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 through the ages and have been translated into some twenty languages. But not until 1960 was the entire text published in its original language of French. In 2010 the manuscript was acquired by the National Library of France, which has started digitizing it. For Casanova, as well as his contemporary sybarites of the upper class, love and sex tended to be casual and not endowed with the seriousness characteristic of the Romanticism of the 19th century. Flirtations, bedroom games, and short-term liaisons were common among nobles who married for social connections rather than love. Although multi-faceted and complex, Casanova's personality,