few thoughts on Fellini's Casanova.

First I'd like to point out the curious blend in this film of the two type of Fellini films. In its looks
the film is most closely related to works like Satyricon and Roma, but its main character is
mainly redolent of Marcellos Mastroiani's characters in La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2: the
ermotionally unstable man who goes from woman to woman searching for something he
cannot find, who's both loved and hated by the women he conquers, and who's deeply lost in
a way of life he's desperately trying to change. Particularly he resembles most La Dolce Vita's
Marcello, considering the tragic outcome and utmosy failure of both characters.

Having this in mind, I'd like to point out that I do not see Casanova the character as a
despicable figure, but as an esentially tragic one. He is indeed false, boisterous and selfish, and
uses his sexual prowesses exclusively with the end of attaining self-gratification and fame and
glory, with no real regard for the pleasure of the women he's with. This is shown at its utmost
expression in the sequence of the sexual contest, where we can clearly see that, although
thanks to his knowledge and exercises he wins the competition, the woman he's with is
ashamed and almost suffering, while the princess who's with the coachman is having the time
of her life. The coachman, although less knowledgeable, is devoid of the whole stiffness that
things like aristocratic conventions might implant on a man, and is more in touch with his
"animal" side, making him a more "apt" lover, since he seeks his gratification only in the
gratification of his sexual partner. The whole of Casanova's inability to feel actual attachment is
further symbolised by the clockwork-toy-like orgy in the german inn, and by the mechanical
bird that accompanies him in most of his sexual conquests.

BUT. He's indeed like this in a sort of "natural" state. He is driven by the clockwork mechanism
of his uncontrollable lust. But first of all, it is really arguable whether his feelings for the
women he's with aren't at least momentarily honest, and if this passionate lust isn't perhaps
more intense and "real" than what we westerners usually consider as "love". Secondly, he
seems to actually want to change this, and I think that he really feels attachment and perhaps
actual, traditional, tender "love" for the three women in his life that might offer him a way out
of his meaningless debauchery: Henriette, the Giant Woman, and Isabella. But, his attempts at
a relationship with the three of them fail miserably, and it is quite telling that in the three
cases is the women who leave or betray him, and not the other way around. Of course, it could
be argued that he seems to forget about them awful quick, and that is curious that he should
have three "loves of his life". But I'd say that his forgetting about them is not really so clear
(the orgy after Isabella's failing to appear might well be considered to be the product of spite,
at least at first) and in respect to the several cases of "true love", I'd say that it is perfectly
possible for a man to fall "truly" in love several times in his life.

So what we have, as I see it, is a man aware of the path of self-destruction that he's going
through, a path that can end only in his dying alone and unloved (as he actually does), who
tries desperatelty to change this path and fails miserably, because the only "tool" he knows
how to handle, women, prove to feeble and inconstant for his designs (it is interesting and
typical of the character that he should attempt this changes from that point of view; he still is
using women for a purpose). And in this light I'd like to examine the last woman we see him
being with, the mechanical woman. This could be interpreted as his finally having encountered
his perfect match, a woman that also works on clockwork, that in a way it is himself that he
falls in love with. But I'd like to point out another possibility, that is that in "mating" with this
woman, he's making one last attempt (he's already very socially and phisically diminished at
this point) of finding that something he's been looking for in women all his life, that "tool" for
the change. And he thinks that maybe he'll find it this time, because there's something this
woman can't do: she can’t leave him. She's bound to be loyal to him till the end. But, he
"sleeps" with her, and after the sexual ecstasy he realizes the truth, which is the other, the first
possibility we mentioned: he's just embraced (in more senses than one) his own
"mechanicalness". The path towards his doom, old age devoid of love, is now unavoidable.

All this points in my opinion to a character that's above all pathetic, and not despicable as
some make him. Sure, there's a lot of the droll in his attitute, especially in the last few scenes
of the film, but above all he's a very sad, tragic figure.

This sense of the tragic I think is quite enhanced by his Christ-like appearance in the scene
after he faints at Isabella's father house. There we see the pins being inserted in a sort of
heabdand by the two women, forming a sort of crown of thorns. He's carrying the cross of his
own doom and his own inability to form a bond.

Finally, a moment in the film that I think is wonderful is his conversation with the pipe-smoking
man inside the whale. Casanova tells him that he, the man, has travelled far, but only in
fantastic worlds, while he himself's travelled through the real world, and the man replies that
his travels from woman to woman have led him only to suffering. This is absolutely true, and
foreshadows Casanova's end. But there's more to it than that. The man acknowledges that his
travels have been only in fantasy lands, and that leads him to a sort of solace or contentment.
Casanova brags that he's travelled all over the "real" world, not realizing that he's anywhere
but in the real world: to start with, he's a character in a film; then, he lives in a world of
haunting, dream-like, surreal appearance; and finally, he moves from royal court to royal
court, a milieu that's entirely detached from what might be considered the "real" world. He's
separated from the "real" world by three degrees of separation. This impossibility to
acknowledge the unreality of the world he moves in causes Casanova a lot of pain, and is in
part what brings him towards the utmost misery of his last years, now that the bubble of
fantasy, supported by the success with women that's now gone, finally bursts and puts him
directly in contact with the bleak, dismal, actual reality that he wrongly believed to have been
a part of since long before.

We work on clockwork. The way we organize society, we add all this filters, all these
complexities to reality, between the world and our drives, our will, that at some point all the
elements that define us as human come out through a sort of grid and become mechanical.
Now’s the socially accepted time to fuck, now to eat, now to shit, now to work and so on. And
what’s curious is that we should at certain times rebel against those rules, but only at the
socially accepted time to do so. We are allowed by society to go nuts Saturday night, or when
we are young. We deceive ourselves with the illusion that we are going against social
conventions, but we do it at moments and in times that it is socially convened that is right to
do so. So much for the hedonism of most. Not all, fortunately, not all. All that, is Casanova’s
Bird.
What attracts him to Henriette: she has all those masks, like himself, and she’s a con-woman,
even more than himself, capable even of wrenching stardom from him

What attracts him to the giant woman: she’s a manly woman, and offers a perfect balance for
his womanly-manliness.

What attracts him to Isabella: her power over life and death, disease and healing. Her duality,
similar to his own.

What attracts him to the mechanical woman: well, her mechanicalness, as his own, but also
the fact that she cannot escape from him.