And the Ship Sails On Blu-ray Review
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, September 9, 2022
Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of
Essential
Fellini.
It may not
quite match the treatment Criterion afforded a certain iconic Swedish director with their frankly almost overwhelming
Ingmar Bergman's Cinema release, but
Essential Fellini should pretty easily serve as either an absolutely first rate introduction to or a nostalgic reacquaintance with one of Italy's most
legendary filmmakers. Fourteen beloved if sometimes controversial Fellini films have been aggregated in this set, along with a bonus disc offering a
special devoted to Marcello Mastroianni, and while Criterion only provided check discs for the purposes of this review, from the looks of things online,
this is another beautifully packaged set from the label with a number of non-disc swag packaging bonuses.
It may strike some as perhaps a little odd that despite Federico's Fellini's protean talents and emphases on visual phantasmagoria that the
celebrated
auteur never made a musical. That may seem especially odd when realizing that two of Fellini's dramatic films
became
Broadway
"tuners" (I'm referring of course to
Sweet Charity,
based
on
Nights of Cabiria, and
Nine, based on
8½
). Though not exactly a song and dance spectacular, some elements of
And the Ship Sails On kind of hint at a musical sensibility,
and
in fact there
is some singing on tap in this often whimsical and deliberately cheeky enterprise.
This latter day Fellini opus offers the
auteur at his most unabashedly
"meta" virtually from the get go with a nostalgic opening
vignette
which seems to be an archival black and white silent film (replete with whirring projector noise), but which has characters more or less breaking the
fourth wall, something that continues apace once the story morphs charmingly into color and we are introduced to a character who basically
becomes
the film's narrator, Orlando (Freddie Jones). Orlando repeatedly serves as an on screen information dump, if kind of in a "Page Six" gossip
merchant way, which is at least somewhat appropriate
given the fact that he is supposedly a journalist covering an epic voyage whereby a number of artistic notables in the early 20th century are
accompanying the ashes of a famed opera singer to their final resting place.
Now this basic setup is in typical Fellini fashion simply a foundation upon which the master builds yet another astounding assortment of images,
characters and vignettes. Some elements of this phantasmagorical world actually play surprisingly close to aspects in
Ship of Fools, though Fellini's "cultural cross section" is deliberately
outré
and even flat out silly at times. An almost gonzo subplot involving refugees on the ship hints at the same sort of displacement due to global battles
that Katherine Anne Porter's opus does, though predictably Fellini doesn't play things for any perceived
sturm und drang, and in fact
aspects of
And the Ship Sails On come close to farce.
This is another Fellini outing where he basically throws everything but the kitchen sink (unless I missed that) at the screen, leaving the viewer to
kind of deal with a number of incredibly eccentric types doing a number of patently weird things, all within a setting that is intentionally fake
looking and which in fact is revealed to
be a set in the film's crowning moment of
"meta" physics. As such, and within the
context of an ocean liner being bidden by the vagaries of the wind, it may be best to simply "go with the flow" here and to enjoy a patently askew
feeling journey. The unusual cast for a Fellini film, which also offers Janet Suzman in supposed old "home movies" as the deceased opera star at
the core of the story, may give this added allure for those not otherwise acquainted with Fellini's output.
And the Ship Sails On Blu-ray, Video Quality
And the Ship Sails On is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Criterion
only sent check discs for
purposes of this review, and so I'm not privy to any verbiage about the transfer that may be included in an insert booklet, but the actual film includes
some introductory text which offers the following information:
Restoration of And the Ship Sails On (Federico Fellini, 1983) completed in 2019 by Istituto Luce - Cinecittà and Centro Sperimentale di
Cinematografia - Cineteca Nazionale at the Istituto Luce - Cinecitta laboratories from the original 35mm picture negative made available by Rai
Cinema
and from a positive track printed from the optical soundtrack negative.
Sound restoration supervision by Federico Savina.
And the Ship Sails On features a deliberately off kilter production design that emphasizes artificiality, especially in terms of some of the
backdrops, and this presentation's generally sterling detail levels help to emphasize that artistic choice. Fine detail is often exceptional on some of
the luxe fabrics seen on upholstery, props and costumes on the ocean liner. The palette seemed just a tad cool and at times slightly yellowish to me
once the film transitions from black and white, and some may wish for slightly more suffusion, but in terms of general color reproduction, there are a
number of undeniable positives, including some striking primaries. Grain resolves naturally throughout the presentation and I noticed no problems
with regard to distracting damage or age related wear and tear.
Cinecitta accent
And the Ship Sails On Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
Fellini from his "hyperbolic" films onward (wherever you want to start that "era") is one of those filmmakers who simply needs to be surrendered to,
without asking questions, and that's probably very much the case with regard to
And the Ship Sails On. This may be the very paradigm of a
"shaggy dog story", but it's a visually sumptuous and often bizarrely entertaining canine, so to speak, at least for those properly initiated into the often
odd, dreamlike worlds that Fellini so often exploits. Technical merits are generally solid and the lone supplement appealing.
Recommended.
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