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Donald Sutherland as ‘a sperm-filled waxwork with the eyes of a masturbator’ in Fellini’s ‘Casanova’
06.12.2019
08:25 am
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For a man as superstitious as Federico Fellini the omens of 1973 were not good.

Too many friends were ill or dying; his private life was the focus of the paparazzi with claims of affairs with various young starlets; his relationship with his wife Giulietta was almost at an all-time low—though she continued to appear with the great director at functions like, as one acquaintance suggested, a politician’s wife out canvassing voters; and his usual life of extravagance was severely curtailed as the tax man was after him for non-payment of taxes. Things were not looking good. And Fellini was about to turn fifty-three which, by his own estimation, was on the back slice of life.

That summer, in need of money and a desire to keep working, Fellini agreed to make a movie on the life of Casanova for producer Dino de Laurentiis.

Fellini had often hinted that he would one day make a film about Casanova. He used it as a ploy to raise money for his other film projects—-Yes, yes, I’ll make ‘Casanova’ one day but now, now I want to make this….whichever film was his latest obsession. Fellini probably never had any intention of making a film about the great lover as he loathed Casanova. He saw in him some of his own negative traits which he hoped he could exorcise by making this damned film. He said:

“After this film, the moody and unreliable part of me, the undecided part that was constantly seduced by compromise—the part of me that didn’t want to grow up—had to die.”

Fellini was also aware that he perhaps subconsciously placed all his fears and the “anxiety [he couldn’t] face in this film,” adding that “Perhaps the film was fed by fears.” This unease sapped Fellini’s confidence and led him to believe he should have let this film project go as he feared Casanova would be “the worst film I have ever made.”

De Laurentiis was aware of Fellini’s misgivings but chose to ignore them. He knew with Fellini’s name attached to a film about Casanova, he could break the American market. Indeed, he favored an American actor to play the lead. He considered Marlon Brando, then Al Pacino, before finally deciding on the newly crowned “world’s sexiest man” Robert Redford to play Casanova. One can see the cartoon logic—world’s greatest lover must have considerable sex appeal. Robert Redford has sex appeal ergo Redford is Casanova.

Fellini baulked at the choice. He wanted Marcello Mastroianni—an actor he could depend on. Unfortunately, Mastroianni was unavailable. While de Laurentiis searched for another international name (he also considered both Michael Caine and Jack Nicholson) to sell the picture to the US, Fellini started writing the script with his collaborator Bernardino Zapponi.

Zapponi brought his experience as a writer and knowledge of Casanova to the project. He arrived at Fellini’s office with several volumes of Casanova’s biography, only for the director to tell him such source material was not needed, as facts were anathema to imagination. This, Fellini explained, would not be a biographical film but rather a movie that filtered the director’s own thoughts on sex and death and aging thru the prism of Casanova. As Fellini later explained:

“I never had the intention to recount complacently, amused and fascinated the amorous adventures of Casanova.”

Instead he was to be:

“A prisoner as in a nightmare, as immobilised as a puppet, he reflects continually on a series of seductive and disturbing faces which succeed only in incarnating each time a different aspect of himself.”

Or as he had once said in an interview with the BBC:

Everything is autobiographical. How is it possible to live outside of yourself? Anything we do is also a testifying of yourself. If a creator makes something that pretends to be very objective, it is the autobiography of a man who is very objective…

...How is it possible to do something outside of your myth, of your world, of your character, of your history, of yourself?

It was becoming slowly apparent to de Laurentiis that this was not the sex ‘n’ costumes film he had intended to make. In July 1974, de Laurentiis pulled out, telling Variety other work commitments prevented him from giving Fellini’s Casanova the attention it demanded. Fellini sought to raise the money himself and eventually brought in Alberto Grimaldi to produce the film. He also managed to raise money from Universal Studios by bringing in Gore Vidal to write a new script. While Vidal’s script was shown to the studio to raise cash, it was never used in the final film.

During all these behind-the-scenes manoeuvres, rumors spread through the press that Donald Sutherland was to star as Casanova. It’s difficult to ascertain who exactly first suggested Sutherland but his “candidature” for the role was “built up from simple repetition of the rumor.” To help this rumor along, Sutherland sent Fellini a highly flattering letter and twenty roses. Fellini wasn’t convinced. He still wanted the unavailable Mastroianni.

Looking for advice, Fellini visited a clairvoyant, Gustavo Rol, who claimed to have made contact with Casanova. During a seance, Rol filled page after page of notes from the great Casanova aimed at helping Fellini make his movie. When he left the seance, the director read some of the notes Rol had transcribed, which offered the sexual advice never to make love standing-up or after a meal.

Without Mastroianni, Fellini agreed on Sutherland to play Casanova. When asked why? Fellini declared:

“I need him. He’s a sperm-filled waxwork with the eyes of a masturbator!”

Sutherland told Time Out that he would not have played the role for any other director:

“I’m not playing Casanova. I’m playing Fellini’s Casanova, and that’s a whole different thing.”

