Fellini Satyricon Reviews

Orgy, anyone? The bizarre characters and situations that had filled the films of Federico Fellini since his early VARIETY LIGHTS found their ultimate expression in this dreamy, hallucinatory depiction of ancient Rome. Based on the 1st century A.D. fragment of a drama by Gaius Petronius (with added inspiration from other writings of the period), this film strips away all the glamor and honor associated with the early Romans to expose a society in which conventional morality has little or no significance. But Fellini's desire was not to criticize Rome, nor was it to set the history books straight; rather, he found the perfect setting with which to parallel the youth culture of the 1960s. Encolpius (Potter) and Ascyltus (Keller) are two students whose adventures in a hotbed of decadence are the excuse for the threadbare plot that holds this extraordinary spectacle together. Their sole aim is the pursuit of hedonistic desires, and hedonism is just what Fellini gives us--there are concubines, nymphomaniacs, hermaphrodites (in the form of an albino infant with magical healing powers), sadism, masochism, and no doubt a few more "isms" as well amidst all the group sex going on. The odd thing is that the excess seems visual and mythical rather than really sexual. (For one thing we see very little sex.) The masterful cinematography and stunning use of color, achieved through the use of deliberately artificial light sources, lend the film an almost hypnotic sheen. Even if you can't recall particular images, the look of the film is likely to linger in your memory.