What is Federico Fellini’s Casanova about?

In Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (1976), the director presents an unsympathetic portrayal of the legendary lover Giacomo Casanova, played by Donald Sutherland.1

The film depicts Casanova’s life as a series of experiences defined largely by humiliation and grotesquery rather than romantic triumph. Ultimately, the protagonist finds his greatest sense of satisfaction not with a human partner, but with a lifelike, ingeniously engineered automaton—a companion that, being incapable of love, makes no emotional demands of him. Historians consider this work to be the final entry among Fellini’s great personal creations.1