And the ship is sailing ...

The name of the film contains a certain stylistic shift that is not conveyed in the traditional Russian translation. A more radical version of the translation was proposed by the French: Et vogue le navire, literally - "A boat swam and swam." This option better conveys the parable nature of the picture.

1914 year . A passenger liner leaves Naples for an unusual cruise. On board are singers, actors, businessmen, aristocrats - they escorted to the last journey the opera prima Edmea Tetua, who bequeathed to disperse her ashes above the sea near her native island. In the meantime, Archduke Ferdinand was killed in Sarajevo ; World War I erupts. On the third day, the liner rescues the Serbian refugees, and after a while, an armadillo flying the flag of Austria-Hungary comes across to meet him. After complex plot interweaving, filled with very strange symbols, both ships go to the bottom, personifying the death of world culture and the Austro-Hungarian empire.

The plot of the film remotely recalls the story of the death of the Titanic steamboat and, more specifically, the orchestra of eight musicians who continued to play on the deck at the time of the ship's immersion.

In a sense, the film “And the Ship Sails” summarizes Federico Fellini’s artistic search (his subsequent paintings are marked by a decrease in the aesthetic level, with the exception of the very last film, “The Voice of the Moon ”, where a way to new aesthetic horizons is dimly outlined). In “The Ship ...” many artistic techniques and principles characteristic of Fellini are developed, sometimes in a pointed form. So, the characteristic exposure of the cinematic conventions of what is happening on the screen (“ Eight and a half ”) here turns into a humorous final chord when the viewer sees the film crew (this technique was then replicated; it was used, in particular, in the final of the Krzysztof Zanussi film “Gallop” ) The embodiment of the same convention is a distinctly fake rhinoceros, which, however, suffers from an upset stomach (humorous parallel to a very serious episode from Amarcord ). The ambiguous but more likely comic figure of the narrator (Sprecher), introduced earlier in the same Amarcord, is again found in The Ship ...; sometimes appearing neither in a village nor in a city, he is similar here to a television commentator or presenter. Finally, true to his principle, to introduce grotesque masked characters into the circle of characters (Saragin in “Eight and a Half”, Chanterelle and Tobacco Box in “Amarcord”), Fellini in “The Ship ...” presents the viewer of the Grand Duke, very reminiscent of a hermaphrodite , and a blind countess (performed by the famous choreographer Pina Bausch ).

This begs the comparison of the film with the famous picture of Stanley Kramer " The ship of fools ." However, films are diametrically opposed in meaning. If Kramer’s film, saturated with serious socio-political content, anticipates the triumph of political correctness characteristic of modern Western society, then the Fellini film, full of buffoonery and at times foolishness, demonstrates the exhaustion of all ideology and the surrender of art. According to the Italian director, it cannot fundamentally become “the most important of the arts” - the art of living on earth (which was what Bertolt Brecht was so eager for in his work). Diligently playing his “three-penny opera” in the face of imminent danger, the heroes of “And the Ship Sails” turn art into the very “glass bead game” that Hermann Hesse recreated in his best novel.

The film received the following awards:

• Four awards " David di Donatello ": for the best film, best screenplay, best camera work and best work of the artist ( Dante Ferretti ) ( 1984 ).

Note. The oblique singers who performed the vocals

• Edmea Tetua - Janet Sazman
• Orlando - Freddy Jones
• Ildebranda Kuffari - Barbara Jefford / Mara Zampieri (soprano)
• Aureliano Fuciletto Victor Poletti / Giovanni Bavaglio
• Sir Reginald Donby - Peter Selye
• Teresa Valegnani - Elisa Maynardi / Nucci Condò
• Lady Donby - Norma West
• Dorothea - Sarah-Jane Varley
• Grand Duke - Fiorenzo Serra
• Countess Lerimia - Pina Bausch
• Prime Minister - Philip Lock
• Ziloev - Maurice Barrier / Boris Carmeli (bass)
• Notary - Franco Ressel
• Ines Ruffo Saltini - Linda Polan / Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz (soprano)
• Sabatino Lepori - Fred Williams / Carlo di Giacomo

• “And the ship is sailing” on the Internet Movie Database  
• And the ship is sailing (English) on the site allmovie  
• Fellini F., Guerra T. Amarcord. And the ship is sailing. SPb: ABC classic. - 2003. - ISBN 5-352-00177-6