Fellini - Satyricon
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Movie Reviews of Fellini - Satyricon
Movie Review: Humanity & Fantasy
Summary: 5 Stars
SATYRICON may well be the crown jewel of the late 1950-1960's European/Asian Art Film genre--by one of the master directors of the time.
As mentioned in the press blurb, the film play is loosely (very loosely) based on The Satyricon by Petronious, and the storyline follows the sexual exploits of Encolpio who searches for his fickle lover, played out within the framework of a hyper-sexualized & surrealistic vision of Pagan Rome (and other locales that could be anywhere between the Italian countryside to Jupiter.)
This is Fellini's most opulent & lavish production (eclipsed only by his other masterpiece CASANOVA--a film critics found just a little too lavish & opulent, and a movie that seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.)
SATYRICON (more or less translates as "Sex Play") is a sumptuous feast for the eyes & ears, emphasized by an non-intrusive & often very funny script. For example, in one scene a man entertains dinner guests with this story: Once upon a time a beautiful young widow had to bury her husband. Following the tradition of the time, she vowed to pine away next to the body she followed to the cemetery. Just over the hill a handsome young soldier was charged with the task of guarding the body of a hanged thief. The soldier hears the widow's crying & goes to investigate. With very little cajoling the widow & soldier make love next to the corpse. Meanwhile, the relatives of the hanged man steal his body. When the soldier finds out, he threatens to kill himself because he knows that he'll be held responsible. But the widow dissuades him, suggesting he replace the stolen body with that of the husband. She says, "Better to hang a dead husband then lose a living lover."
The storyteller's audience laughs--and the theatre audience laughed along with them. This exemplifies the intent of the director in this film--to show the continuity of human nature, with all its aspirations & foibles.
Another scene I liked involved a rich man who employed a fulltime soothsayer to interpret the meaning of his belches.
And this one: The intrepid hero becomes impotent, but unluckily for him, he is selected to play the role of Lover in a city fertility rite. The rather ample High Priestess displays herself on the altar & entices him to lay on top of her. Unfortunately that's all he does. In a huff she tosses him off the altar, picks up her clothes & goes stomping off yelling "You shriveled up little worm, you'll bring bad luck on all of us!"
There are poignant scenes between the humor.
In one such scene a Patrician (land owner) and his wife learn that Caesar (no particular Caesar is really identified) has been assassinated. As they were allies of his, they know that they are marked for death. They send their children away to safety (Fellini's daughter plays one of them.) Then in a highly stylized, emotive, graceful scene, they commit suicide. No melodrama here, but dignity.
The sexual and other visual images of the film are very Dali--and if you love Dali, you'll love the movie. If you're uncomfortable about sex, you won't like this picture. Every form of sex & fetish runs throughout SATYRICON. Nudity is rampant! However, here too Fellini shows his humanity. No matter how bizarre the situation (or position) not one character is portrayed as degrading or demeaning. SATYRICON is a Celebration of Life, a fusion art form the almost quietly invokes an age old expression of joy.
It is as if we were being ever so gently reminded that our life is all we have, and unfortunately, it just can't last forever.
As a matter of fact, it has a tendency to end all too soon.
This was certainly the Pagan outlook.
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Movie Review: roasted pigs in space!
Summary: 5 Stars
FELLINI SATYRICON - the first film I experienced directed by Federico Fellini. I was with two or three other people in a small theater, and remember sitting through the movie with my jaw gaping like a little kid watching cartoons; I was on the edge of my seat. I walked out and spent an hour or so trying to figure out what the hell it was I just saw? Favorite scenes: Vernacchio, marriage at sea, minotaur. I later read that Fellini had always wanted to make a science fiction picture, and SATYRICON was the closest he would come to that goal. Petronious Arbiter was a Roman scholar and poet who mixed with the courtesans of the emperor Nero. The remains of his writings are his observations of the world he lived; ultimately, he was "asked" by Nero to end his own life for various insults to the emperor. A strange, distant world is painted in the fractured remains of the Satyricon. Fellini used the text as a jumping off point to attempt to imagine a world completely alien to our own (images, sound, everything). Fueling this tour-de-force of invention is the period of the film's creation - the late sixties. If not directly quoted in its scenes, the spirit and free form of the late sixties definitely influenced Fellini and company.
BARBARELLA comes to mind as a comparison, in terms of color pallet, bizarre situations and a comic book quality - psychedelia at its finest. Fellini's interpretation of the Satyricon seems to capture that weird pulse of chaos and the "climate" of revolution; stripping away a mere "classic literature travelogue" approach - and presenting a libidinal sideshow of monsters, perverts, politicians, artists, and other variations of the human condition. The movie works like a dream, just presenting this river of existence that we follow through the misadventures of the main characters: Encolpio, Ascilto and Gitone. It's certainly a wonderful work of art and invention, among the best the cinema has provided thus far. Since its release, major filmmakers have dipped into this film for inspiration - Terry Gilliam, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, etc.
In the end, Encolpio's desperate way of life leaves nothing behind, except an expressionless face carved in stone amongst other faces. Life is short and fleeting. What will people two thousand years from now think of the way we live today? Trying to imagine a possible inkling of an idea to follow that question was all I could think about after walking out of FELLINI SATYRICON.
So, I'm not sure what you'd call this movie - science fiction? A comedy? CALIGULA on acid? I read [maybe in Playboy] that Fellini was asked to direct CALIGULA, and refused to take the job. Funny, that. Certainly SATYRICON is an entertainment of some kind? Whatever it is - definitely RENT it first.
