That Night in Varennes (1982)

Marcello Mastroianni: Casanova - Chevalier de Seingalt

Photos 

Quotes 

• Casanova : Place au Chevalier de Seingalt et à Monsieur de la Bretonne! Place au génie!

• Madame Adélaïde Gagnon : You've spent time at the court in France?

  Nicolas Edmé Restif de la Bretonne : Mr. Casanova has been the toast of every court in Europe.

  Casanova : It wasn't a great privilege. Courts aren't the gardens full of rare blossoms people imagine. I mostly met wrinkled old countesses and princesses.

• Nicolas Edmé Restif de la Bretonne : I haven't introduced myself: Nicolas-Edmé Restif de la Bretonne.

  Casanova : Who wrote "Fanchette's Foot", "The Bastard Daughter", "Parisian Couples", "New Abelard", "Contemporary Women"?

  Nicolas Edmé Restif de la Bretonne : At your service. Thank you for not mentioning, "The Perverted Peasant".

  Casanova : I've read and enjoyed that too. But it's obviously not your favorite.

  Nicolas Edmé Restif de la Bretonne : Some fathers prefer their least gifted children.

• Countess Sophie de la Borde : I saw you when I was 15.

  Casanova : Really?

  Countess Sophie de la Borde : Can you keep a secret?

  Casanova : Yes.

  Countess Sophie de la Borde : You were my first love.

  Casanova : You met me too soon - and I met you too late. So it goes.

• Casanova : I miss my sweet France of yesteryear, when everything was bright and harmonious, where it was a good life, even for a foreigner. Dignity was respected. Dignity is the first thing you lose. You're getting ready to have the people as your monarch: well, it's the most violent and tyrannical of all monarchs.

• Nicolas Edmé Restif de la Bretonne : Damned bladder! To get this old and have to pee constantly. And with such pain.

  Casanova : You always get punished in the places where you sinned.

• De Wendel : Your pasts are so eventful that you neglect the present. You haven't even noticed the three ladies here watching you. The looks they're giving you. Who knows, maybe I'll witness in this very coach, between two relays, the 1,000th conquest, Mr. de la Bretonne or Mr. Casanova.

  Casanova : What a pain in the ass.

  Countess Sophie de la Borde : Why not give Mr. Wendel that pleasure? True, the conditions aren't ideal, six people in a carriage, four more than necessary. But you've been in more desperate straits and come out ahead. I remember, Mr. Restif, reading some of your truly perilous adventures with a husband snoring in bed beside you.

  Virginia Capacelli : No.

  Countess Sophie de la Borde : Yes! Or in a confessional within convent walls, on a river barge, up a tree, in a stable, with a girl holding yarn for her blind mother making a skein. You can't be defeated by a stagecoach.

• Casanova : If a widow's inconsolable, she's jealous of her sorrow. If she's consolable, at least in public, she hides her availability. And if she's already been consoled, she doesn't want it known.

• Casanova : Our traveling companions are waiting.

  Countess Sophie de la Borde : With a man like you, they could think we went off for a flirtatious interlude.

  Casanova : For me, it has been one, madame.

• Casanova : Making love in a carriage, which we may have done anyway, or in the most secret alcove, is all the same. What matters is - that there should be - is that, in lovemaking, there should be - should be...

  Madame Adélaïde Gagnon : There should be - what?

  Nicolas Edmé Restif de la Bretonne : Mystery.

• Casanova : One shouldn't refuse anything on principal alone.

• Casanova : Youth is a fault we soon learn to correct.

• Casanova : I'll head for Verdun. I don't enjoy attending a king's funeral.

  Nicolas Edmé Restif de la Bretonne : The French people don't want his death.

  Casanova : My dear Restif, when a king is captured, not by another king, but by a postmaster, he's as good as dead.