Casanova

- Season 1

(1971)

The guardians of Venetian morality burst into the apartments of notorious libertine Giacomo Casanova. He is indicted for atheism, possession of indecent literature, and fornication - the last a hard charge to shake off, as he happens to be in bed with an equally naked woman. As his friend Senator Bragadin tries to intercede for him, the imprisoned Casanova is tormented both by evil jailer Lorenzo and by memories of his lost love, the innocent country girl Cristina, whom he betrayed.

Casanova's helpful friend Senator Bragadin uses his influence to have him moved to a larger, better-lit cell - just as he was making headway on an escape tunnel. Discovering the hole, vindictive turnkey Lorenzo takes the opportunity to stripsearch him, on pretext of looking for the instrument he dug it with. To increase Casanova's misery, he has to share his new cell with an acquaintance, the obnoxious broker Schalon, whose perfumed silks bring with them memories of happier, pre-incarceration times.

Continued incarceration and the conversation of his cellmate are starting to take their 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 troupe's performance, he took refuge in the house of an elderly judge with a beautiful daughter. Seeing the old man's credulity about holy relics and the occult, Casanova hatched a plot to part him from his money and the girl from her virginity.

The act of impulsively throwing a stone through a window sparks off a chain of memories from Casanova. He thinks back on his Venetian prison experiences while watching the torture and execution of Robert-François Damiens, would-be assassin of Louis XV, from the window of a Parisian apartment. Later, in Grenoble, his memories of both occasions haunt him as he is drawn to a pious young woman he sees at a Vivaldi concert and seduces her compulsively despite his friend Valenglart's warnings.

On a journey to London, Casanova meets an Englishman so boneheaded he might almost be Lorenzo's double, and reunites with Schalon, whose pomposity has only grown since his release. Finding that his charms do not work on English ladies, he advertises for a female tenant with the intent of seducing her, but the plan turns sour when he finds himself genuinely falling in love. Obsessed with and repulsed by sex, Casanova wonders whether he is any freer than he was in prison.

Casanova longed for books in his imprisonment; now, as an old man, he is surrounded by them. Aged 73, he works as a librarian in a German castle, although disquieting rumours have reached the ears of tyrannical major-domo Herr Feldkirchner about the whereabouts of Casanova's hand in relation to the cook's skirts. Plagued by a heart ailment, Casanova struggles to put into literary form the memories of his life, including his triumphant escape from prison.