E la nave va

Plot synopsis:
The film opens depicting a scene in July 1914 immediately prior to the cruise ship Gloria N. setting sail from Naples Harbor. The opening sequence is in sepia tones, as if it were a film shot in that era, with no sound other than the whirring of the projector. Gradually the sepia fades into full colour and we can hear the characters’ dialogue.
Orlando, an Italian journalist, supplies commentary by directly addressing the camera, explaining to the viewer that the cruise is a funeral voyage to disperse the ashes of opera singer Edmea Tetua near the island of Erimo, her birthplace. Considered the greatest singer of all time, Tetua is celebrated for her goddess-like voice.
The bumbling but lovable journalist also provides highly subjective anecdotes and gossip on the wide array of cartoon characters that evoke the golden age of the "funny papers" (Little Nemo, Bringing Up Father, The Katzenjammer Kids) but with a perverse Felliniesque twist. These include more opera singers, voice teachers, orchestra directors, theatre producers, actors, prime ministers, counts, princesses, Grand Dukes, and panic-stricken fans of the deceased diva.
A jealous and bitter soprano named Ildebranda desperately tries to penetrate the secret behind Edmea Tetua’s unforgettable voice. A bristle-haired Russian basso is shown around the ship’s vast mess hall where, using only his voice, he hypnotizes a chicken. A curly-cued actor travels with his mother in order to seduce sailors. Sir Reginald Dongby, a voyeuristic English aristocrat, relishes spying on Lady Violet, his nymphomaniac wife. The Grand Duke of Harzock, a Prussian, is an obese bubble of a young man whose blind sister (choreographer Pina Bausch) schemes with her lover, the prime minister, to disinherit her brother. The brooding Count of Bassano closets himself in his cabin transformed into a temple dedicated to the diva’s memory.
An awful stench rises from the ship’s hold and soon it’s revealed that a love-sick rhinoceros has been neglected by the ship’s crew. The beast is pulled up, washed on deck, and returned to the hold with fresh water and hay.
On the third day of the voyage, the passengers discover a crowd of shipwrecked Serbians camped on the deck of the ship. Fleeing in rafts towards Italy after the assassination at Sarajevo, the refugees were brought on board the previous night by the captain. The Grand Duke and his men, however, are convinced the Serbians are terrorists and order the captain to isolate the group to a corner of the ship. The upshot is Fellini’s barely disguised take on the Marx Brothers's A Night at the Opera in a heady mix of cultures, both ethnic and artistic, where aristocrats and snobs joyfully share the stage (the ship’s deck) with peasants and vibrant Serbian folklore.
But the revels end when the menacing flagship of the Austro-Hungarian fleet sails into view, demanding the return of the Serbian refugees. The captain agrees on condition that Edmea Tetua’s ashes be dispersed at Erimo beforehand. After the ceremony, the refugees are loaded into a lifeboat for delivery to the Austrians but a young Serbian hurls a bomb at the flagship, causing pandemonium. The Austrians respond by cannon fire. The Gloria N. sinks while Albertini wields his baton, aristocrats march to the lifeboats, a grand piano slides across the floor smashing mirrors, and butterflies twitter serenely above the melee of suitcases in flooded corridors.
In a reverse tracking shot, Fellini reveals the stupendous behind-the-scenes of his floating opera of a movie - giant hydraulic jacks (constructed by Oscar-winning set designer, Dante Ferretti) that created the ship’s rolling sea movements, along with acres of plastic ocean, an army of technicians burning naphthalene for the smoke of disaster effect, and, finally, an enigmatic figure that may be Orlando or Fellini intentionally hiding behind his own camera filming the main camera filming himself.
The main camera then tracks forward to a final shot of Orlando in a lifeboat with the rhinoceros happily munching on hay. "Did you know," confides Orlando, "that a rhinoceros gives very good milk?" Laughing, he once again mans the oars to disappear on a vast plastic ocean.

Tags: whimsical, psychedelic

Review:
Conventional knowledge has it that the only film of Fellini's worth a damn after 8½ is Amarcord.
I present to you And the Ship Sails On..., a film that is not only to be ranked alongside Fellini's permanent, almost unquestionable masterpieces, La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, La Dolce Vita, 8½, and Amarcord, but one to be ranked among the best works in cinema.
This is all in an attempt to have the audience identify the characters - or, more precisely, caricatures (before he made movies, Fellini worked as a caricaturist on the streets of Rome) - in a stereotypical way.
Take the Duke from And the Ship Sails On - could you imagine a teenage, Teutonic duke any other way than Fellini presents him?
