Cinema
Going down
Peter Ackroyd
And the Ship Sails On
('PG', Academy One, Oxford Street) The cinema screen is Frederico Fellini's nursery, and in his films various fluffy toys or clockwork machines are thrown about in order to annoy nurse; on some oc- casions he will examine the private parts of his playmates (the actors) in a way that adults might consider naughty, and on others he will throw a screaming fit although, alas, there is never anyone to slap him.
And the Ship Sails On is one of his worst practical jokes to date. It begins well, however: by a dock-side in 1914, just as a liner is about to sail, some scenes are caught on silent film. We know at once that Fellini is behind the camera, even if the trails of smoke and slightly theatrical crowd-scenes suggest that D. W. Griffiths has been remade by Vidal Sassoon. At this point, sound and colour suffuse the picture, em- phasising at once the virtues of the silent cinema. Fellini can visualise scenes, general- ly in terms of monumental tableaux, but he cannot animate them in a convincing man- ner.
The plot of this film, such as it is, con- cerns a group of operatic stars sailing on board the Gloria (quite mistakenly named) in order to scatter the ashes of a famous diva off the coast of her favourite island. These men and women are said to represent 'the crest, the glory, the utmost in all the arts', so we know they are about to have a rough voyage. Freddie Jones, who plays a journalist, speaks to camera in order to ex- plain what is happening; it is an old trick, but there are older ones to come. For this is essentially another Ship of Fools, amongst whom are some Serbian refugees symbolis- ing the masses, and as such is a rather slow- moving vehicle for a number of random events: an impresario shows signs of foot fetishism, a comedian in the style of Stan Laurel ogles the sailors, and a plump Arch- Duke plays chess with his blind sister. The absurdity is taken to relentless lengths when The Spectator 28 April 1984 a sick rhinoceros is lifted from the cargo hold — although it might just as well have been lifted from lonesco. There is no doubt some kind of point to all all — perhaps the narrative is designed W it luminate the role of 'high culture' in a disintegrating world, or it may be an allegory of the state of the upper 1“,-"'rldil,e class just before the Great War; sn,_e" scenarios offer opportunities for only, the crudest satire, however, opportunities which Fellini is not slow to exploit. The nearest he comes to social comment, for ex- ample, is to have the Serbian refugees Press their faces against the window of the ship ,„'s restaurant. Of course Fellini always works close to parody, no doubt because the, febrile lushness of his imagination is alviLY; on the point of itself seeming ridiculous, u", this is altogether too self-conscious an therefore clumsy an exercise. There are not as many grotesques as we have become accustomed to in his rilIns but,, even if the dwarves and elephantine women have been banished on this oeen: sion, all of the protagonists are nevertheles; reduced to caricatures of effeminacY, lustne'; stupidity. And since they are simplY Prn_„,r-; contrived by Fellini with the saran spending a fortune on sound equiPiw-,4 he invests in mechanical deliberation which his artificial seas and skies, the idea of ac' ting ceases to be important. For this direr tor, the cinema is entirely a form of sPee' tacle and if the actors are not vistrallY,111;; teresting they are not important; tue'e unhappy situation is not improved by s°111of appalling dubbing. What is the Pcd112,„„t, when the finished product has all the Po"' e of aa sgtruoduiop basseemmbenletd? round a micrOhnn in This is an 'asItalo-French co-production's and it does have that air of hollow costume drama which seems characteristic of trrs cheaper end of European culture. Fail° d certainly more interested in costumes 31.10r sets than in anything else; he is an inte.flee designer rather than a director and, since his imagination seems to revolve sloWlY,,at the twilight of romanticism, he ensures "10f everything is turned into a form he melodrama. The 'surrealism' for whicnthe has been praised in the past (henceture rhinoceros) is no more than a cheap ges ntic in the same direction, being a melod A version of that which was once con: to be avant-garde. The literary tricks -Tar, speak, I narrate, but just what am I n How or why Fellini became so tawdrY.i_s.,9t rating?' — are also tedious. Italian cinema in the last 20 years; riavi, matter of interest only to his adm as there are no doubt those who are,. u,be cerned to define the decadence or like play Italian fashion, it seems fit only to rhs.cies. within the pages of glossy rnagazi h
thong
r I scale; working on a grand and colonral rfects the problem is, however, that such eL by are now engineered much bett_er_orge young American directors such as LiC
irn cols, Lucas and Steven Spielberg. The fi
that Fellini is always at his best when It is perhaps significant, of course, when Fellini and his crew are shown filming the entire spectacle — thus Only confirming what a waste of time, ,inoney and equipment the enterprise has been.
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