Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Jemima It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Phillipa Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

ElMaruecan82 If a filmmaker's appeal were solely based on seduction, then Federico Fellini would epitomize the expression "hard to get". Still, what a relief when we finally 'get' him! I remember a few years ago, my first intended immersion into Fellini's universe was through his groundbreaking "8½". As a result, I waited one year and half before giving a second chance to Fellini. This is how disappointed I was, maybe less by the film than by my inability to claim that Fellini was an avant-garde genius. I guess I dived too brutally in cold water, while I should have approached it step by step. I started then with his neo-realist period, and after "Nights of Cabiria" and "La Strada", my heart was conquered and the rest of his oeuvre, including "8½", confirmed my feelings that Fellini was on the field of emotions what Ingmar Bergman was on human psychology, essential to Cinema and complementary like libido and psyche for humans. And through the most libidinous "Satyricon", Fellini signs the most defining of all his films. And defining is the right word, because from our perspective, it means that Fellini's detractors would certainly pick "Satyricon" as a proof of Fellini's self-importance, while his adulators will consecrate it as the quintessential artistic expression of a genius, who was the mirror of human's most pervert yet fascinating sides. But let me be the devil's advocate, when talent can allow such magnificent deviations, it can afford pretentiousness, which in Fellini's case, is never a posture, but a risk-taking dynamic tunneling us into our most repressed sensations. Still, all through "Satyricon", I kept wondering how much time I would have waited before giving the 'second chance' had I seen it first. The film is a hyperbolic depiction of whatever Fellini stood for, a universe made of freaks, weird, funny-looking characters, debauchery, boredom, sexuality, amorality, poetry, blood, gluttony, feast and fantasy, as nonsensical and unsettling as they could get in the mind of the most twisted of us all. But it takes Fellini's genius to transcend the inner ugliness of humans and make such a cinematically significant movie. As I said for "La Dolce Vita", the morally worst can bring the aesthetically best."Satirycon" was loosely based on a poem from Petronius, a writer who lived under the reign of the lunatic Emperor Nero. The poem, discovered a few centuries ago, was made of disjointed fragments, the perfect format for the director who, since "La Dolce Vita" and before "Amarcord" cherished movies' structure made of independent little vignettes. The Fellinian experience is like a trip in a dream-like universe, when episodes don't need a connection to have relevance, where characters are defined by their mythological, mystical and sometimes physical attributes rather than any psychological notions or plot devices. And like a perfect dream-like escapism, the dazzling cinematography made of purple skies and splendid combinations of lights and shadows, reinvents the settings of Antic Roma in its most decadent days, before Christianity would set a new tone, when lifestyle was made of weird and bizarre distractions meant to conceal life's suffocating boredom. The film is made of one stunning sequence after another, and will probably be most remembered for the unforgettable orgy in Trimalchione's house, a sort of trip in an Antic world that never seemed as modern. And we hypnotically follow him as if we sensed a cathartic effect in this orgy of excesses, succumbing to devilish voyeurism to better expiate from our lowest impulses, just as Peckinpah's use of excessive violence in "The Wild Bunch". "Satyricon" is a journey in a world where normality is meaningless, where beauty is asexual, and sex is ugly, but both so appealing. A world where everything is corrupted and even poetry is traded for honors, food and fun. "Satyricon" is moral corruption is like a form of salvation as if it extrapolated Fellini's own impulses, own desire to dare such shots for the sake of digression. And it works because Fellini is pretentious but not self-important, his excesses create a coherence that makes the calmer and ordinary moments more awkward. Two men marry together, a beautiful black woman ignites fire from her vagina, a slave has his hand cut-off to entertain a hysterical audience in a theater, and we have no choice but to plunge in the lowest parts of humanity, like the abysmal depths of Pompeii before its imminent explosion."Satirycon" is beyond any explanations, and a real challenge for criticism. It is an Odyssey in a Roma that probably never existed, but had all the predispositions to allow Fellini to project his inner demons and most pervert fantasies into it, the universe created is unsettling but had it tried to be normal, it would have been a disaster just like Visconti 's "The Damned", released the same year. The film was as bizarre, as unsettling, but its realistic setting made the experience confusing by trying to battle in too many fronts of our perceptions. What a year for filmmaking anyway, released in the summer of love, "Satyricon" is the exaltation of freedom, it embraces the total zaniness of its project and therefore belongs to the category of 'films victims of their own greatness'. I used the same terms for Stanley Kubrick's "A Space Odyssey" and John Cassavetes' "Husbands", the movies convey the very feelings that inhabit the director's heart, illustrating in the form the point made by the content and transmitting it to the audience, at a time where cinematic creativity was at its peak. Watching "Satyricon" made me regret the crowd-pleasing aspect of today's cinema. And Fellini didn't give a damn about pleasing crowds: as a true author, he created immortal classics. Not that I'm planning to watch the film again, not that I believe it's a masterpiece, but it's a film of guts, of images and entertainment, sitting majestically on the throne of its ugliness, above our boring prudishness.

dlbhina622 I remember seeing this for the first time in a crowded, darkened theater known for showing avant-garde films. The reaction was positive but bewildering, as it was for me. Surely, in the early '70's, when I saw it, it was startling and hard to place for its genre. X rated? Unrated? Avant-garde? Definitely not a film for middle America, it would appeal to those with sophisticated adult tastes.The continuity of the film is I think what makes it great. The ease at which Fellini breaks in with innuendo is remarkable. The opening scene is unique for its effect, which at the time didn't have all the high-tech computer generated effects available, a sign of a great director. The beauty of those boys is not so much physical, as it is in their spirit and energy. And this pervades the film, although overt in its physicality, yet the background takes the fore. A must-see for anyone interested in the adult arts, in staging, in ancient Rome, in story-telling. Memorable.

rrmeade My friends and I were high school juniors in 1970 on a school trip to Paris. We were abandoned (emancipated?) by our chaperon on the second day on the Left Bank, and left to our own devices. We went to see Fellini's Satyricon in the original Italian with French subtitles. The theater was sloped the opposite of American ones, and we could smoke. I remember that we had only a dim understanding of the plot, but the visuals were stunning. Even today, more than forty years later, I can still see the image of the hermaphroditic Demi-god, his chalk-white skin and feeble eyes. So, though my high school chaperon probably broke several laws by leaving his French honors students to fend for themselves in Paris, his decision altered my life and my appreciation for Fellini.

bbrooks94 I'm a fan of Fellini and usually can accept his indulgence and laziness, but this is a step too far. There are some positives to what is essentially an episodic, fantastical and depraved journey across imperial Rome. For example, it looks fantastic and there are genuine moments of beauty, particularly during the opening scenes within Fellini's hellish, claustrophobic, labyrinthine Rome. However, it is ultimately incredibly boring. Appalling characterisation, acting woeful (and embarrassing dubbing throughout) and the storyline nonsensical. With La Dolce Vita, or La Strada, there is enough brilliance to gloss over Fellini's self indulgence. Here, however, it is in the open. The traditional manic laughing characters and overall melodrama become annoying beyond belief, whereas usually I find them charming. Technically, it also has flaws. The editing only adds more confusion to the film's hectic narrative. It's a vision of a nightmare and somewhere in this mess there lies a haunting masterpiece.