Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Fellini Satyricon Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov April 7, 2015

Winner of Pasinetti Award for Best Italian Film at the Venice Film Festival, Federico Fellini's "Fellini Satyricon" (1969) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Eureka Entertainment. The only supplemental feature on the disc is an original trailer for the film. Also included on this release is a 36-page illustrated booklet with a new essay by Pasquale Iannone and more. In Italian or English, with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Region-B "locked".

"Who is more fortunate than we who can witness our divine Caesar's new miracle?"

The film is inspired by the explicit novel by Gaius Petronius, a courter during the reign of Nero, but it is essentially a large collection of imagined events. Federico Fellini once described it as a "documentary of a dream."

The narrative is broken into nine episodes. There are no conventional stars, but the camera follows closely three characters that appear in each episode: Encolpius (Martin Potter, The Marquise de Sade's: Justine), a clever student, Ascyltus (Hiram Keller, A Real Young Girl), a temperamental and unpredictable troublemaker, and Gitone (Max Born), a beautiful young boy. Encolpius and Ascyltus are both attracted to Gitone and are trying to win his heart.

The rituals and the minor conflicts in each episode are difficult to describe. The majority of the time it simply feels like one has entered a vivid nightmare populated with some of the oddest characters the mind can imagine. Occasionally there are short exchanges that identify opposing sides and their dilemmas, but the film is rarely interested in the resolutions. In fact, there are entire sequences where some of the exchanges -- either in Latin or Neapolitan -- are not even translated.

Without conventional stars and narrative, the film eventually forces one to study the faces. There are familiar shapes and colors, but the expressions can be quite confusing as well. Joy, fear, ecstasy and pain are revealed with a different type of intensity, often through body movement that looks completely incomprehensible.

There is plenty of explicit sex and some very graphic executions, but because of the overwhelming excess they don’t look as disturbing as they would have been in a conventional film. The sky also turns purple, but after a sea of blood is spilled during the worshipping of unknown pagan gods the confused mind easily accepts it as normal.

Fellini Satyricon is that kind of a film – fragmented, subversive, absolutely impossible to deconstruct with conventional logic. Indeed, if one attempts to identify a message, an idea that unifies its scattered pieces, one is guaranteed to walk away from it frustrated and disappointed. Simply put, there is too much in it that the mind cannot process unless the walls of logic are taken down.

Fellini completed the film in 1969, exactly four years after Juliet of the Spirits. At the time it was the most expensive project he had been involved with, and the first to be funded by a foreign party. The original title of the film proved quite controversial -- producer Alfredo Bini had already registered Satyricon for another period film to be directed by Gian Luigi Polidoro -- and producer Alberto Grimaldi and Fellini were forced to choose the current, admittedly less than ideal, title. (United Artists also purchased the distribution rights to Polidoro’s film and kept it off the market until Fellini’s film premiered in Rome and was then sold to international distributors).

Fellini shot the film with the great cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, who had collaborated with some of Italian Cinema’s greatest directors (Mario Monicelli’s The Great War and The Organizer, Lucino Visconti’s Rocco And His Brothers and The Leopard, Valerio Zurlini’s Family Portrait).

The eerie, wildly exotic soundtrack was created by award winning composer Nino Rota (The Godfather).

Fellini Satyricon Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in an aspect ratio of 2.37:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Federico Fellini's Fellini Satyricon arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Eureka Entertainment.

The release uses as a foundation the same terrific 4K restoration of Fellini Satyricon, supervised by director of photography Guiseppe Rotunno, which Criterion introduced in the United States earlier this year (you can see our review of the Region-A release here). The basic characteristics of the two presentations are virtually identical -- detail, clarity, and especially color reproduction are now vastly superior. I suppose viewers with larger screens and especially projectors, however, will be most impressed with the terrific image depth. Indeed, many of the darker sequences now boast excellent shadow definition and large parts of the film actually look substantially different. Fluidity is also greatly improved and when the camera moves around the larger panoramic shots look absolutely terrific. Some minor sharpness fluctuations remain, but these fluctuations occur when some unique decors are used or light is captured in a special way. There are no traces of problematic degraining adjustments. However, there are parts of the film where the grain could be slightly underexposed because of different stylistic enhancements. Still, the high-quality 4K scanning has ensured that it the grain is evenly distributed and well resolved. There are no stability issues. Lastly, there are no encoding anomalies to report in this review. All in all, thus far this is the year's biggest and most impressive new restoration that I have seen released on Blu-ray. A real stunner, indeed. (Note: This is a Region-B "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-B or Region-Free PS3 or SA in order to access its content).

Fellini Satyricon Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are two standard audio tracks on this Blu-ray release: Italian LPCM 1.0 (with portions of Latin and Neapolitan) and English (Dub) LPCM 1.0. Optional English subtitles have been provided for the main feature. When turned on, they appear inside the image frame.

I can only echo the comments I left in our review of the Criterion release of Fellini Satyricon. It is very easy to tell that various stabilization enhancements have been performed as the music and the dialog are now very well balanced. Some minor dynamic fluctuations remain, but they are clearly part of the film's original sound design. More importantly, in select parts of the film the syncing can be fluid, but this is also a production limitation -- some actors were overdubbed and the sound simply does not always match the movement of their lips. You should also keep in mind that the Latin/Neapolitan exchanges are intentionally not translated in English. There are no pops, cracks, audio dropouts, or digital distortions to report in this review.

Fellini Satyricon Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Booklet - 36-page illustrated booklet featuring: "Preface to the Treatment" by Federico Fellini; "Fellini: Subversion by Excess" by Sabrina Marques; "Felliniscope" by Pasquale Iannone; "Fellini-Satyricon-Dossier"; and technical credits.

• Trailer - original trailer for Fellini Satyricon. In English, not subtitled. (3 min).

Fellini Satyricon Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The new 4K restoration of Fellini Satyricon is simply astonishing. There are other big restorations that will soon arrive on Blu-ray -- the recent restorations of Alain Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour, King Hu's Dragon Inn, and Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy, among others -- but I have a good feeling that Fellini Satyricon will remain my favorite this year. I think that it is tremendously well done and, more importantly, looks magnificent on Blu-ray. Eureka Entertainment's release does not have any substantial supplemental features, but I urge you not to wait and consider adding it to your collections now. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.