Federico Fellini

And the Ship Sails On

And the Ship Sails On

In this late-career highlight from Federico Fellini, the ringmaster-auteur trades his customary spectacles—the cinema, the circus, and the variety-show stage—for that of the opera, in a quirky, imaginative fable set on the high seas. A motley crew of European aristocrats (and a lovesick rhinoceros!) board a luxurious ocean liner on the eve of World War I to scatter the ashes of a beloved diva, only to sail into the headwinds of history when they cross paths with a group of Serbian refugees and an Austro-Hungarian warship. Fabricated entirely in Rome’s famed Cinecittà studios with the help of production designer Dante Ferretti, And the Ship Sails On reaches spectacular new visual heights with its stylized re-creation of a decadent, bygone era.

Film Info

  • Italy
  • 1983
  • 128 minutes
  • Black and White/Color
  • 1.85:1
  • Italian
  • Spine #50

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation

Cover by Cynthia Eddy

Purchase Options

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

Essential Fellini

Essential Fellini

Blu-ray Box Set

15 Discs

$199.96

Special Features

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation

Cover by Cynthia Eddy

And the Ship Sails On
Cast
Freddie Jones
Orlando
Barbara Jefford
Ildebranda Cuffari
Victor Poletti
Aureliano Fuciletto
Peter Cellier
Sir Reginald Dongby
Elisa Mainardi
Teresa Valegnani
Norma West
Lady Violet Dongby
Paolo Paoloni
Maestro Albertini
Sarah Jane Varley
Dorotea
Credits
Director
Federico Fellini
Producer
Franco Cristaldi
Screenplay
Federico Fellini
Screenplay
Tonino Guerra
Opera texts
Andrea Zanzotto
Cinematography
Giuseppe Rotunno
Production design
Dante Ferretti
Costumes
Maurizio Millenotti
Music
Gianfranco Plenizio
Editing
Ruggero Mastroianni

Current

And the Ship Sails On
And the Ship Sails On
In And the Ship Sails On, I needed a large exterior to paint, so I used the wall of the Pantanella pasta factory. It was where my father, Urbano Fellini, had worked when he passed through Rome on his way back from forced labor in Belgium after World …

By Federico Fellini

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Federico Fellini

Writer, Director

Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini

One of Italy’s great modern directors, Federico Fellini was a larger-than-life maestro who created an inimitable cinematic style combining surreal carnival with incisive social critique. While his most popular—and accessible—film, the darkly nostalgic childhood memoir Amarcord, is a great entryway into his oeuvre, , a collage of memories, dreams, and fantasies about a director’s artistic crisis, is perhaps his masterpiece. In his early career, Fellini was both a screenwriter for neorealist pioneer Roberto Rossellini and a newspaper caricaturist in postwar Rome, competing influences he would bring together with startling results. After such early works as I vitelloni, Fellini broke away from neorealism’s political strictures with the beloved La strada, and from there boldly explored his obsessions with the circus, societal decadence, spiritual redemption, and, most controversially, women, in such films as Nights of Cabiria, Juliet of the Spirits, and And the Ship Sails On.