Fellini's Casanova more basic urges. The film opens with a carnival in Venice as a prelude to a series of erotic encounters that follow Giacomo Casanova through the cities of 18th-century Europe. The organizers of the festival attempt to raise a gigantic bust from the water; this fails, which is taken as a bad omen. Casanova is then introduced, as he visits one of Venice's islands to copulate with a fake nun for the pleasure of a rich voyeur; Casanova succeeds in entertaining him, but is frustrated that the man finds no interest in his research into alchemy and his further scheming.
Giacomo Casanova Casanova, on his ninth birthday, was sent to a boarding house on the mainland in Padua. For Casanova, the neglect by his parents was a bitter memory. "So they got rid of me," he proclaimed. Conditions at the boarding house were appalling, so he appealed to be placed under the care of Abbé Gozzi, his primary instructor, who tutored him in academic subjects, as well as the violin. Casanova moved in with the priest and his family and lived there through most of his teenage years. In the Gozzi household, Casanova first came into contact with the opposite sex, when