Odd this day

Coates
2 min readDec 7, 2022

--

So, happy 46th birthday to Fellini’s Casanova, a film in which Donald Sutherland was cast even though the director thought he was

a big sperm-full waxwork with the eyes of a masturbator

Donald Sutherland in Fellini’s Casanova. Image shoes a man in a white robe and wig with an extremely high forehead, next to a cabinet which appears to contain a silver statuette of a bird with its wings spread
Donald Sutherland in Fellini’s Casanova

Sutherland knows this, too, because journalist John Patterson told him in 2005 — and this was the first he’d heard of it, 29 years after the film came out. He seemed quite happy to hear it.

Wasn’t that when you first met Fellini? “Oh, yes,” he says, with another sly smile of pleasure and mischief. I have a great quote from him about you, I say. This is Fellini defending his choice of you to play Casanova to one of his partners: “No, I need him. He’s a sperm-filled waxwork with the eyes of a masturbator!” My tape recorder records an explosion of laughter from Sutherland that lasts a gratifyingly long time. “Oh God, oh God! You have to send me that, full quote and source…

Whether he’d be quite so pleased to know that critics described his appearance in the film film as “a sort of spectral anamorph of male genitals”, “lumpy eared, lazy-eyed, not-so-handsome” and “a bald, glabrous, waxen beanpole”, I don’t know.

(Those quotes are all from Hollywood Reborn: Movie Stars of the 1970s.)

The original Fellini quote is from Conversations with Fellini, and is less enthusiastic than Patterson remembers it — making clear that Sutherland wasn’t the director’s first choice.

My first thought was to entrust the role of Casanova to Gian Maria Volonté. But subsequent postponements lead to a breaking off of negotiations. So I gave the role of Casanova to Donald Sutherland, a big sperm-full waxwork with the eyes of a masturbator, as far removed as one could imagine from an adventurer and Don Juan-like Casanova, but a serious professional actor.

This is Gian Maria Volonté

Italian actor in a dark suit looks moodily at someone and gestures with his hand

…and you can see what Fellini means — but he needed American money to make the picture. Producer Alberto Grimaldi suggested Brando, Pacino, and Redford, but Fellini had a different vision for the character.

He had, apparently, read Casanova’s memoirs only after signing the contract to direct, and, according to the New York Times in 1977,

was smitten by a feeling of dizziness and the mortifying impression that I had made a wrong move

Sutherland, meanwhile

thoroughly researched the role. Fellini told him to forget everything

(according to Federico Fellini: Ringmaster of Dreams, by Chris Wiegand).

Any vision Sutherland might have had was quickly forgotten. He

was told where and how to move, how to turn his head, what to do with his hands…

Full disclosure: I still haven’t seen the bloody thing myself — I just love the quote. Anyway, it’s worth reading the whole interview with Sutherland, because he’s very entertaining, and at the end he emails Patterson about *that* scene in Don’t Look Now

--

--

Coates
Coates

Written by Coates

Purveyor of niche drivel; marker of odd anniversaries

No responses yet