Giacomo Casanova: Childhood and Adolescence Giacomo Casanova: Childhood and Adolescence Infanzia, vocazione e prime esperienze di Giacomo Casanova, veneziano (literally "Childhood, Vocation, and First Experience of Giacomo Casanova, Venetian", internationally released as Giacomo Casanova: Childhood and Adolescence and "Casanova: His Youthful Years") is a 1969 Italian comedy film directed by Luigi Comencini. It tells of the youth named Casanova, who, after an unhappy childhood and early ecclesiastical activity in Venice, became an abbot and abandoned his vocation for the love of a countess. Despite the plot, more than a portrait of Casanova, the film wants to be a vivid fresco of the Venetian society of
Giacomo Casanova them Madame de Pompadour, Count de Saint-Germain, d'Alembert, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. So popular was alchemy among the nobles, particularly the search for the "philosopher's stone", that Casanova was highly sought after for his supposed knowledge, and he profited handsomely. He met his match, however, in the Count de Saint-Germain: "This very singular man, born to be the most barefaced of all imposters, declared with impunity, with a casual air, that he was three hundred years old, that he possessed the universal medicine, that he made anything he liked from nature, that he created diamonds." De Bernis decided to send Casanova