And the Ship Sails On

# 923

A surprisingly 'restrained' work that found Fellini finally making peace with Italy's most famous artform while lampooning the pomp and ceremony associated with its patronage. It's an elegant journey that's seemingly aimless: a charming tour guide navigates our way through the cast of eccentric bourgeois stereotypes aboard a luxurious ocean liner. But it's a deceptively lightweight film whose sense of nostalgia and loss for a bygone era is deeply resonant and strangely moving.

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What begins as an era-appropriate sepia-tinted silent slowly begins to seep color and sound, then explodes into full-force opera. A buzzing fast-motion kitchen gives way to the slow-motion elegance of fine dining. An omniscient narrator speaks directly to the audience. The artificial sets are duly noted, one character exclaiming the painterly quality of a sunset. Fellini keeps reminding us that we are watching a movie, achieving a whimsical kind of fourth-wall expressionism. It's a blast.

Gentle and humane, as dreamlike as anything Fellini ever made, full of haunted characters like an Edward Gorey book come to life. Next to the hypnotic opening scene, my favorite sequence has the singers vocalizing in the steam plant (which looks astonishingly like the steam plant in FLAH GORDON's city of the hawkmen . . .)

Fellini's tribute to opera doesn't have that spark of brilliance to put it alongside his masterpieces. But it does have a variety of fun characters, some unusual ideas, and a handful of really magnificent scenes. And there's nothing terribly flawed about the film, except that the fake vintage footage doesn't quite work. But artifice is part of the package, notably in some of the blatantly artificial sets and the finale, most likely meant to parallel the artifice one would see in an opera.

E la nave va estreava há 40 anos no Festival de Veneza. Vi esse filme pela primeira vez e achei chato, nunca mais revisitei, mas achava que quando o fizesse conseguiria ver os elementos de outra forma como de fato fiz agora, mas continuo achando chato. Talvez a explicação disso se deve ao excesso de tempo dando à burguesia chatonilda, visualmente é deslumbrante e as características fellinianas são maravilhosas, mas não consigo gostar desse como a maioria. Box Versátil Fellini Essencial.

I should probably rewatch this some time, but the first time I did it bored me, despite being a Fellini.

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#949