Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29954 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-05-31
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 320 minutes

DVD Description
Starring Frank Finlay and Norman Rossington. The Italian adventurer and libertine Giovanni Jacopo Casanova lived from 1725 to 1798, but in this six-part series Dennis Potter attempted to find a contemporary relevance through his central themes of sex and religion. He commented that Casanova "was concerned with religious and sexual freedom, and these are the things we have to address ourselves to now." Casanova was imprisoned in Venice in 1755, and Potter used that event as a central device, constantly inter-cutting to contrast Casanova's amorous escapades, radiant, joyful and brightly lit, with his oppressive solitary confinement in the gloom of a half-darkened cell.

Special Features

• Subtitles: English SDH
  
• PAL
  
• Region Code: 2
  
• Total Running Time: 230 minutes approx.

Synopsis
Dennis Potter's first adaptation, CASANOVA is a six part TV series, loosely based on the 18th century hedonist's own memoirs. Frank Finlay plays the eponymous lover of lasciviousness, newly escaped from his Venetian prison. Charting the egomaniac's umpteen erotic encounters with heaving busomed ladies, and his blasphemous and fraudulent activities, this suitably lavish period production was considered very racy when it was first transmitted on TV in 1971.

Customer Reviews

Casanova
This is no Sunday teatime costume drama, but an interesting, idiosynchratic series by critically acclaimed dramatist Dennis Potter. Potter was always essentially an autobiographical writer, so it is unsurprising that his Casanova is subjected to the torments of confinement, memory and guilty libido that would later become the themes of such seminal dramas as Pennies From Heaven and The Singing Detective. But even among Potter efficienados, this is a somewhat neglected work, probably on account of its thin skin of period drama trappings. The production values date the piece, of course, but accepting the back projections and once fancy (now clumsy) editing techniques, we still have a compelingly written, well acted drama. It shares with all Potter's finest work the sense that it is an intensely felt work; sensual, visceral, oddly frightening one minute and earthily funny the next. No Potter fan should be without it and anyone tired of the inspipidity of modern television will relish the opportunity to see what can be done with the medium when a little imagination and a lot of heart are applied.

they don't make 'em like this anymore
Casanova doesn't fizz and sparkle quite in the same manner as 'Pennies From Heaven' or 'Singing Detective' but it is well worth the taking the effort. Frank Finlay is very very good, especially in the prison scenes, but probably isn't the modern idea of a Casanova figure. The whole thing has inevitably dated, but this isn't a bad thing; it adds an extra dimension to a series that takes as one theme the balance between repression and permissiveness. I guess Dennis Potter was saying something about human nature in the 18th century and in 1971; we can watch it in 2005 and judge the truth of it today.
Early sequences of bare-breasted lovelies suggest we are going to watch a good-natured romp with an 18th century man of feeling. Wrong! Casanova is a tortured soul caught between heaven and hell, the sublime and the sordid, pleasure and pain (you get the picture). He is a man who struggles to articulate the depth and purity of his feelings and, when he does succeed, he finds only indifference in the people around him. Casanova is compelled by nature to fulfil his own desires; the irony for him is that his success as a libertine does not bring him liberation.

Well, I enjoyed it.

Early, and therefore good, Potter
Dennis Potter was responsible for many TV dramas, and to my mind, his later work became self-indulgent, overly autobiographical and embarrassingly repetitive. Here, in his first long series, Potter's obsession with sex and nudity doesn't get in the way, it gives an extra dimension to the story. His dialogue is a joy to hear ("Feldkirchner - how that name trips off the tongue") and he presents a surprisingly accurate and sympathetic view of Casanova. Frank Finlay acts reasonably well, Norman Rossington hams it up superbly as the sadistic gaoler, and the shoddy production values actually help the slightly tawdry nature of the story.