Page 98 - All About History - Issue 18-14

HISTORY HOLLYWOOD

VS

Fact versus fi ction on the silver screen

CASANOVA

Director: Lasse Hallström Starring: Heath Ledger, Sienna Miller,
Jeremy Irons Country of origin: USA Year made: 2005 What they got right
Casanova’s fondness for crossdressers
Will this retelling of the legendary is accurate; his real love Henriette, an
aristocrat’s daughter, disguised herself
as a man to flee an abusive husband.
lover’s life woo the critics? He also fell for a castrato singer who
turned out to be a woman wearing a
prosthetic member, which he deemed
an “extraordinary attachment.”

WHATTHEYGOTWRONG…
An elderly Casanova says Although the real Casanova As Casanova races through The film paints Casanova as When Casanova and
01 in a voiceover: “10,000 02 did write about his 03 Venice he hides in a 04 smitten by feminist writer 05 Francesca take to the skies
pages […] about one woman for encounters with a nun, the chase university auditorium where he Francesca Bruni, likely inspired by a of Venice in a hot-air balloon, it
every page.” But Casanova’s real that ensues with the Inquisition in spies his one true love, Francesca single line in his memoirs. This line would have been 30 years prior to
memoirs were a mere 3,800 pages the film is not accurate. The real Bruni. This building is the Teatro was most likely added by his editor the first real flight. The Montgolfier
long and featured liaisons with 136 Inquisition disapproved of Casanova Olimpico, which is not in Venice Jean Laforgue who modernised brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-
women, hardly the 10,000 his film more for his beliefs about astrology at all, but in Vicenza, 74km (45mi) his original text and added lines Étienne, manned the first flight of a
equivalent claims to have bedded. and Kabbalah than his sex life. away from the city. favourable to the French Revolution. hot-air balloon in 1783.

© Alamy

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