And the Ship Sails On is also very colorful, but the palette is more specified here - a beautiful canvas of blue-grays and whites.The narrative styles of the two films differ quite a bit, but still are similar.
I don't believe that Fellini meant the film as any kind of biting satire.
It's all done in fun, although the juxtaposition of the rich with the Serbian refugees, whom the ship's crew finds afloat on sinking rafts one night, does ring with a certain painful and ironic truth about how the rich see the poor.
The music in that scene, in fact, the music throughout the entire film, made me want to clap and dance.
I also have to add that Fellini never made a funnier film, at least of the ones I've seen, which are a majority of them (Toby Dammit of the omnibus film Spirits of the Dead comes very close).Most of this film's greatness lies in individual scenes, and thus, as you might guess, the sum is not exactly equal to the parts - at least as far as I saw, there's no real point - the substance is thin.
Each individual scene ranks among the best ever put to film - the wine glass concert, the scene where sunlight brightens one half of the ship and moonlight the other, the boiler room scene where the great opera singers compete vocally in order to impress the sailors below, the interview with the duke, and the opera singer's funeral.
Each scene is so exquisitely created by Fellini and every other artist involved that it is entirely forgiveable if the audience remembers those individual images rather than an overall effect.
A glittering gem of a movie that I feel deserves more attention in Fellini's canon.
Although Fellini's most challenging and provocative work preceded And the ship sails on, I can't say any are more poetic than it.
This film is also worth seeing if only for the stunning visuals, and the glorious music!.
Like Ken Russell, Fellini can always be depended on to go way over the top and never do anything by halves.The story of a group of rich aristocrats, opera singers, hangers on and just plain rich accompanying the body of a great opera singer to her cremation on the island of her birth in 1914, is shown in Fellini's stylised fashion as an allegory on the decline of Europe in WWI.
Antonioni has called this one of his favorite Fellini films and after seeing it myself, I knew he didn't make that judgment rashly.
"And the Ship Sails On" is a thoroughly 'modern' film and one of the maestro's best--certainly as good as "Amarcord," and probably better.
The fact that both films happen to take place on the deck of a ship is their only similarity and the 'message' of Titanic has absolutely nothing do with what Fellini was trying to say.
Fellini doesn't make 'allegories' of society; at his best, he makes 'allegories' of 'allegories.' His sense of humor goes deep enough to include ridicule of people who take allegories too seriously within his allegories, hence his true artistry.
And those kinds of people, obviously, sense that the joke is on them, and don't particulary like this film.
In fact, you could write a whole book analyzing "And the Ship Sails On" solely on its deep artistic value and another on all the great things in this film that certain 'cultured' people don't get because of their particular brand of 'high-brow' conditioning.
"And the Ship Sails On" is a PURE film, folks, one of the few amidst an ocean of endless mediocrity; and that is the hardest thing to achieve when trying to integrate as many elements as Fellini tries for (he himself has failed many times precisely because he was seeking purity within excess and got lost).
Each time I see "E la nave va", I'm deeply moved about the ending, masterly contrasting bold opera music and the vanishing of a certain Europe..
For some reason I hadn't seen one of his pictures for a while, and while his astounding images remained inviolable in my mind's private cinema, the gradual, repeated decline of his critical status made me tread fearfully into this nautical drama.It is clearly his worst film.
It is clearly the work of a jaded Maestro.And yet it contains more life, wit and magic than most films this year, and, needless to say, it is less silly than Titanic.
The story (a group of mourners carrying the body of a celebrated opera singer on a huge liner as World War I breaks out) is open to many allegorical interpretations (ship as nation, empire, class, art, life etc.), none of which quite fit.
There is much play on images of moon (Claire de lune tinkles throughout), tides and sunsets - possibly as motifs of decline, but also of the ever-continuing circle that is its opposite, life?The film's tone is ambivalent, nostalgic for an elegant age of art and beauty, yet coldly aware of its inhuman faults.
This is epitomised by the trademark Fellini altar ego, a journalist/film  narrator, who watches the mixture of tragedy and farce with an amused eye, yet desperately wants to belong, and share in its faded grandeur.There are wonderful set-pieces, and graceful, Kubrickian camera movements.
This film is strange and beautiful- some of the scenes remain  with me though I haven't seen it for 12 years.
Most of all I recall the scene where the ship takes on a group of refugees somehow this funeral ship with its cargo of grieving operatic elite and  exhausted stateless and utterly impoverished people becomes an image of great compassion and humanity and optimism even.
