“They Are Spoon-feeding Casanova To Make Him Feel More Secure”-Once Again The Legend-Slayer Cometh- Heath Leger’s “Casanova” (2005)- A Film Review-Of Sorts

By Will Bradley

Casanova, Heath Leger, 2005

This is a funny business, this film reviewing stuff that has been my entry into getting my feet wet in the on-line publishing industry now that I have a by-line. That by-line courtesy of the good work that Greg Green said I did in going mano a mano (my expression) with old-time film reviewer Seth Garth, yes, that Seth Garth that has garnered a handful of Press Globes on everything from film reviews to political reporting, on debunking the English private detective Sherlock Holmes. excuse me real name via my expose Larry Livermore, legend. I have been doing the same, have been building a solid reputation as a legend-killer with a bunch of other has-been legends. Here is the problem though every lonely hearts dingbat with time on his or her hands has been sending in requests about the to quote one of these geeks “real deal” on the likes of Snow White, Cinderella, the Wizard of Oz. Jesus, don’t these fools know the different between a real legend like say Johnny Cielo or Robin Hood and fairy tale characters. To the extent that these were innocent errors I will forgo further reprimanding but let it be known that I am Will Bradley the legend-killer not some sneak in the night disturber and disabuse of children’s dreams and fantasies.   

Now on to the real business of this review, a review of one Johnny Casanova, no, not the long-time and dare I say really legendary gangster, mob boss who ruled Trenton and its New Jersey environs for decades with an iron hand and a vast graveyard. No, this joker is the one reputed to be the great Italian lover back in the day, back in the 1700s. In short another one of those annoying cases where I have to pour through a million documents to burst some foolish balloon, some task I really should not have had to do.     

Excuse me but I am still burned up about those clowns who wanted to waste my time, my valuable time, theirs apparently not to them tthis hard fought for by-line without bringing down some very serious legends which I will in good time do to one John Casanova, or whatever his real name was. I almost lost my eyesight looking over the documents which proved that Sherlock Holmes was nothing but a London night pub crawler down at the waterfront with the tough sailor boys doing tricks. Had to go to the London Assizes for crying out loud to find that this Sherlock Holmes was some cad, some serious con man whose born name was Larry, or rather Lawrence Livermore, who was responsible for half the crimes committed against property in the greater London area during his reign of terror fronted by that Baker Street debauchery. Many people and you know how people are once they attach themselves to certain beliefs, to certain legends even after they have been scientifically debunked who will believe unto the end times about their heroes, refused to believe a man whom they had been spoon-fed to believe was a master criminal detective, smarter than Scotland Yard’s best although that might not be saying much was nothing but dross, a dung heap denizen. But some, and this is my sole purpose here beyond holding on to this by-line for dear life for de-fanging the legends, will read and listen and gain some worldly wisdom.       

Sherlock, excuse me, Larry, okay Lawrence Livermore, was just the tip of the iceberg, the beginning and in a certain way not the most famous legend snapped since it was pretty easy to get the goods on a famous scoundrel from the last hundred years or so. Going back in deep time, a time when all the records might not have survived is different. And that has been my trajectory ever since I got waylaid by debunking the Johnny Cielo legend. That one should have been easy since that was the case of the so-called famous early aviator whose main claim to fame beside the proven bogus claims that he was almost at Kitty Hawk when the deal went down there with manned flight was that he squired the eye candy 1940s actress Rita Hayworth around. Got her to go with him to Barranca down in Central America abandoning her movie career when he got run out town here. Later had the gall to have it put out that he was transporting guns and supplies to Fidel and the boys in the Sierra Madres. Said to have died in a plane crash in the Caribbean doing that heroic work. Baloney, he had some whore who looked like Rita on his arm who ran out on him when his money ran out and that plane crash was in the Gulf of Mexico when he was transporting well-fixed tourists from Naples in Florida to Key West.        