It certainly was different as Sutherland soon found out when they met:

Walked into La Scala, him warning me that they wanted him to direct an opera and he was not going to do one. I remember three guarded doors in the atrium as we walked in. At the desk the concierge, without looking up when Fellini’d asked to see the head of the theater, demanded perfunctorily who wanted to see him. Fellini leaned down and whispered, truly whispered, “Fellini.” The three doors burst open.

With that word the room was full of dancing laughing joyous people and in the middle of this swirling arm clasped merry go round Fellini said to the director, “Of course, you know Sutherland.” The director looked at me stunned and then jubilantly exclaimed, “Graham Sutherland,” and embraced me. The painter Graham Sutherland was not yet dead, but nearly. I suppose the only other choice was Joan

Sutherland had two millimetres filed from his teeth, his eyebrows removed and his hairline shaved back by two inches. He wore a false nose and chin. Fellini had turned Sutherland into a puppet—a mere mechanism for telling his story. On set, he never called him “Donald” or Mr. Sutherland” but addressed him as “the Canadian.” He offered little in the way of direction or support and could be very disparaging. “That poor guy,” Fellini said, “He believed he was going to become him.”

“Sutherland!—the incarnation of a Latin lover. He had two tons of documentation under his arms. I told him: ‘Throw out the lot. Forget everything.’”

Yet Sutherland was magnanimous in writing about his experience working with Fellini:

I was just happy to be with him. I loved him. Adored him. The only direction he gave me was with his thumb and forefinger, closing them to tell me to shut my gaping North American mouth. He’d often be without text so he’d have me count; uno due tre quattro with the instruction to fill them with love or hate or disdain or whatever he wanted from Casanova. He’d direct scenes I wasn’t in sitting on my knee. He’d come up to my dressing room and say he had a new scene and show me two pages of text and I’d say OK, when, and he’d say now, and we’d do it. I have no idea how I knew the words, but I did. I’d look at the page and know them. He didn’t look at rushes, Federico, the film of the previous day’s work. Ruggero Mastroianni, his brilliant editor, Marcello’s brother, did. Fellini said looking at them two-dimensionalized the three-dimensional fantasy that populated his head. Things were in constant flux. We flew. It was a dream. Sitting beside me one night he said that when he had looked at the final cut he had come away believing that it was his best picture. The Italian version is really terrific.

The film’s production was delayed by strike action and then seventy-four reels of film were stolen and ransomed. This meant Fellini had to change his film. Some scenes were dropped, others edited to fit the footage available. The finished movie bombed with the critics. At best, it was considered a misfire, at worst a disaster. Sutherland was given the unenviable task of attempting to deliver an intelligent and considered performance to a director who only wanted a marionette to play the role. Fellini’s abhorrence of Casanova undermined his ability to make a work of art or even a film that would resonate with an audience. The film could be admired but not always liked.

Fellini’s final verdict on Casanova was that it seemed to him his “most complete, expressive, courageous film.”
 
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More ephemera from Fellini’s ‘Casanova,’ after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.12.2019
08:25 am
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Beautiful handmade Venetian carnival masks
02.02.2017
09:54 am
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‘Damask Joker.’
 
Reading The Story of My Life by Giacomo Casanova set me off on a browse of the beautiful masks famously worn during the Carnival of Venice. These masks were originally used to celebrate the victory of the Most Serene Republic of Venice against Ulrich II of Aquileia and his failed attempt to bring the city under German rule circa 1162. By the time Casanova was living in the city in the middle of the 18th century, citizens were allowed to wear masks for up to six months which enabled the wearer to indulge in an excess of food, wine and partying, and to mix freely with those of other classes. The masks also provided anonymity for those seeking to indulge in a bit of sexual shenanigans. Such hedonistic pleasures led Venice to gain its reputation as a strict yet deeply licentious city.

But back to Casanova who was much more than just a bed-hopping sex beast. He was a soldier, a musician, a dabbler in the dark arts, a novelist, a spy and eventually a librarian to Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein at his castle in Bohemia. Casanova also spent time in the Piombi prison for “public outrages against the holy religion.” Quite incredibly, he escaped from this jail situated in the upper floors of the Doge’s palace by climbing through the roof in 1756. He then fled to Paris where he set up a lottery to raise money for the French army. Casanova was a rather ingenious man and I think it fair to say throughout his life he quite literally donned various “masks” like an actor as he tried out the different roles he played. The real Casanova only became apparent when he sat down to write his memoirs when working as a librarian in Dux.

These gorgeous handmade paper mache masks are inspired by many of the traditional designs worn in Venice during Casanova’s era. They are for sale and though expensive, are utterly beautiful.
 
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‘Casanova.’
 
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‘Jolly.’
 
