FELLINI’S CASANOVA (IL CASANOVA DI FEDERICO FELLINI) Guest Artistic Director

Federico Fellini’s infamous 1976 take on Giacomo Casanova’s tale is a lavish, hallucinatory reimagining of the legendary Venetian seducer’s life — less historical portrait than fever-dream-induced baroque fantasia. Originally envisioned as a major international production with an American star (Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert Redford and Paul Newman were all considered), the role ultimately went to Donald Sutherland, whose haunting and stylized performance anchors the film’s surreal tone. Far from a romantic hero, Fellini’s Casanova is a tragic, melancholy figure moving through a grotesque and dreamlike Europe — one built entirely on the massive soundstages of Cinecittà Studios in Rome. Drawing only loosely from Casanova’s own memoirs, Fellini instead filters the character through his recurring cinematic obsessions — artifice, desire and the absurd theater of sex — as Casanova’s encounters span the bizarre and fantastical, from noblewomen to acrobats, a giantess, a dwarf and even a life-size automaton. Co-written with longtime collaborator Bernardino Zapponi and produced by Alberto Grimaldi, FELLINI’S CASANOVA is a visual and sonic spectacle, with striking production design and an unforgettable score by Nino Rota. The result is one of Fellini’s most ambitious and divisive works. –Abbie Algar