That nonsense made me swear off today’s legends as so much trade puffing and hubris so I have looked behind convent walls been heading back to the big ones from centuries ago. Guys like Robin Hood whose “rob the rich, give to the poor” was one of the greatest scams in history until I got a look at the church and estate records and found he gouged his tenants worse than old Prince John of dreams in Nottingham. Proved through the Spanish Inquisition records, those boys were nasty but they reveled in recording every moan and groan, that Don Juan, another great lover, was a figment of the imagination of one young rich heiress caught up in a convent a norm for young women of her class whose lies were echoed throughout the young women convent land that they had been ravished by this guy, who turned out to be some innocent some farm boy seen from behind convent walls. It did not, does not stop there. Despite my fondness for fellow reviewer Si Lannon and his well-kept and sorrowful secret about his mother’s heritage I had to expose Zorro as a blowhard and as an example of another kind of hysteria, mass hysteria among the peasantry when that is combined with no food, and no prospects. Tough work on that one.  

So now here we are with one Casanova. This will be a tough one to break because even the curators of a recent exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston which young Sarah Lemoyne has reviewed in these pages got caught in the trap when they produced a yarn about the so-called age that Johnny boy lived in. And he wasn’t an artist or even had one painting to display although I hear that his brothers, if Casanova was his real name, were pretty good.

That is the crux of the matter. Naturally this film goes unabashedly along with the legend business, lets Casanova played by the late Heath Leger, run wild in convents and milady’s bedrooms and unquestioningly assumed that what he said he did was gospel true. Said and did via a doctored memoir of some 10,000 pages filled with more crap than any one person could shovel in a lifetime. Did what no “celebrity” today would dream of-selling his or her story on the low. Of course, the film would have done the producers no good financially if the Casanova legend was debunked and he was just some raggedy-assed quay bum working the dark canals for whatever passed his way. But sometimes a film plotline gives away more than it would think. 

The key here is the role played by Francesca, the so-called love of Johnny boy’s life, who was a writer, a proto-feminist writer which befits our time but would have been very advanced in her day. So advanced that she had to write under a male signature, moniker and go through hoops to get her works published. Not to speak of dodging the Inquisition which was still running full-bore although in Venice where most of the action in this propaganda film out of the Riefenstahl handbook takes place although they were being held back a little by the Doge and others who were covering for every kind of debauchery emanating from the emerging merchant class and its hangers-on.  

Francesca, no need to give her last name used in the film since that was a moniker too, as it turned out was the real creator of the Casanova legend, for good or evil. It seems from the Inquisition records, which I have noted are quite good and complete, Francesca admitted under the torturer’s thumb that she had been unhappy in love with one Billy Casanova, go figure, and in her desolate chambers had written the poor bastard up as a philanderer and debauchee. Worse had published the exploits which had developed a following among the plebeians assorted decadent nobility with time on their hands between wars. Before they hanged her from the yardarm or whatever their dastardly methods she refused to recant, refused to say that one of the things about Jimmy was that he was a poor lover in the bed department and so what we have is what she wrote. People will still believe this Casanova stuff but thinking people will know that they do so at their peril. Especially in these #MeToo days

How does that truth square with the film. Nowhere to be seen as our boy Johnny, Jimmy, Billy whatever he told anybody his name was cavorts with wenches, witches and wild novices not ready for the cloister. Makes him the gallant until he glams on Francesca who rightly dismisses him out of hand as a buffoon, braggard and a man with a small inconsequential member. From there on in his patently monogamous seeking only her love and attention. Our gallant even had made heroic gesture of seeking to take her place in the gallows but a clever ruse saved his ass. Some drunkard well met came through acting as a cardinal of dear Rome and proclaimed him free since it as the pontiff’s birthday. Too bad it could not have saved heroic Francesca who bravely went to her end event though smart young woman that she was would cause a serious delay in women’s liberation, in emancipation. And that ain’t no fairly-tale.