And the Ship Sails On (The Criterion Collection)
Federico Fellini's 1984And the Ship Sails Onis one of the late  master's most fanciful projects, while simultaneously striking one of the  most somber notes in the director's filmography. The year is 1914, the eve of  World War I and the coming destruction of Europe's old, cultured aristocracy,  an elite class mourned in many a film from Renoir'sThe Grand Illusionto Truffaut'sThe Green Room. A luxury liner sets sail from Italy,  full of artists, a royal entourage, and one rhinoceros. The point of the  voyage is to scatter the ashes of a world-famous diva, but the exotic  passengers--blithely unaware of the imminent conflict--have many, more private  intrigues going on behind closed doors. Still, it is the self-containment and  formality of these travelers, at once absurd and moving, that sticks with the viewer: the way the many singers, musicians, and conductors (and one plump  archduke) seem aware, in public, of embodying a privileged history. Fellini films all the action aboard an impressively lush and blatantly artificial  set, with a painted sky, paper moon, and cellophane sea, all underscoring the  dreamy, precious nature of this adventure. The camera itself becomes a kind of character via a determined journalist (Freddie Jones) who speaks to us  directly, drawing the film into vaguely obscene disruptions of an otherwise serene formalism.--Tom Keogh