During his time in prison, Casanova reminisces of his affairs with a dressmaker and later on with one of her junior employees, Anna Maria, who suffers from frequent fainting and requires constant bloodletting.

The Madame, an aged woman, enthralled by Casanova's apparent knowledge of alchemy, wishes to transform her soul into a man's through ritualistic intercourse with him.

Two years later, in Forlì, Casanova moves to the court of a hunchback, Du Bois, in between taking charge of a beautiful young woman, Henriette.

In Bern, he falls in love with an alchemist's daughter, Isabella, who fails to keep an appointment to go to Dresden with him; Casanova instead partakes in an orgy within the hostel he has been stranded in.

Fellini's Casanova is noted for its symbolic, highly stylised mise en scène and the casting of Donald Sutherland in the lead role.

[8] When De Laurentiis bowed out of the project and Fellini signed a new contract with producer Alberto Grimaldi, Sutherland was cast in the role.

[12] Fellini had to re-shoot parts of the film, including the elaborate Venice carnival scene, when approximately seventy reels of film—including the first three weeks of shooting—were stolen at the Technicolor labs of Tiburtino, Rome, on 27 August 1975.

[13] The thieves were apparently interested in Pasolini's Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), and some reels of this film were also stolen, along with half of Damiano Damiani's spaghetti western A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe (1975).