Fellini Satyricon [Criterion Collection] [2 Discs]

"Federico Fellini's intent with Fellini Satyricon was not to bring Rome to task, but to draw parallels between the libertinism of the Eternal City and the hippie culture of the 1960s. Martin Potter plays Encolpius, a young Roman student who spends the early portions of the film battling with his friend Ascyltus (Hiram Keller, a veteran of the Broadway musical Hair) over the affections of androgynous youth Giton (Max Born). Ascyltus wins, whereupon Encolpius embarks upon a hallucinatory odyssey throughout the empire. He partakes in a spectacular drunken orgy staged in a crumbling multistoried building (which collapses under the weight of the revellers); is captured by bisexual sea captain Lichas (Alain Cuny) and Lichas' concubine Tryphaena (Capucine, barely recognizable under her period makeup); rejoins Ascyltus for a visit to a respectable Roman couple who commit suicide rather than endure the deterioration of their moral values; joins in a plot to kidnap a ""sacred"" hermaphrodite; and much more. Woven throughout the proceedings are such pure Petronius anecdotes as the story of a widow who rescues her soldier lover from punishment for leaving his post (""Better a dead husband than a dead lover""). The concluding sequence involves a group of avaricious heirs who are compelled by the terms of the will to eat the corpse of a departed relative. Despite his sordid portrait of Petronius' Rome, Fellini concludes Satyricon on a hopeful note."