My favorite movie of all time!

When most people see Fellini's Satyricon for the first time, they are confused.  The story seems to skip major plot lines and jump around a bit. This is because the actual story, written around 50AD has only three major portions surviving (out of possibly 80 books).  It was like a soap opera for the Romans.  Each installment was waited for in great anticipation and it was very popular.  Fellini created incredible sets and costumes and embellished the story a little to make it his own version.

In the first scene, the college student Encolpio tells us that his young lover Gitoni has gone missing.  Encopio's roommate Ascylto is at the baths, and is telling us that Encolpio pretends to be pious when in fact he's a whore.

The lighting in these scenes is dramatic.  Fellini, as you will notice, liked to have the action in his scenes take place in a corner, typically the right hand one.

Turns out that Gitoni had gone with Ascylto, but always needing money, Ascylto sold Gitoni to an old actor.  Encolpio rushes to the theater to take back Gitoni.

Encolpio is on the left, Gitoni on the far right and the actor is in between.  The crowd doesn't like the play which makes fun of Caesar so they demand the actor gives the boy back to Encolpio.  Encolpio and Gitoni go back to their flat in the poor section of Rome, but they get lost.  This is the maze-like section of Rome that burnt down during the great fire only a few years after the original manuscripts were written.  At one point the boys come across a group carrying a toppled statue's enormous head, presumably of a past and disfavored Emperor.  An old woman directs the boys to their flat, but actually she sends them into a huge brothel where all sorts of crazy things are happening. 

Once back at the flat, the boys make love.  However, in the morning Ascylto returns to find them in bed and he starts a fight with Enclopio.  Ascylto says he'll move out, so they begin to divide up everything.  Ascylto then points to Gitoni and asks how they will divide him.  It is decided that Gitoni will decide whom to go with. Of course Encolpio thinks he'll stay because he's in love and Ascylto sold him once, but Gitoni ends up going with Ascylto and Encolpio is devastated.  Suddenly an earthquake occurs and in one of my favorite scenes, the entire district crumbles, including the wall of the flat.

The earthquake scene is made more dramatic by the panicking horses.  There is one little still that I love: an old woman is crouching in the corner of her tumbling room with a look of sheer panic.  It is awesome.  Fellini liked to find people in the streets and put them into his films.  He didn't want traditionally beautiful people, he wanted people with distinctive faces, crooked noses, gnarled teeth, strange eyes.  He called these people beautiful because they were real and had such strong traits of humanity in their visages.

Another of Fellini's famous methods was to put extras into the frame of the scene who look directly at the camera.  This "breaking of the fourth wall" was to invite the viewer into the scene by making them a part of it.

 

And then suddenly, without segue, Encolpio is at an art gallery with his poet friend Eumolpo.  This is, of course, the way the book flows too since there are many scenes we have lost.  This fragment is about Eumolpo commenting on the lack of real quality in art; how it's mass produced or without character.  It's very much apropos today when people buy art simply to match their interior palette and not on the merit of the art itself.  In the wall of the art gallery is a large open hole where a scaffold of workers slowly moves by.  The sets for this film were brilliant and expensive and of course Fellini kept going over budget as he'd change things constantly.

This is only the first third of the movie and so I'll continue the rest later.