Satyricon   1968
• Producer: Alberto Grimaldi [i.e. supplier of money - RW]
• Federico Fellini

My version: 2003 MGM Home Entertainment DVD 2hr 03:43
Story and Screenplay: Federico Fellini & Bernardino Zapponi

---

'A free adaptation of the Petronius classic'. Many years ago, someone said to me that Satyricon was the only film he'd ever walked out from. (I'd only ever walked out of a film once, which was Being There, with Peter Sellers). Out of curiosity, I bought this DVD—I have no idea how much of the original film is retained, or if scenes have been shuffled, deleted, or inserted.
      And I have two copies of the book in English translation, one by the Jewish Penguin books in a black cover-design paperback—a Penguin classic (series founded 1944 by E V Rieu). And a copy of Burnaby's translation of 1694, republished as an undated Abbey Classic, with a Beardsleyesque ex libris bookplate (of J Alan White, if you must know), introduced in the style of one English gentleman addressing another, before fast communication, by C K Scott Moncrieff, translator of Proust, who died in Rome in 1930.
      Vol 21 of the 11th Encyclopædia Britannica has a long entry, written by two authors. The 15th edition Encyclopædia Britannica (1973-4) is much the same, with a few new items, speculation rather than scholarship, but written in the US Chicago University style of definite answers for exams. I found an Encarta95 note on Petronius, which looks copied from the 11th Britannica, including bits on the picaresque novel and Gil Blas and Roderick Random, but not Jonathan Wild or Barry Lyndon, and not Quintilian, Juvenal, and Martial, and not Nero's Troica and Lucan's Pharsalia.   Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, and Plutarch are quoted as sources on Petronius' life. (I'm tempted to mention Rabelais, and Rochester, and even The Good Companions and Discworld, but life is short.)
      Petronius left almost no trace in the world's writings; even his first name is not known for certain. Moncrieff suggests the Satyricon was 'planned on the Homeric model, in twenty-four books', mostly lost.  Burnaby's title-page states the fragments were ‘recover'd at BELGRADE’. The Penguin translation (by J P Sullivan) says almost nothing about the discovery of the manuscript(s); nor do the others.   Rather odd; I'd guess such research was regarded as technical, dealing with remains of handwriting on substrates such as vellum and papyrus, with complications to do with preservation, interpolation, dating, ownership. The earliest bibliographical note was in Burnaby, dated c. 1482, placed in Milan.

Let me now introduce a few revisionist issues. Firstly, the Mediterranean was dominated from the distribution viewpoint by ships. There must have been industries, important at the time, of timber and its cutting, of sails and masts—I'd guess sails could provide as much power as an entire rowing crew—and loading and unloading at ports. A revisionist view seems to attribute much monetary activity to owners and operators of ships. The land equivalent radiating out from ports into their hinterlands contained more difficult terrain, though horses and roads probably did their best. (Britain until recently had a sea empire; on the face of it, it's remarkable how little evidence remains, including in rather trivial museums and archives.) In my opinion, 'Jews', who I won't attempt to define, dominated the sea, and the land equivalents were slowly being swallowed and enlarged by networks, which were to become lands owned by churches; this was a slow and violent process.
      Nero was, on one revisionist view, a reformer, later hated by aristocrats and Jews. He could be compared as a hate-figure with Hitler, but, if Hitler is viewed as Jew-supported, Nero may have been a crypto-Jew; Seneca and Acts against the Jewish slave trade perhaps support this view.
      Most of Petronius' work has been lost, perhaps destroyed. It would appear that Trimalchio was a vulgar Jew, ridiculed by Petronius, and perhaps therefore killed by Nero on some pretext. (Fellini's film subtitles have mistakes, I'd expect in their many voiced and subtitled languages, which in fact are intentional. There's a scene showing a suicidal man cutting his wrists, who may be intended as Petronius, except that he has no companions but one, no flow of literary elegance, and no closing and reopening of veins.)
      The silence over the original manuscript(s) leads me to wonder whether the destroyed books were at least in part commentaries on Rome and Jewish wars. Destruction of libraries, combination of superstitions into something unified, Jewish wars, and through censorship, are obvious possibilities.  Forgery and interpolation are in complete accordance with Jewish practices.  Pornography and prostitution and debauchery might well be Jewish introductions.

