18th-century Europe. Rilke's chandeliers (Sonnets to Orpheus) are seen at the opera house, The Magnificent Ambersons is brought to bear on the reunion with Mamma (Mary Marquet). The hollowed-out roué finds his match at last in the mechanical maiden out of Offenbach (Adele Angela Lojodice), a herky-jerky memento to comfort him on the frozen canals of his dotage. "Won't you consider it a contest between vulgarity and poetry?" Losey paints a similarly corroded Eros in Don Giovanni, Russell meanwhile lets his own fabled Great Lover off with a wink in Valentino. Cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno. With Carmen Scarpitta, Clara Algranti, Daniela Gatti, Olimpia Carlisi, Silvana Fusacchia, Daniel Emifork, Dudley Sutton, John Karlsen, and Reggie Nalder.
--- Fernando F. Croce |