Casanova — Season 1, Episode 3: Magic Moments
Drama • 30 min • 1 season, 6 episodes • ★ 4.5/10
Episode synopsis
Continued incarceration and the conversation of his cellmate are starting to take toll on Casanova. His mind is cast back to a visit he once made to Mantua. On the run from an angry mob after he disrupted a commedia dell'arte performance, he takes refuge in the home of an elderly judge and his beautiful daughter. Seeing the old man's credulity about holy relics and the occult, Casanova hatches a plot to part him from his money and the girl from her virginity.
About Casanova
Italian adventurer and libertine Giovanni Jacopo Casanova lived from 1725 to 1798, but in this six-part series Dennis Potter attempted to find a contemporary relevance through his central themes of sex and religion. He commented that Casanova "was concerned with religious and sexual freedom, and these are the things we have to address ourselves to now." Casanova was imprisoned in Venice in 1755, and Potter used that event as a central device, constantly inter-cutting to contrast Casanova's amorous escapades, radiant, joyful and brightly lit, with his oppressive solitary confinement in the gloom of a half-darkened cell.