Thursday, September 4, 2014

497. Satyricon

Satyricon
1969
Directed by Federico Fellini













Frequent readers of my blog will know that I really hate Fellini and think he is a bit of a pretentious nutcase.  So I apologize if this review seems a bit repetitive.  I also apologize if it is not the most in-depth review, since I kind of spaced out during the duration of this movie.  Unfortunately, I love myself too much to rewatch the parts that made me zone out.

Encolpio is heartbroken that his sex slave was taken by someone else.  Um, then let's see.  People are sexually abused and humiliated in different ways.  Good thing I didn't have a chance to be too disturbed since I wasn't paying much attention anyway.

The cinematography is often praised in this film, but I personally think beauty is quite easy to capture on film; it really is everywhere.

A real low for Fellini and that is coming from me, who wasn't expecting much anyway.

RATING: *----

Interesting Facts:

Fellini didn't cast Italians as the male leads because, according to him, there are no homosexual Italians.

7 comments:

  1. I cannot agree with quite such a sweeping condemnation of all Fellini's work.. (I really like Amarcord, Nights of Cabiria,..).. BUT ..
    I will happily join in going "What the...??" on this one.

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    1. You are right; Nights of Cabiria wasn't awful. But this one was just terrible.

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  2. No, no no. Sexual abuse and sex slaves. Why was this in the book?

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  3. I think anybody who manages to sit through this and stay attentive deserves a medal. The narrative is just all over the place. In fact, I am not sure what the narrative was.

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  4. Lord alone knows what was going on here. It's almost 1am so I might look it up tomorrow to see if there was some kind of plot or or over-aching purpose which escaped me.

    Visually very impressive, partly in an obtuse way. It's a shame that subtitles can distract the eyes from the visuals, but every time I looked up from the words when someone was talking I was shocked by how bad the voice synchronisation was. How could Italians watch films where the sound mismatches so badly? (Assuming hey could sit through this in the first place)

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    1. UPDATE: Apparently the bad voice synching was deliberate on the part of Fellini.

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