Fellini's Satyricon

This 1969 piece from Federico Fellini is a point where Fellini has, undoubtedly, become indulgent. Loosely based on Petronius, loosely following one character while genuinely being a collection of vignettes.
Let us look at this visually, to start with. Fellini is not so pure visually as in his 'La Dolce Vita' and his '8 1/2'. He doesn't look at a character, rather they seem to skirt around the sides of his image more. He has also developed a tic of having an actor in only one half of the scene, as though there should be another, and they are in actuality all alone. The wide shots are now more often from either a high or a low level (the latter indicating staginess). This adds a hightened dramatic sense to proceedings, giving the theatrical, almost widely ridiculous element to proceedings.
The colours are another element to this. The obvious studio sets, the ridiculous almost Georges Melies-ish colours (post colouration?). The beach being a spectacular colour, the flushed skin and so on. Here we have the ssence of the deliberately over exuberant film.
Of course it comes off unfocussed at times, and more of a narrative continuity would be more immediately appealing. The film is almost deliberately infuriating, in that some scenes defer pleasure, give more, take it all away again. This film is all about pleasure, it is about desire and how it is given, how it is taken away. This is in tself quite an interesting text on psychoanalysis, in many ways, and has surely been decoded in various journals.
The images are piled on thick and fast, the random events either being simply a part of a dream scape, meaning something, or perhaps living in some kind of Bunuel-ean hinterland where we are told to interpret nothing, but there is so much already there.
This film can be a little trialsome at times, but it's not like there aren't a few spectacular moments. Less tight and straightforward enjoyable than the earlier Fellini, but fascinating, and often beautiful.