Waxwork Narcissus

By Christopher Porterfield

FELLINI'S CASANOVA

Directed by FEDERICO FELLINI Screenplay by FEDERICO FELLINI and BERNARDINO ZAPPONI

What a brilliant subject for a Fellini movie--and what a disappointing treatment of it. Seducer, charlatan, scribbler, dabbler in black magic, Giacomo Casanova was that most magnetic of figures, the legend with nothing lofty about him. Born in a glittering Venice that was rife with disease and intrigue, he was equally at home in scenes of Watteau-like elegance or Hogarthian stench. He roamed the capitals of Europe, living by his wits, his nerve and a nice instinct for when to get out of town. He dreamed up mining schemes and lotteries, supported himself at the card table, survived imprisonment by the Inquisition, taught manners to princes and, almost constantly it seems, made love to women--servant girls, countesses, prostitutes--leaving a surprising number of them well disposed toward him.

Chilly Fop. "Having had all," a friend said of him late in life, "he sees that he has lost all." His only recourse was to have it all again vicariously, by writing his memoirs. This twelve-volume work made Casanova a classic instead of a footnote, for even in its most suspect and self-serving pages, the 18th century throbs with life and color.

Fellini has kept the color--indeed, heightened it--but drained away the life. He seems to have fastened on the legend only to repudiate it. Seen through his hostile lens, Casanova is a chilly fop whose salon manner is alternately tongue-tied and bombastic. How such a creature manages to charm so many women into the bedroom remains a mystery. Nor, once he gets them there, is it easy to see how they can derive much fun from the groaning calisthenics he puts them through. This is a film that earns its R rating not by making sin enticing but by making it repellent. In earlier Fellini works like 8 1/2 and Juliet of the Spirits, there was a fruitful tension between private fantasy and social reality. More recently, as in Fellini Satyricon, the fantasy has tended to overrun the reality. Here Casanova does not move against the rich backdrop the historical period offered but drifts through the bizarre misty regions of Fellini's own imagination. The episodes do not make up a narrative of Casanova's life, but a sort of meditation on it.

It is a meditation peopled by Fellini's patented galleries of grotesques --hunchbacks, dwarfs, crazed aristocrats, a giant strong woman in a circus and a particularly loony occultist (Cicely Browne). But the presentation of most of these figures is so inert that they constitute a series of waxworks, tableaux morts. The film's only burst of real energy, a tumultuous Venetian festival at the beginning, is quickly dissipated. Its loveliest image is completely gratuitous: the candle-laden chandeliers of a theater are lowered to the floor and extinguished by footmen wielding long fans.

In the title role, Donald Sutherland has the thankless task of trying to make something positive out of a negation. Heavy-lidded, stiff in his makeup and costume, he never shakes off the lugubriousness that has worked to better advantage in some of his previous roles.

Although he is playing a character for whom intimacy was a principle of life, the script leaves Sutherland curiously remote and isolated, so self-absorbed that when Casanova is briefly reunited with his aging mother, he forgets to ask for her address. His only moment of what might be called warmth is with a life-size mechanical doll (effectively mimed by Adele Angela Lojodice). He dances tenderly with the wooden figure, names it Love and takes it to bed.

Narcissism and clever mechanics -- that is Fellini's summary of the legend. It is too little to base nearly three hours of film on, and insisting on it only makes the movie numbingly repetitive. Havelock Ellis described Casanova as"natural man in excelsis." Fellini has turned him into morbid man in extremis. Christopher Porterfield

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