I don't "understand" Fellini's films but I "felt" this one very passionately..
Fellini accomplishes more in the first 15 minutes than many directors accomplish in a film.
i guess the purpose of using black and white and silent cinema techniques before the ship scenes was to underline the fact that the important factor in the film was the ship itself.
Fellini had created so many symbols including the rhinoceros and the ship itself.
Fellini has reminded me that the cinema is an art which underlines the importance of visual structure..
As a film experience, it is much like "Duck Soup," where the fakery and frippery is exposed and unremarked on: in the thing itself; in the ridiculous pomp of "royalty;" in the strutting of the artists, all conflated.I would have been tempted to give this the honor of being one of the two Fellini films I set as fours.
Everyone seemed to expect something special from Fellini later in life, as if all that had gone before was just preparation for a master oeuvre that would make us fall to our knees.
This is what Fellini did – like it or not - the simple observation of harmless caricatures, which is actually engaging, enjoyable, even a little intriguing.
Nobody is intrinsically good or bad; everyone is a set of circumstances, more or less fortunate or unfortunate; nobody harbours grudges – even here – especially here, on the eve of World War I, the end of a golden era of genteel innocence.The first time I watched this I took against Freddie Jones' MC character.
At the end, the camera pulls back to display the set and the crew – a simple indication that we are all part of some grander machination, that we are all a bunch of fools on a sinking ship, and if we all took life a little less seriously, we might enjoy it a good deal more.
This film combines whole elements that summarize the meaning of greatness.A moving masterpiece that explores every aesthetic possibility given by Cinema.
At 1st view, I thought our sound didn't work on the DVD player, then so typical of Fellini, knowing this, he slowly adds little sound bites, then there is music and singing, then there is voice.
Everyone on the ship is requested to be there by the dead opera singer's will to witness her ashes being blown at sea at her desired place 3 days sailing out.
The movie ends but you know everyone else's story doesn't.
"And the Ship Sails On" is perhaps the only post-"Amarcord" Fellini film truly worthy of extravagant praise.
The film is Fellini through and through.
Always engaging, completely unique, and rather special, this film is probably among my favorite Fellini efforts.
It's not perfect (Fellini is such an auteur that he has a sense of humor that few others can fully appreciate all the time, and sometimes it's a little trying), but it's an excellent movie.8/10.
Great Rare Fellini Film on DVD!.
I felt like I returned to 1914 while watching this film.
It is very rare that a time in the past comes calmly alive feeling like present time in a film.
Fellini as usual fills this film with bizarre imagery, cinematography like a painting, and carnival-house faces.
From the one of the most originals beginnings in the film history to some pure perfection moments, this movie does not disappoint.
One of Fellini's better later films.
However along with Ginger and Fred(my personal favourite of that particular part of Fellini's career), When the Ship Sails On it is one of Fellini's better later films after Amarcord.
While Fellini's direction is more restrained than usual, there is still the distinctive style that made his films so wonderful.
Overall, a fine film and while not one of my favourites of the later Fellinis it does stand out as one of the better ones.
After the first metalinguistic appearance of the journalist Orlando and a short singing by the passengers, they go aboard, the ships leaves port, and the movie actually begins.The music is splendid, and the scenery and the costumes do not fall short of it.
(And if you're sitting there saying, "I drink coffee but not excessive amounts of it", you're deluding yourself.) Fellini is for people who would like to make the world a better place, but they don't know how, so they just avoid it and concern themselves with the absurdity of life.
And drink more coffee.When watching Fellini films I am infected with a violent desire to throw popcorn at the screen and quote Bruno Kirby from _When Harry Met Sally_ in the scene where he's frustrated at Sally's inability to convey her ideas while playing a game of Pictionary: "Draw SOMETHING resembling ANYTHING!!!".
Fellini says in few minutes what directors and writers wanted (do they really want?...) to say in many ignorant movies, like Spielberg's or Cameron's movies.
Fellini is an artist, he makes real art, not just for making businesses or a great stupid show to people be delighted with the illusion of the happy endings..
Federico Fellini might be the most talented genius when it comes to how to end a film; almost every single work of his I have seen finishes with an emotional conclusion accompanied by a great picture.
And the Ship Sails On is no exception: the splendid ending sequence shows a separation, a romance, a catastrophe accompanied by overly expressive operatic music, an inserted picture of the studio where the film was made, and a humor in the closing shot.
Despite the great ending, however, overall the film looks dated--more precisely, it might have already appeared to be dated in 1983, when it was released.
