Fellini—Satyricon (1969)

(YouTube Streaming, December 2022) It was a terrible sign when, fifteen minutes into Fellini—Satyricon, I realized that what I first thought was a meaningless prologue was actually the main movie—a very stylized theatrical staging of a Roman-day gay romance set against surreal sets. While the film eventually evolves toward a (slightly) more realistic presentation, the initial mark never goes away—this is pure self-eccentricity from Federico Fellini, and I was left wondering what was the point of it. The off-putting nature of the film is completely deliberate, of course—any other film in Fellini’s filmography will show that he was capable of far more welcoming works. But Satyricon is fragmented, surreal, violent, and possibly ungraspable by design. My inner cynic wonders how much of the praise for this film runs on simple accumulated goodwill for Fellini, but maybe that’s just me being tired of even trying to play the game he’s going for here. I can promise you that you haven’t seen anything like it. Whether that’s a compliment or not remains to be seen. [January 2023—The existence of making-of documentary Ciao, Frederico! helps justify Satyricon a bit more, as it leads to footage of Fellini at work directing the film, puppeteering his actors through sequences where they admit that “he tells us what to do, but only he knows the why.”  There’s a lengthy sequence that portrays a day of shooting on the beach from cold morning to warm afternoon, and another where the imperatives of a complex production all come into play. It’s not necessarily a joy to watch (Fellini isn’t particularly likable, and the film’s innate sexism is quickly grating) but it’s interesting to see the director at work, especially in a film whose meaning can’t necessarily be inferred from its narrative sequences.]