Alien nation… Fellini Satyricon (1969), BFI Fellini Centenary

There is nothing as blatantly false as unconvincing statements made by men and nothing as blatantly unconvincing as their fake seriousness… Gaius Petronius, The Satyricon

Having started with La Dolce Vita (1960), dipped back to near the beginning with I Vitelloni (1953), I am left dazed and confused by the director’s outrageous acceleration in style and content with 1969’s Satyricon. I’d come to NFT1 straight from watching Be Natural the new documentary on early film pioneer Alice Guy and to find myself confronted with this eroticised Roman storytelling was more than a little culture jolt. Frederico and Alice would, I’m almost sure, have got on famously… maybe, if they’d just stuck to the films.

Fellini’s film is extravagant and frankly, very frank: nothing can prepare you for it on the big screen. There are clearly elements that influenced Passolini, Ken Russell and Derek Jarman as well as dozens of other less reputable film makers. Yet, as with Passolini and his Trilogy of Life, Fellini was trying to get inside the historical mindset, here that of the Roman scribe Petronius, who wrote this story in the first century AD when he was very much in favour with well-known fiddler Emperor Nero.

The Satyricon depicts the exploits of the narrator, Encolpius (Martin Potter), and his lover Giton (Max Born), a handsome sixteen-year-old boy who is the envy of Encolpius’ fellow courtesans especially Ascyltus (Hiram Keller), once his lover now his friend and rival. As the title suggests the “novel” is a satire and one that would go down well with the court of Nero and, Fellini correctly assumed, the debauched audiences of the late sixties. The characters on which the episodes are based would not have been known to contemporary viewers but their behaviours would; the hypocrites, the puffed up egos and the carelessness of the powerful are all timeless as is the blood and guts of the design – the mess-on-scene if you will (ha!).

It's a visual feast but one which quickly over-faces the watcher; you’re overloaded by a screenful of gruesome details from over-made-up actors to strangely-painted masks – there’s a bloated actor dressed as a pig who eulogises about his newly acquired boy-toy, Giton, breaking wind and blowing his pig-tail into the air. It’s not that easy to watch amongst the greasepaint, the sweat and the disorienting shade and tone but all these things are there for a purpose; presenting an exaggerated, heightened reality that spins with uncomfortable velocity. Fellini seems to be following the original document closely even the parts that are missing provide him with the opportunity to add to destabilise the viewing experience as we go from a battle to a maze to face a minotaur. The film even ends on an unfinished sentence even as the manuscript does.

Fellini described the film as science fiction and in a 1969 interview, said "I am examining ancient Rome as if this were a documentary about the customs and habits of the Martians." And, if you’re in the right frame of mind it is enjoyable. Roger Ebert said it was a masterpiece saying that “…films that dare everything cannot please everybody” and he would know havening co-written Beyond the Valley of the Dolls – which, incidentally, would make a great double bill with this film. I would agree with Ebert’s assertion that this is a very controlled piece of work from the director for, whilst it looks uncomfortable, everything is done with measured deliberation, all designed to alienate and shift our state.

Martin Potter debates ownership with Fanfulla as Vernacchio and Max Born

This Rome is a culture cut off from sincerity and even Encolpius’ passion for Giton may just be a response to other’s attempts to posses him. Everyone is an enemy and alliances pass quickly when they outlive their usefulness with hands chopped off for laughs and men thrown into furnaces when they have stopped being entertaining. There’s a coup and we find a well-off couple seeing their family off to safety as they take their own lives knowing that they’ll not fit with the new regime; the man is meant to be Gaius Petronius.

There are nine major episodes in the film and they are only linked by the presence of the three main protagonists as they stumble from the debauched banquets and brothels of Rome to being kidnapped by pirates – the leader of which wants to marry Encolpius (of course) – to encounters with an hermaphrodite on the road, who dies after they kidnap him/her for a ransom… death is very much what you make it. There’s a Minotaur and a duel with a gladiator, who spares Encolpius’ life after his “eloquent” pleas – just another random episode. Encolpius is rewarded with humiliation after he fails to perform in public with the sensuous Ariadne. There follows a journey to see a witch in order to regain his mojo…

Life, it seems, is what happens when you’re busy making other plans and there’s little our hero can do to direct his own fate in the face of the cruel and unusual rulers of this world. Is this what the smartly dressed hip set of La Dolce Vita are really like underneath, is this all there is when you strip away the manners and the inhibitions of accepted society?

As is usual, there’s a superb score from Nino Rota – with the help of others – which incorporates electronica and heightens the strange feelings of the film. Given the way the director and musician worked – Rota didn’t always watch the film and Fellini would sometime cut to the music - it would have been an interesting brief!

It works… but in truth I’m not sure after one viewing why. I can say for certain that Fellini was clearly developing his style and it’s hard to see the three films mentioned at the top as obviously directed by the same man in the way that Berman or Antonioni films over the same period might appear. Eclectic and difficult to fathom. Don’t ask me, I’m as clueless as Encolpius.

For details of Fellini screenings at the BFI please see their website.