Towards the twilight of his film-making career, Fellini might have reached an area of his own too unique aesthetics; consequently, his works might not have been synchronized with the era (though I admit this statement may be biased with my knowledge in the American 80s)..
Maybe, just maybe, a surrealist cosmogony as well.Already in Fellini's time, cinema was long ago validated as art.
Because here Fellini the wizard went beyond ambitions and achieved this partGoyesque part satirical take on a world long ago abolished and drowned; and some of those who know at least some of the important Italian cinema of the '70s and '80s (things like the Ottaviani brothers, the Avatti, and the master Fellini himself) will not fail to recognize rather promptly this blend and also this special flavor of temerity and decadence.Now of course most do not even need this; yet I would insist of taking by the hand the unconvinced few and dip them a little in thiswhat shall we call itin this primordial soup, in this _cosmographic sketch.
I bet you do not know many other musical sequences in the cinema as good as the glasses session in the ship's kitchen.
Or the countless jokes issued by the master's inventivenessbeginning of course with the silent scene right at the beginning, before the color shift.The final Fellini was somehow the mellower; understandable.
In keeping with the style and tone of his later-period films, like Fellini-Roma, Amarcord and Casanova, ...And The Ship Sails On is a purposely elaborate and overly-stylised romp through the decadent and the grotesque, as a congregation of mourning opera singers find themselves stuck on a drifting ocean liner, whilst, unbeknownst to them, the first World War is breaking out across Europe.
Like all of Fellini's work following 8 ½ (or maybe even going as far back as Nights of Cabiria), the films seems loose and directionless, propelled along by a series of darkly-comic set-pieces, colourful characters and grand cinematic gestures.
It's less sprawling than a film like La Dolce Vita and less abstract and thematically repulsive as Satyricon, with the film falling somewhere in between, probably ending up closer to the fantastical stylisation and nostalgic fabrication of Amarcord than anything else.It's certainly more focused than many of his films from the same era, with Fellini managing to present a loose story that we can actually buy into, whilst the use of humour here is much broader and more central than some of his other films, with the references to Chaplin and the silent age helping to undercut the overt-stylisation (a thousand acres of plastic seas, a huge light bulb sun, etc) and the lack of an obvious central character (or any real character, for that matter).
Once again, Fellini deals in caricatures, choosing actors more for their physical appearance than any kind of acting ability, then directs them to mug to the camera with movements and expressions as grand as the film's design.The photography here is exquisite (like all Fellini), with the director creating a number of beautiful images and compositions that look like paintings from the early part of the last century.
Deceptively, but also as to illustrate his cinematic references, Fellini begins the film with no sound and in a dull, brown sepia.
As the film progresses, and the camera follows the mourners and the actions of the ship's crew, the sound of the ship-yard begins to slowly fade in...
There are a number of other stand out cinematic moments, in which Fellini gracefully orchestrates the actors and his camera so that their movements are integrated, almost like a musical, whilst the use of fast-motion to over-exaggerate the period feel and to create a sense of farce that works well with the material, and Fellini's style of direction.Some might argue that the film is quite trivial and never really ascends to the level of greatness set by the likes of La Strada, 8 ½ and Amarcord, and I suppose that's true, but for me, the film creates such an atmosphere and such a wholly intoxicating world of stylisation, arcane historical references and the trademark Fellini absurdities, that the whole film becomes a joy to sit through.
On top of all the grand visual flourishes, outlandish characterisations and general Fellini-isms, there's also the various symbolic references and narrative interpretations, which give the film a further layer of entertainment.The use of World War One as a pivot for the latter half of the story is an essential one and is important in as much as it allows Fellini (after so much time spent on spectacle and cinematic buffoonery) to create a notion much more meaningful and memorable.
So, what begins as a typically Fellini-esquire romp, gradually becomes something much more meaningful, and remains, in my opinion, his last true masterpiece.Admittedly, it's nowhere near as essential as his earlier films, pre-8 ½, in which his work generally had a much greater degree of narrative and cohesion, though from his later, more grandiose films, ...And The Ship Sails on remains an absolute treat...
This is one weird film--and Fellini intended it to be.
Sometimes, the people move in a rhythmic fashion, while at others they break into VERY elaborate operatic numbers and the sets are NOT the least bit realistic at times but look more like art nouveau pieces of art.
I liked the film very much, but would certainly NOT want a steady diet of this type of movie.
About the only thing I really hated was at the very end when the cameras panned back and showed the actual film crew and set.
This completely took me out of the weird moment and seemed unnecessary--I wanted to remain stuck in this strange world a little longer and hated to be reminded it was all a movie.