Fellinis Schiff der Träume

The most eccentric gallery of artists embarks on a cruise ship named Gloria, distinguished members of the Opera world, sopranos, baritones, prima donnas but also musicians, comedians and politicians gathering together to pay their last tribute to the diva Edmuee Tueta whose ashes are to be dispersed on her native island of Erimo. She was revered and referred to as the greatest singer who ever lived. Given that music is perhaps the closest to perfection humanity ever got close to, the odyssey carries the dimension of a pilgrimage into the soul of a goddess-like figure who embodied the very perfection of music.

Now, who better than Fellini to design the partition of such an homage with his own instinct for cinematic poetry? And I don't use the word in vain, the Italian title of "This Ship Sails On" is "E La Nave Va" and I have a feeling that Fellini chose to set his movie on a ship just for the beauty of that title, the delightful harmony of this alliteration of 'l's and 'v's, suggesting a delicate and dream-like buoyancy, a sort of soul-escaping from a reality traced by the watermine ... this is certainly Fellini's best titled after "La Dolce Vita", and I wish I could like the film even better.

Now, was I disappointed? I'm not sure because that would imply a set of expectations while no one never really enter Fellini's movies with an idea of what's hidden behind these curtains... visually, musically or narratively... all you know is that this will be another show in form of a story or a story in place of a show, both navigating over the waves of the Maestro's inspiration... but that time, the line between show and show off was crossed like the Equator line, you don't see it but you can feel it when there's that little voice inside you that whispers to the Fellini fan you are that maybe, maybe the director is pulling our leg or underestimates the connection we would have with his boiling imagination. But even on that level "The Ship Sails On" doesn't exactly deliver...

The opening is a masterstroke, carrying the illusion of the early 1910s movies with the sepia tone, the fast motion and people occasionally looking at this oddity named camera like Chapin in "Kids Auto Race at Venice". Fellini brings a dimension of authenticity within the illusion of reality, he knows that's how people react when they see the camera, they look at it... why shouldn't they? And it's precisely because the camera is present that we accept the illusion of a documentary, allowing us to reveal the protagonists without any words, nor sounds, not even some musical accompaniment, only the typical noise of the whirring projector just before the sepia fades into full color.

But even them, actors break a golden rule by staring at the camera as if Fellini couldn't resist the temptation to stalk his own protagonists a few minutes before finally tiptoeing backwards and let the story go, passing the torch to Freddie Jones who plays a foreign correspondant and the film's ringmaster introducing us to all the protagonists and then you realize that this is still a 'show'. Indeed, the showman disappears but we, the audience, are parts of the film. Sure we know 'realness' was never a requirement when you watch a Fellini film but this time, I was more perplexed than excited by the whole process as if I was reminded of Stanley Kramer's "Ship of Fools", a film that made an effort to introduce many characters at once but failing to connect them all into a rather tedious story.

The boat looked so real, the context of July 1914 made it clear that the plot would interfere with a certain war that started in Sarajevo and yet Fellini insists that his film would only be a fable, the incarnation of a vision from him or his writer Tonino Guerra. But no matter how rich and promising this vision was on the paper, it is restrained in the confinement of a big boat with people belonging to the European bourgeoisie and only a rhinoceros can bring that little touch of surrealism.

Freddie Jones is an entertaining fourth-wall breaker but it's a miracle if we hardly remember one name he introduces to, so the point of the long exposition is quickly lost. What remains are some more-or-less interesting bits of conversation: one about the color of voices for instance, then you have a series of little episodes involving a seagull intruding in the restaurant, a bunch of scientists playing music with glasses... two women admiring the sunset and saying it's so beautiful it looks fake, which would certainly inspire paragraphs of analysis from Fellini fans .... And in this patchwork of little vignettes, I failed to grab that magical line that would create the illusion of consistency within disjointment.

It's only when the Serbian party starts and everyone dance in a sort of fraternal communion that the film gets back on its feet and remind us that Fellini hasn't lost his touch and then things escalate with the threat of a German ship, allowing Fellini's inspiration to literally implode and provide us one of these moments of genuine and delightful chaos that built his legacy, it's within destruction that Fellini recovers his creative power and maybe the opening was way too slow, too civilized, too exhausting... I would suspend my disbelief anytime for a Fellini film but I can't pretend not to be a little confused and in that foggy journey, I wished a torchlight would show me the way for enjoyment.

Maybe I wished he could have one character to raise our interest, but there's no Mastroianni or Masina, no central character, only a director whose imagination is undeniable but sometimes he forgets that it takes a lot of imagination for the viewer to see greatness when clarity is lacking...

When younger, I was a Fellini obsessive - I adored the excess, the humour, the grotesquerie, the sympathetic comedie humaine, the audacious visuals, the beautiful, sad, lonely Marcello Mastroianni. 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 always threatens to break into a frenzied dance of the Id, like his best pictures, but never quite does. The acting is generally poor, the dubbing atrocious; the ideas seem to cancel each other out in an aimless mess. Fellini's style is more restrained than usual, with a greater, seemingly restricted, emphasis on content composition and montage. 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. The narrative and characterisation is constantly splintered, mocking the desire of the passengers for order and rank. Imperial folly is angrily lampooned, culminating in a remarkable burlesque dogfight, stylised as a Verdi opera, yielding, in impotent terror, the Force of Destiny.

The classical music soundtrack initially seems bland and uninventive, but actually offers, once identified, a stunning, ironic commentary on the actions, pretensions, sadnesses and failures of the characters and the society they represent. The party scene with the Serbs is very moving - loaded with the mixture of anger and regret that constitute the film's heart.

The self-reflexivity does not patronise the audience for giving into illusion - the film's 'reality' is in question from the beginning. Film is shown not to be a modern weapon of the future (cinema as an art-form emerged at around the same time as the film was set), but merely a skip for the bricolage of Europe and the past. This pessimism, though, is not despairing - there is great beauty in loss.

"E la nave va" is one of the best films made by Fellini, which I see as the best film director ever. Just two personal comments about it. First, I have seen it in 1985, when in Romania a dark dictatorship saved hard currency by preventing foreign films to be imported. It was presented during a festival arranged by the Italian Embassy. Combine the local cultural desert and the post-modern style of this film and you'll understand why, after the film ended, I wanted to have just a walk-on part on it. My wife just proposed to pay the projectionist to run it again. The second comment is about a strange premonition Fellini had about the conflict in Serbia/Yougoslavia. 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.

Fellini as usual fills this film with bizarre imagery, cinematography like a painting, and carnival-house faces. The symbolism of a decaying Europe is drawn with rather broad strokes (the bloated smelly rhino as colonialism, the hungry at the windows of the rich), but it's worth watching just for the visuals. Oh yeah, the music's great too.

A glittering gem of a movie that I feel deserves more attention in Fellini's canon. The motif of the ending of an era and the films positioning near the end of his career make for a particularly poignant expression. I think it is a tendency for most artist's to be seen to be at the height of their power somewhere in mid-life. Although Fellini's most challenging and provocative work preceded And the ship sails on, I can't say any are more poetic than it. It's rich sentimentality beautifully positions individual stories within the tapesty of larger world events oblivious to these characters. This film is also worth seeing if only for the stunning visuals, and the glorious music!