Sullivan provides handy endnotes on the main characters, who include Agamemnon (Professor of Rhetoric at Puteoli - not the famous king); Daedalus (a great inventor, but here a cook, though I'd have thought 'chef' more appropriate); Encolpius ('The hero, or anti-hero, of the work.' In other authors, such as Martial, the name is given to homosexual favourites. The name means 'embraced'), Eumolpus (Homosexual poet, critic... in Greek the name means 'sweet singer'), Trimalchio ('the name means literally 'thrice-blessed' and is basically Semitic ... the great vulgarian ex-slave, whose dinner occupies most of the extant fragments').
      I notice Hesus, 'A superstitious passenger on board Lichas' ship', and Lichas, 'A ship's captain from Tarentum and an old enemy of Encolpius'. Fellini has a few names absent from Sullivan's list: Ascilio, Vernacchio, Trifena for example.

The Satyricon, so far as it survived, appears to have five sections, viz. PUTEOLI, DINNER WITH TRIMALCHIO, EUMOLPUS, THE ROAD TO CROTON, and CROTON, all more or less recognisable in Fellini's acts and scenes. And many FRAGMENTS. Trimalchio's banquet has a slight suggestion of Plato's Symposium, at least to my tortured imagination. With philosophy—and the admittedly feeble proto-Christian-like reflections on the soul—replaced by wasteful profligacy. And I suspect the adventurous style may have been a satire, or indirect reference, to the Odyssey, a long trip in the great world of the Mediterranean, with sarcastic commentary on Jewish shipping, the Jewish slave trade, Jewish money, and Jewish lies. All treated loftily by the Arbiter of Elegance himself. In the 'silver age of Latin literature'. (Imagine 2000 years in the future: how would the Jew York Times book lists, Jewish garbage be judged? The Age of Rust? The Age of Shit?)

It's important to understand Jewish motivation in destroying cultures, removing laws, killing literature, exterminating beliefs and stories.  Aesop's Fables, and Cicero's oratory and writings, are just two examples of creativity, which survived—unlike most—and which show wisdom in ways unwanted by Jews.  The supposed words of Jesus—a few items of drivel and superstition, taken from what must have been many books, too worthless even for the Bible—ridiculous material on having to be told to kill or not kill—absurd stuff on gods and eternal life—no wonder Jews—with their constricted abilities and instinctive uncreativity and vicious hate—instinctively destroy. One of the triumphs of Jewish activities is the huge numbers of truly stupid whites with no ideas in their heads beyond a parroting of Biblical networks of nonsense.

Fellini's film was made in Cinecittà in south-east Rome, which even has an underground stop nearby. It occupies a large area, and was founded by Mussolini, himself something of an actor. See here for a revisionist interpretation of Il Duce by Miles Mathis. (On another puzzle, Mussolini in WW2 declaring war on Metaxas of Greece, look at this.)
      I suspect the Cinecittà area of Rome may be one of the land clearances by Mussolini which provoked enmity by people concerned with conservation, naturally something Jews hate. It's a tourist attraction, though by now I fear not a very successful one, I'd guess because digital images have improved immeasurably—about thirty years from Satyricon to Lord of the Rings—green screens allow far more effective imagery. Note that in north-west Rome, and far nearer the centre, is the Jewish 'ghetto', officially founded 1555, with Papal approval. (In my view, Roman Catholicism is in symbiosis with official Jews; the rumpus over 'usury' being a deflection, designed to allow them to mutually exploit).

Fellini's film's strangeness is partly a function of make-up (solid colours, gold, bronze...) and clothing (pleated mini-skirt tunics?) and odd-looking and odd-behaving people. And subdued lighting though naked flames are few. There's a huge indoor tenement building, open to the sky, oddly-designed, with walls made presumably of rendered plywood, making for unconvincing earthquake collapse. The sex stuff must have been constrained by official guidelines; a leather dildo with oil and ground pepper and crushed nettle seed was not inserted in anyone's anus, though whippings with green nettle-stalk were acceptable.

Rae West 14 May 2020