Federico Fellini’s Satyricon (1969) is about two pansexual men; the scholar Encolpius and his lust-driven accomplice Ascyltus as they traverse through Rome and beyond, experiencing open sexuality, debauchery, and hard living (Fellini Satyricon).

 

Satyricon can definitely be described as a work of its time, “Fellini himself encouraged viewers to think of the 1960s” (Wood). It goes without saying, one just needs to watch the film, that Satyricon marked an abrupt shift from Fellini’s past films. Shifting from the clean perfectionist dream of Julieta of The Spirits (1965) is the grit of Satyricon, described as having “grimacing faces appearing at almost every crack, half-clothed, fleshly human figures lurking in every cave-like room, squatting or sleeping or quarreling” (Wood).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The environment of Satyricon, as compared to the lush plastic sets of Julietta of the Spirits, is “sickly and claustrophobic” (Wood). 

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As with any shift in an artist's style or direction of creativity, the work of Fellini would never be the same after creating Satyricon, breaking through a wall so to speak, where Fellini could explore a semi-unfiltered, but controlled, style of filmmaking.