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Painted Rats. Later, on another set, the director swung aloft on a crane over an indoor water tank to film an enormous caged seraglio at the edge of a Venice canal. "Motore!" he shouted, and the cameras rolled. The harem was wild with excitement as Casanova's gondola glided past. Fellini exhorted the girls chosen for the scene to climb their cage like monkeys to get a better view. "Higher, Fernanda!" he roared through a megaphone. "Climb higher and hang those lovely boobs of yours through the bars." The girl followed instructions, hung on precariously and was rewarded by a blown kiss from "the maestro," as he is known to his adoring veteran crew. Fellini is a masterly politician, roaming the crowded sound stage to flirt shamelessly with the women and backslap the men. Says he: "I am the captain of a glorious ocean liner. My crew and I work together to make a big joke of the crossing."
But Fellini's penchant for detail is no laughing matter. Filming a Venice canal sequence in an outdoor tank, the maestro ordered 200 rats into the water. "Stop!" he shouted after noticing that half the rats were white: "Paint them brown." His hard-pressed casting staff is often given a sketch of a type of face he wants and ordered off to the back alleys of Rome in search of their prey. For Fellini, the right face is everything. "I chose Sutherland because he is completely alien to the conventional idea of Casanova—the dark-eyed Italian, magnetic, raven locks, dark skin, the classic Latin lover. He reflects my thinking about Casanova, of estrangement."
Sutherland's metamorphosis into Casanova begins each day with 3½ hours of makeup application, which supplies him with a Romanesque nose and jutting jaw (Fellini has filmed him almost entirely in profile). These details resemble those in portraits of the real man. But as usual, Fellini goes further. Sutherland's scalp has been shaved clean for three inches up from the hairline and his eyes lined into a definite slant. The result is a highly stylized, almost Kabuki look that conforms amazingly to a sketch of Casanova drawn by Fellini—who was once a cartoonist —months before he met Sutherland. "Fellini choreographs every move I make," says Sutherland, who had arrived in Rome with Casanova's twelve-volume Memoirs. "Don't read any more," ordered the director. "I will tell you all you need to know."
At first, Sutherland bridled at being treated like a puppet. "But why resist?" he concluded. "The man's a genius." Says Fellini: "I don't have problems with actors—they have problems with me. 'Donaldino' has done very well."
Skitter Bed. Tacked to Sutherland's dressing-room wall is another Fellini cartoon showing the director and his star running for their lives, pointing the finger of blame at each other, while from the clouds, a furious Casanova is brandishing a sword and screaming at them: "Bastards!"