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The Fellini note is adduced not from Satyricon but rather Toby Dammit (Spirits of the Dead) for the ultimate send-up of British thespians cutting loose in Roman studios. Many hands fondle the authorial bosom: The original idea was a Rossellini miniseries reshaped by Gore Vidal as political treatise, Tinto Brass perhaps had Pasolini's Salò in mind and funding poured in from Penthouse, the scrambled result comes padded with "additional scenes by Bob Guccione and Giancarlo Lui." A pivotal work all the same, less the culmination of '70s porn-chic cinema than its purposefully degraded last hurrah. The new Caesar is quite mad, in his own mind divinely appointed ("Jupiter loves me") and a colossus amid toady fornicators, the role calls for wild inspiration and Malcolm McDowell delivers fulsomely. "More conviction!" roars Peter O'Toole in warty makeup and scotch-soaked toga as Tiberius, John Gielgud as Nerva exits early after a foretaste of Prospero's Books. Helen Mirren's Caesonia is picked out of a Sapphic lickfest and proposed to mid-buggery, her wink while dancing for her husband's horse captures the sangfroid of the performance. "Serve the state, though the people in it are wicked beasts." The pornocracy, its cruelty and tedium laid mercilessly bare. Caligula as demonic libertine and prancing paranoid and Senate cutup and wedding crasher, so eager to pile on the grungy sleaze that even the lifeless body of his sister (Teresa Ann Savoy) is turned into a spread-snatch shot. Wobbly zooms flatten looming sets, disembodied voices and clashing film stocks reign supreme, the ubiquitous smoke might be sulfur. The imperial brothel-vessel dissolves to the farcical battlefield. "They were appalled!" "I do hope so." A rare appreciation of the form comes from Russell in Salome's Last Dance. With John Steiner, Guido Mannari, Paolo Bonacelli, Leopoldo Trieste, Giancarlo Badessi, Mirella D'Angelo, Adriana Asti, and Anneka Di Lorenzo.
--- Fernando F. Croce |