Hi babes!
Welcome back. 50! 50! I cannot believe I’ve watched 50 of these things and then wrote about them and then you’ve read them. I mean, are we dating orrrrr? 😉
I have nothing special to do to celebrate this momentous occasion, except:
Because I made a STINK about my cedar garland in newsletters 25 to 27 (I think I proclaimed it would be “over” for you once I got it up and that it was a “cure” for my depression), I think I should let you know that I finally took it down. It was a spectacular 8 months until it wasn’t. This summer it started to yellow and crumble and Josh, a sort-of neat freak, very sweetly let it happen, let me let go in my own way. My home is DEVOID OF NATURE but it also doesn’t feel like I’m living inside a Christmas tree dumpster so that’s probably good.
#50: And the Ship Sails On
Director: Federico Fellini
Country: Italy
Year: 1983
Runtime: 128 minutes
Language: Italian
**As always, this post contains spoilers**
CW: Death
As a Fellini scholar (I’ve seen three of his films), I have to say Fellini was suuuuuper Fellini in this movie; more than he Fellini’d with Nights of Cabiria but less than he Fellini’d in Amarcord. Which, for me, means I don’t have a ton to say, except it was fun and you should watch it! However, reading a recap of a Fellini vessel is sort of like the “this place has everything” part of the SNL Stefon sketch about the night clubs, so enjoy!
The film begins with a sepia-toned silent film set in July, 1914 where lots of people are preparing for the departure of an enormous ship called the Gloria N. I know this isn’t an actual film from 1914, but boy was I reminded how silent films make me feel so close and so distant from people from the past.
The ship is preparing to embark as part of a funeral procession for a beloved opera singer named Edmea Tetua (Janet Suzman). Outside the boat, the crowd begins to sing an opera and the film slowly becomes colorized. Isn’t it amazing how adding color can make a film seem instantly more relatable?? Wild. As the ship departs, everyone on the ship also sings, including the people who work in the boiler room.
Josh was not watching this with me and was sort of bummed to miss it, so I yelled to him upstairs, “I think this is a musical!” because he hates (is that too strong a word?) musicals and I didn’t want him to feel too bad about missing it.
The ship’s destination is Edmea’s birthplace of Erimo, where her ashes will be scattered.
A slow-motion shot of the guests on board reveals the ship is v fancy—white tablecloths and hats and tuxedoed butlers! Which is probably obvious because can you imagine building a giant ship, naming her the Gloria N, and then it’s just a Golden Corral on the inside? Also, by slow-motion, I mean they’re acting in slo-mo, which is an entirely different fun thing.
This scene is set to the Dance of the Mirlitons from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. Which I definitely knew immediately and didn’t have to take 15 minutes to reverse engineer from my most recent viewing of Fantasia which occurred while I was absolutely toasted on a J&J COVID vaccine fever at 4 AM this April. But I got there!
ANYway, boat is fancy. And we have a narrator! His name is Orlando (Freddie Jones), he’s a journalist, he’s qUiRkY, he talks right into the camera, and he’s our source for all the hot goss on board, of which there is PLENTY.
Because this is Fellini, the cast is a collection of absurd characters that are not completely worth keeping track of. All you need to know is everyone on board is either royalty, a bigwig in the European show biz scene, or one of Edmea’s fans. They’re all here to honor Edmea’s last wishes of having her ashes scattered around the island of her birthplace.
From here, a lot of stuff happens! Stuff like…
A dinner table argument about synesthesia.
An Egyptian with a huge, violet-colored penis.
A rich guy named Sir Reginald (Peter Cellier) is revealed to be a cuck.
A count named Bassano (Pasquale Zito) has transformed his room into an outrageous shrine to the late singer.
A sing-off in the boiler room.
A rhinoceros in the (basement? Storage room?) that is, apparently, love-sick.
A male opera singer hypnotizes a chicken by singing a single note to it in the kitchen.
The depressed rhinoceros is raised above the deck of the ship and hosed down by a bunch of guys and wow do I fully get that thought process.
All of the guests gather around and many of them talk shit about Edmea, which is like...probably the opposite of her wishes? She probably just wanted someone she loves to stand on a cliff and sprinkle her ashes around, not a full several-day cruise filled with catty, self-centered performers?
Orlando, the narrator, says around day 3 of the voyage, everything went wrong. Everything started getting strange. Started!
One guest seems to inhabit the soul of Edmea while a bunch of other guests gather around to talk to her in a whisper, hoping not to disturb her. Her spirit never speaks to them and my skeptic’s theory is that the guy who’s supposedly possessed is just really drunk.
Then, the guests discover dozens of Serbian passengers on one of the decks. Apparently there was a war in Sarajevo; many people fled by boat and were shipwrecked and then rescued by the Gloria N’s crew. This, obviously, creates some tension! The refugees watch the diners in the dining room through the window; the staff closes the drapes, but some kind hearted guests bring them food. Aaaaand the Grand Duke (Fiorenzo Serra) on board thinks the Serbians are terrorists and his life is in danger.
So, of course, they isolate the refugees to one section of the boat cordoned off with rope. But! That night, all of the guests and the Serbs dance together on the deck.
The next morning, an Austro-Hungarian battleship approaches the Gloria N, demanding the immediate return of the refugees.
With the Duke’s help, they negotiate to release the refugees only after they’ve scattered Edmea’s ashes as they are very near the island of Erimo. The guests gather on the deck in funeral attire and a small Italian man with absolutely bonk hair reads from the Bible in front of Edmea’s ashes.
While a gramophone plays a recording of Edmea (presumably) singing, her ashes sit atop a pillow and naturally blow into the sea. Aside from every person looking like a character rather than a real human, this is actually a very nice ceremony and if I weren’t repulsed by boat travel, I’d consider it for myself.
After the ceremony, the Serbian refugees are put on lifeboats and sent toward the war ship, as agreed. But, a Serbian refugee tosses a bomb into the battleship, causing a fire. Whoops!
Of course the battleship flips out and starts firing cannons at the Gloria N (while a bunch of people are singing opera on deck), blowing its ass up and causing it to sink. The folks on board pile onto lifeboats and continue to sing. Even the boiler room guys sing as the ship floods.
There is such a specific feeling to the perishing at sea on a luxury vessel narrative, right?? It’s a floating mansion that is extremely vulnerable to all sorts of things: weather, icebergs, war ships, apparently. They couldn’t be more out of their element, literally, in basically an unsurvivable environment and yet there’s a fantasy that they’re living in the lap of luxury. So when they succumb to nature (to me, capitalism is all about transcending nature but that’s for another dayyyy) it has a poetic feel to it. Not poetic in a romantic way, but an “oh yes . . . these two things juxtaposed make me feel something” way. Or did I just see Titanic one two many times?
We then see the set and crew of the film for a few seconds: a huge boat set rigged up on scaffolding and a sea made out of plastic.
The last shot is of our narrator, Orlando, in a lifeboat alone with the seemingly happier rhino, rowing in a plastic sea.
He asks, “Did you know that rhino milk is first class?”
THE END.
This movie was absurd, fun, and extremely watchable. It also reminded me that sometimes there are movies that I don’t enjoy as much when I know I’m writing about them here. Like with a lovesick rhino. You kind of just had to be there.
Look, I know it was only two in a row, but I am relieved to be moving out of Felliniville and back into Gilliamland. Next up is Terry Gilliam’s 1985 “black comedy dystopian science fiction film,” Brazil. Never heard of her but that sounds like a lot! Let’s go!
XOXO,
Steph
This is an awesome bit!