Directors: Petronius, 20%; Fellini, 80%

There's an enormous platter of live black eels in an inky sauce, and that's only the hors d'oeuvres. As the guests seat themselves at the banquet, their hostess urinates in a silver chamber pot. Slaves stumble over garbage-strewn floors bearing trays of delicacies from some gastronomic apocalypse: a white calf wearing a brass helmet, cows' udders aswim in a mucid green sauce. It is a picnic in the best traditions of ancient Rome and Federico Fellini, designed and executed for Satyricon, his first full-length film in four years. It may be the...