ridiculous rating

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Yet another Fellini extravaganza, again with Danilo Donati's costumes. He won an Oscar for it. And believe me, they are something. Casanova, a strangely melancholic character played by Donald Sutherland, is surrounded with and literally swims in silk, lace, jewelry and - camp. But he is never camp and the film is never camp. It transcends camp. It's so over the top, camp runs away scared. Tina Aumont is probably one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the silver screen. She, and a bunch of other 'exotic' conquests are what Casanova thinks of in his lonely hours.

If you have ever found yourself watching a movie like Emmanuelle and thinking: "This would be great if it were an 18th century costume drama with less nudity and enough nightmarish surrealism to make even David Lynch weep for mercy," then this is the movie for you.Donald Sutherland plays the infamous Count Fucula, a man who tries to have sex with everything he sees that resembles a female, and whose sexual technique generally consists of laying on top of a woman and bouncing up and down on her like he's humping a trampoline - and all without ever even taking off his pants!Short girls, tall girls, blonde girls, brunettes, girls with hunchbacks, female robots.. you name it, he tries to screw it. At one point, I thought he was going to try to make it with a giant turtle. A missed opportunity, if you ask me.Until now, I thought Satyricon was the weirdest Fellini ever got, but this one makes it look square in comparison.

In a way this is the disaster Fellini has been working towards all his life. The line between absurd masterpiece and free association bullshit is very small, and what category a film will ultimately fit in will often just depend on personal feelings. That said, "Casanova" left me in cold admiration for its sets and little more that cannot be summed up more adequately by Bukowski: "Casanova died too, just an old guy with a big cock and a long tongue and no guts at all. to say that he lived well is true; to say I could spit on his grave without feeling is also true. the ladies usually go for the biggest fool they can find; that is why the human race stands where it does today: we have bred the clever and lasting Casanovas, all hollow inside, like the Easter bunnies we foster upon our poor children." As far as I could make it out, this is the position Fellini takes regarding his subject; granted, with more empathy, but disgusted nonetheless.Casanova's environment is made from decay and incestuous behavior, themes Fellini dealt with more pointedly in "Satyricon". The succession of plot is characteristic of soft porn, just without the coherence; and Donald Sutherland is ugly and slimy to the point of distraction.Yet, there might just be a point in portraying Casanova as an unsightly fool. And I challenge anybody to formulate this point without being obvious; Fellini couldn't. More than ever he seems here like a dirty old man - a maestro, for sure, but one whose impulses satisfy himself more than anybody else. I find it hard imagine an audience who enjoys this film. It was a story not worth telling.

With his "La Dolce Vita" and "Amarcord", Federico Fellini is probably one of Italy's best known directors. But that the man has made a lot more movies than only these two, isn't something that everybody seems to know. And even though not all his movies were famous masterpieces, they almost always have something to offer that makes it interesting to give his movies a try. That's why I watched "Il Casanova di Federico Fellini", based on the autobiography of Giacomo Casanova.Telling what the story in this movie is about isn't exactly difficult, although it's not easy to bring it well either. If you want to keep it simple than you could say that this movie is about nothing more than Casanova's sexual escapades. In his quest for fame and fortune, he travels through Europe, visiting all the royal courts, seducing as many women as possible. But the entire movie seems to be one big hallucinatory circus as well. I truly believe that's the best way to describe it, because you don't know if you should take it very serious or not. You can see it as something very disturbing, but the irony and completely over-the-top make-up and costumes almost seem to forbid you to take it all very serious. Even the sex-scenes seem like one big farce. And the acting only makes that feeling stronger, although I must say that I appreciated Donald Sutherland in his role as Giacomo Casanova.In the end I believe that this movie will make it very difficult for the average audience to judge it. Either you love it, either you absolutely hate it, as there almost seems no way in between. Personally I don't really know what to think of this movie. I liked it, but not to such an extend that I would recommend it to my friends. Not that they would understand what I like about it (most of them prefer a lot easier movies), but even if they preferred the not so average movies, I wouldn't be able to explain them very well why this is a definite must-see. I guess this is the kind of movie that you should only give a try when you are already familiar with movies other than the average American blockbuster. I am one of those people and I quite liked it, but it wasn't the best example of 'weird' cinema that I've seen so far. I give it a 6.5/10.