More beautiful masks, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.02.2017
09:54 am
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Donald Sutherland gives a brief history of his career: Rare interview from 1979

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Donald Sutherland’s big break came in Robert Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen, when co-star Clint Walker refused to play a scene—as Sutherland explained to the Daily Telegraph:

‘...Clint Walker sticks up his hand and says, ‘Mr Aldrich, as a representative of the Native American people, I don’t think it’s appropriate to do this stupid scene where I have to pretend to be a general.’ Aldrich turns and points to me and says, ‘You — with the big ears. You do it’....It changed my life.’

“Big Ears” was born Donald McNichol Sutherland in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, in July 1935. He moved to England in the late 1950s, where he briefly studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, leaving after 9 months to start his professional career as an actor. Sutherland was soon acting in various BBC plays, and guest starring in episodes of such cult TV series as The Saint and The Avengers. Sutherland also co-starred with Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Michael Gough in the classic Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, where he played a newly-wed doctor who suspects his wife is a vampire. After a stint in repertory theater, including 2 disastrous productions, Sutherland’s career seemed stalled. The Dirty Dozen changed that.

During the 1970s, Sutherland made some of the most iconic and seminal films of the decade, including M*A*S*H (a film he originally hated), Kelly’s Heroes (which nearly cost him his life), Klute, Little Murders (a cameo), the unforgettable Don’t Look Now, The Day of the Locust (as the original Homer Simpson), 1900, Casanova, The Eagle Has Landed and National Lampoon’s Animal House.

When asked on the set of Bear Island, in 1979, if he considered himself a star, Sutherland replied that Peter O’Toole is a star, as he has that certain something, while he just makes a lot of movies. Personally, I’d beg to differ. Sutherland gives a brief history of his career, discussing the highlights M*A*S*H, working with Fellini on Casanova and the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Some man, some talent, some head of hair.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous MInds

Donald Sutherland’s hairstyles throughout the years


Donald Sutherland: His Films and Hairstyles


 
With thanks to NellyM
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.06.2013
07:52 pm
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‘I’ve never compromised. But then I’ve always been lucky’: Federico Fellini talks about ‘Casanova’
12.28.2012
07:59 pm
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Federico Fellini had been working on his 12th feature film Casanova. It had been a difficult experience. Filming had taken over a year to complete, and Fellini had spent in excess of $10m, using up 3 producers. He claimed he hated his leading star, Donald Sutherland. There had been union disputes, and the negative had been “kidnapped” and returned. Then the Vatican declared one of Fellini’s previous films “obscene”. But the great master was unfazed by all of this.

‘I’m sorry if I disappoint you by not describing the tears in my eyes, my role as the victim, the artist forced to sacrifice his own integrity and purity,’ Fellini explained in an interview with the BBC in 1976.

‘I’ve never compromised. But then I’ve always been lucky.

‘On the occasions that I could be reproached for compromising, was directly attributable to my own laziness, because I was in love, or I wanted to finish the film. Or, simply because I was fed-up by it.

‘I don’t think absolute liberty is necessarily a good thing for people creatively. As far as I, or people like me are concerned.

‘Being Italian, I have a particular type of psychology: I am an artist who is conditioned to the idea of delivering his work to All.

‘The Popes in the 14th and the 15th century, or the great Lords of days gone by, they always used to commission painters or writers to create a madrigal or a crucifixion for them. It’s this necessity of an obligation - a contract - it’s an authority that forces you to work.’

For Casanova that authority was the American film company. Fellini may have had control over the designs, the sets, the costumes, the cast, the script, and the direction, but ultimately Fellini was answerable to his producers. This was partly why he had chosen to work with Donald Sutherland.

‘Well, in Casanova,’ said Fellini, ‘There was a precise plan for a certain type of character. Because the film is an American film - made by an Italian crew for a major American company. My contractual position is that the producer made me make the film in English.’

Fellini made Sutherland have his head partially shaved, his eyebrows removed and his teeth “cut” by 2mm. A false nose, chin and eyebrows were then added. Sutherland had to rethink how best to interpret Casanova’s experience in terms of 18th century expression.

Fellini wanted authenticity, and he knew his film would cause outrage from the prudes and hypocrites of his homeland, who had already burnt copies of The Last Tango in Paris on the streets of Rome.

‘You’ve got a real moralistic tyranny in Italy,’ Fellini said. ‘It is fast coming to the point where people are being told how to make love, how to dress, how to shave, how to look at a woman. I feel completely bewildered and confused. Clearly what’s going on in our country is a real mess. I cannot honestly see how we are going to extricate ourselves.

‘The Italians are like confused children. They’ve had a thousand years of Catholic up-bringing which has left us uncertain in our context of life. We are incapable, apparently, of making personal judgments because we have always asked other people. We ask our fathers, the teacher, police, the ministry, priests, the Pope. We have always asked others to give their opinion for us, without ever having to judge for ourselves individually.’
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Pier Paolo Pasolini: A rare interview on the set of ‘Salò, or 120 Days of Sodom’


 
With thanks to NellyM
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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12.28.2012
07:59 pm
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