And The Ship Sails On

The ship is a potent metaphor that has been used innumerable times in art to represent society in microcosm.Here Fellini's gorgeously abstracted version is a luxury Art Deco liner sailing from Naples at the outset of WW1 to a distant island to scatter the ashes of a famous opera singer (Janet Suzman) born there.The boat is filled with her friends and manner of exotic types bent on pleasure but on the third day the captain has to save a a large number of Serbian refugees from the sea.

Like Fellini- Satyricon (1969) the allegorical aspect of the subject matter is handled in broad yet also highly personal terms that many will find obscurely self-indulgent but with the help of his art director, Dante Ferretti, Fellini creates a gorgeous dreamscape, shot entirely in the Cinecitta studios, that will at least please lovers of cinematic artifice.

 

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