Fellini was not at all interested in Casanova. He was just one of his ghosts, part of one of his dreams. He was a monster among other monsters, who live in the imagination of an artist grown up in a small town overlooking the Adriatic Sea and who then moved to Rome, a city that in his view was the seat of the church and of clerical life.

Casanova is, perhaps, the best Fellini’s film after Otto e mezzo, and probably the one that does not fall within fellinismo. It is certainly his most compact film (and it doesn’t make much sense to discuss whether it was really necessary for the film to last two hours and 43 minutes), due to the wealth of Fellini’ inventions, narrative, ability to balance horrible and loving aspects, ironic and fantastic traits, and his ability to switch from caricatures to visions. This has always been one of the peculiarities of his talent, but here – even with some repetitions – it is highly homogeneous, and is supported by the wonderful colour palette by Rotunno and an excellent score.

Casanova is not a novel that is meant to become a film, as it lacks logical progression or a real story links. The connections in-between the nine or ten chapters are quick and uncertain, and remind us of comics books’ captions. Federico Fellini’s great circus belongs to avant-garde art, as the American ‘underground’ filmmakers stated when Otto e mezzo was released. Despite the billions spent lavishly, we are not close to the “industrial art” described by Flaubert here, but we are rather closer to ‘privatism’ and Andy Warhol’s impudence. Therefore, if we compare this film with Barry Lindon we find more differences than similarities in-between the films. Kubrick takes nineteenth-century novels and the 18th century setting, as well as the sociological and political traits of this story very seriously. He has apparently read and annotated the books of an entire library, and voices his moral opinion on that period and the main character. Fellini has skimmed through Histoire casanoviana as if it were a telephone directory, the phone list, but he apparently putting forward only his own impressions. However, if Kubrick’s vision of the 18th century is based on deep cultural reasons, Fellini’s dreams on the 18th century have the alarming and mysterious quality of a prophetic vision. Maybe Jung would have said Il Casanova is a prophecy on the past.

Il Casanova is rich, multifaceted, characterized by a variety of tones, perhaps it slows down sometimes, but we are bound to love it especially when its main character gets old and acquires a humanity that he had been denied before. That’s how we feel involved.