Fellinis Schiff der Träume

There is no mistaking a Fellini film, even when you only catch the last 30 minutes, as I did when channel surfing. I made an effort to catch the full film next time it was shown, and was rewarded with a stunning feast. Not one of Fellini's best (or worst excesses) depending on your opinion of Fellini, but images that will stay with me for many years. 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. The opulent excess of the doomed rich lifestyle, which no matter how hard they tried, was never regained, contrasts with the workers slaving in order to enable the rich to enjoy that elegant privileged lifestyle. The scene where the passengers tour the boiler rooms, standing on a cat walk to look down on the stokers shovelling coal into the boilers and trilling arias while the stokers took off their caps to show respect, made me hope the catwalk would collapse and plunge the passengers into the furnace.

The stylistic storytelling reminded me of "Oh what a lovely War" Joan Littlewood's depiction of WWI as a series of songs and dances by a seaside concert party. If you want reality, you can look out of the window every day and see reality. Sometimes a surrealist view puts a different window on things. The stupendous finale of the movie is enough to make the film worthwhile if nothing else.

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...

"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.

first five minutes of `E La Nave Va` was what attracted me most from this movie (not meaning that the rest of it was not interesting). i thought that it should be a silent movie but then i realized that there were some inaudible voices coming from the background. then i asked myself whether there's a problem with the sound system or not. but just as i was thinking about this, voices started to be audible. and the black and white movie became coloured when the ashes were taken to the ship with ceremony. 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. life without the ship was black and white (probably meaning boring and full of cliches). but when we enter the world inside the ship (or when we enter the world through Fellini's eyes), we see that there are lots of differences from reality. and that makes the ship coloured! Fellini had created so many symbols including the rhinoceros and the ship itself. but these symbols are not so clearly defined so after watching the film, the audience leaves with some question marks. even if you are not interested in the plot, watch this for a good visual treat. Fellini has reminded me that the cinema is an art which underlines the importance of visual structure.