Movie Review: Exploring reality through drug-induced fantasy
Summary: 5 Stars
As much as I enjoy Roman epics like Kubrick's Spartacus - Criterion Collection, it is undeniable that these tend to either whitewash the more bizarre aspects of Roman life or turn said aspects into a freak show (Caligula (Three-Disc Imperial Edition), Gladiator (Widescreen Edition)). What sets Fellini's film apart is that he does not try to make any connections to our present (except that he and his version of the Romans apparently shared a penchant for hallucinogenic drugs). His vision of the Roman world is confusing like some sort of endless carnival, alien to us in a way a Far-Eastern culture might be. In many ways it seems a bit overdone, until you realize that e.g. Roman food was indeed quite strange (read Apicius). And yes, the Roman women put lead makeup on their faces. I bet that was healthy!
But the real star of the film is the production design and the cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno. Not to mention the delicious overacting and the deliberately out-of-sync dialogue (there is a book about the making of the film in which Fellini explains his vision). Many movies have stolen a few ideas here, for example Lychias's ship somehow seems to have influenced Waterworld and other post-apocalyptic movies. I guess it is no coincidence that Fellini called this his "science-fiction film of the past". Also, Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life" with its episodic structure and carefree sexuality is deeply indebted to this film.
The work on which the movie is based, the The Satyricon (Oxford World's Classics) by Petronius Arbiter, might perhaps be called the birth of the anti-hero novel, where three misfits -- students who dabble a bit in murder, theft, and prostitution on the side -- stumble from one ribald adventure into the next and where the reader can never decide if he should laugh with the "heroes" or at them. So, does Petronius intend to satirize the "haves" (like Trimalchio) or the "have-nots" (like Eumolpius) -- or simply everybody? And what does Fellini want to say with this film? Maybe just to sit back and enjoy the visual feast he offers.
Movie Review: The Reason Movies Exist
Summary: 5 Stars
*Fellini-Satyricon* was the Maestro's first movie in which his name appears as part of the title. It is also his first color masterpiece, and one of the most fascinating and origninal films of the 20th century. Every Fellini movie is unique. He had no peers. *Fellini-Satyricon*, however, is a cardinal enry in Fellini canon (not to mention the canon of Italian cinema) because it is the perfection of the new style announced in *8 1/2* and the innauguration of a new visual extravagance that would inform all of Fellini's subsequent films. The subject, 1st century Rome in all its florid, tumescent decadence, is lovingly transformed through Fellini's comic vision. The self-contained sequences, vignettes really, are not only fair translations into cinema of what is probably the first "novel" in Western literature, they also serve to reflect the fragmentary nature of the surviving evidence of antiquity. Scenes are fitted together like pieces in a puzzle where some of the picture is ultimately lost. This is emphasized by the visual references to broken frescoes, from which the characters seem to emerge and revert back into.
The DVD provides a sparkling, lush, diamond-sharp transfer with a choice of English or Italian soundtracks and English, French, Spanish subtitles.
A word about the dubbing: The English version is much better than the Italian version, for a number of reasons. 1) Fellini dubbed all his actors anyway because he used international casts. There is no such thing as a Fellini movie where the actors are actually speaking their lines in real time. For the most part, different actors were used for the dubbing. 2) The Italian actors used in the Italian dub are horribly miscast. There is just no way that those voices could come out of those people. Physically. The English actors are better. (If you watch their lips, you'll notice that Hiram Keller and Martin Potter are both speaking their parts in English). 3) You'll want to watch, not read, this film. 4) A good amount of the sound that comes out of the characters' mouths is either Latin, gibberish, or some admixture thereof, and, for the most part, what the characters are actually saying isn't all that important.
There are sadly, no extra features on this DVD. A commentary by surviving cast members would have been so great. Nevertheless, this is a DVD that anyone who loves movies should want to own. Highest recommendation!!!
Movie Review: A singular triumph
Summary: 5 Stars
Many complain "Satyracon" is lewd and "over the top". Hello! It's Ancient Rome! Many complain "Satyracon" is fragmented and episodic. Wake up people! It's taken from an ancient episodic work [like the Odyssey] that has only survived in fragments.
"Satyracon" is genius! It's a dream, a romp through the civilized western world without Christ or Christianity. A place where homosexuality and slavery are taken for granted. Where magic rules and life has quite a different meaning than it does today. To understand the genius of this film, one can simply compare it to 2 other films of about the same era, and themes.
One is "Caligula". It takes place in the same period of Ancient Rome, and the film even has the same designers! But "Caligula" is trash and porn and is all shock value that leaves little behind after you struggle through it. It's crap. Not so for "Satyracon". Both films have blood and gore and sex, but "Satyracon" does it with style, and it is never gratuitous.
The other is "2001: a Space Odyssey". Both films are experiments in filmmaking firmly planted in the period in which they were made: the late sixties. They are based, sort of, on an aesthetic of the time called "the happening" in which events unfold spontaneously. Plot becomes secondary...or tertiary even. Remember the musical "Hair", a hit of course at the time, has no plot. This 60's notion can be seen in other films too, that don't work and have become very dated, like "Easy Rider" or "Lucky Man". But "Satyracon" and "2001" take this happening idea and use it to concentrate on images. After all these are "motion PICTURES" and both films could almost be silent films [how the very genre of film started!] and they still work. Both involve unfamiliar places and cultures, one in the future [for the 60's] and one in the past. The characters in both realms take for granted the things we look on with amazement.
Yes, "Satyracon" is a period piece, a 60's film, but unlike others who tried to get "the happening" to work and failed, this film succeeds beautifully [partly by cleverly basing the film of a fragmented source]. And like "2001" it is still original, unique, and mysterious. It's brilliant! Don't miss it!