Fellini's Satyricon

(Fellini – Satyricon, Federico Fellini, Italy 1969, 129 min., 35mm, Italian w/subtitles)

Period Dramas. Of all Fellini’s films, this is perhaps his most quintessentially Fellini-esque, consistently serving up grotesque carnival excess and spectacle. Loosely adapted from Petronius’s lurid Ancient Rome farrago, Fellini's Satyricon freely follows the alternatingly bloody and randy adventures of the young poet Encolpius (Martin Potter), whose desperate infatuation with an androgynous piece of jailbait (Max Born) gets him in all kinds of trouble.