Fellini's Casanova

Fellini's later works often get a bad rap as being overindulgent, but I think that seriously misses the point. Fellini was creating these wild fantasias to work out his dreams and obsessions. One of the themes he consistently retuned to was the price of erotic longing, and that theme has never been tackled better than in this film. Fellini's Casanova, as portrayed by Donald Sutherland, is a pathetic figure, vain and narcissistic, with little understanding of how is viewed from the outside. He quests after erotic conquest as if that meant something outside of his own obsessions. Fellini was clearly commenting on himself here with the unflinching eye he used to dissect himself throughout his career. A powerful work by a true genius with a career best performance from Sutherland.