E la nave va
Viewed censorship: 79229 31/10/1983A liner, Gloria N., is ready to sail. We are in the port of Naples, it is July 1914. Around the pier a crowd of street urchins and street vendors, while quickly the passengers arrive to board. Also arrives the ashes of a famous singer, Edmea Tetua; it is to spread these at sea that the cruise to Erimo was organized. On board there is also a journalist, Orlando, who entertains passengers, mostly singers, conductors, admirers of Edmea. A singer wants to learn the secrets of her skill; an Italian nobleman transforms his cabin into a temple dedicated to Edmea. From the hold rises the unbearable stench of a rhinoceros, which is then hoisted on the deck and washed. Serb shipwrecks who fled after the attack in Sarajevo are picked up. Life on board comes alive, until the ashes of Edmea are scattered in the sea. A Serb launches a bomb against an Austro-Hungarian warship and this cannons the Gloria N. that sinks; even the Austro-Hungarian flagship sinks and explodes. The journalist Orlando finds himself on a lifeboat together with the rhino, which ruminates placidly.
poster – courtesy of © Webphoto & Services
Crew
Director: Federico Fellini
Subject: Federico Fellini, Tonino Guerra
Screenplay: Federico Fellini, Tonino Guerra
Lyrical texts: Andrea Zanzotto
Photography: Giuseppe Rotunno (Technicolor)
Operator: Gianni Fiore
Assistant operator: Gian Maria Majorana, Luigi Bernardini
Music: Gianfranco Plenizio (directed by the author)
Orchestra and choir: RAI Radiotelevisione italiana
Choirmaster: Ines Meisters
Teacher collaborator: Elvio Monti
Stage design: Dante Ferretti
Costumes design: Maurizio Millenotti
Costume designer assistant: Barbara Mastroianni
Choreography: Leonetta Bentivoglio
Architect: Nazzareno Piana, Massimo Razzi
Layout: Massimo Tavazzi, Francesco Lo Schiavo
Paintings and frescoes: Rinaldo Geleng, Giuliano Geleng
Painter set designer: Italo Tomassi
Sculptures: Giovanni Gianese
Effects: Adriano Pischiutta
Editing: Ruggero Mastroianni
Editing assistant: Adriana Olasio, Leda Bellini, Rosanna Landi
Assistant director: Giovanni Arduino
Assistant Director: Andrea De Carlo
Secretary of edition: Norma Giacchero
Production Director: Lucio Orlandini
Screenplay: Catherine Breillat (French crew)
Assistant director: Terry Nahon (French crew)
Production Director: George Dybman (French crew)
Production Inspector: Willy Rahau (French crew)
Adaptation of the Italian dialogues: Roberto De Leonardis
Cast
Freddie Jones as Orlando
Barbara Jefford: Ildebranda Cuffari singer
Vittorio Poletti: Aureliano Fuciletto singer
Peter Cellier as Sir Reginald Dongwy
Elisa Mainardi: Teresa Valegnani singer
Norma West: Lady Violet Dongwy
Paolo Paoloni : Master Albertini
Sara Jane Varley as Dorotea
Fiorenzo Serra: the Grand Duke of Harzock
Pina Bausch: Princess Lherimia
Pasquale Zito: the Count of Bassano
Janet Suzman as Edmea Tetua
Linda Polan as Ines Ruffo Saltini
Philip Loche: Prime Minister
Jonathan Cecil as Ricotin
Maurice Barrier: Ziloev singer
Fred Williams as Sebastiano Lepori
Elizabeth Kaza: producer
Mara Zampieri: Ildebranda Cuffari singer
Elizabet Norberg Schulxz: Ines Ruffo Saltini singer
Nucci Condò: Teresa Valegnani singer
Giovanni Bavaglio: Aureliano Fuciletto singer
Carlo Di Giacomo: Sebastiano Lepori singer
Boris Carmeli: Ziloev singer
Bernadette Lucarfini: Second Serbian soprano singer
Bruno Beccaria: Serbian tenor singer
Awards
1984
Silver Ribbon for Best Director
1983-1984
Silver ribbon for best photo
1983-1984
Silver ribbon for best scenography
1986
Silver ribbon for best costumes
Silver ribbon for best special effects
David di Donatello for Best Film
David di Donatello for Best Screenplay
David di Donatello for best photo
David di Donatello for best scenography
David Luchino Visconti Award to Federico Fellini in tribute to his career
Sant Jordi award for best foreign film
Peculiarites
“I would like to see billboards in the entrance to the cinema saying: ‘There is nothing but what you see’. Or: ‘Do not try to see what is behind, or you risk not seeing even what is in front’. [… ] The film simply tells a voyage by ship to disperse the ashes of a famous singer of the 1920s. Some friends told me that it’s a terrible movie, that it has something obscurely threatening, while I think it has its own happiness. [… ] In E la nave va I expressed, more or less sincerely, more or less artificially […] the sense of bewilderment that invades us. The fear of the worst is a state of mind or a presentiment with which we have lived for a long time and which does not seem destined to abandon us. [… ] I do not think that the rhinoceros that sails on the ‘Gloria N.’ has anything to do with the monster that appears on the beach in the finale of La Dolce Vita. A symbol is such because it cannot be explained, because it goes beyond the concept, beyond reason, because it contains irrational or mythical elements. Why am I being forced to explain this? In any case, the rhinoceros that is on the ship, if it has a meaning, this meaning must be understood in a totally opposite sense. The monster of La dolce vita was a mirror of the degeneration of the protagonist, while the rhinoceros of E la nave va could suggest an interpretation, for example, of this type: the only attempt to avoid disaster, not to fall into catastrophe, could be the one directed to recover the unconscious, deep, healthy part of ourselves. It’s in this sense that you could explain the phrase “get fed on rhino milk”. But it is always a bit clumsy explanations, as is the awkward approach of the rhinoceros to the monster of La dolce vita. A fantasy, if authentic, contains everything, and needs no explanation”.
(Fellini. Telling of me, conversations with Costanzo Costantini, Editori Riuniti, Rome, 1996, pp. 182-185)
Reviews
The sea is fake, the battleship is a silhouette, the whole film was shot in the studio. Why, then, does the audience accept? I replied that the truth of his images imposes itself on the viewer with the evidence of a dream. As in life we never have the choice of the dream, but it is the dream that chooses us, so E la nave va bussa come un sogno alla nostra porta, anzi la sforza – says Caillois – “come un visitatore impaziente e scostumato” […] Felliniano senza fellinismi, or almost; film on the music that tends to music (but the lack of Nino Rota is heard…); all placed under the sign of mourning, but serene and as gently detached; rich in many beauties, but without spectacular prevarications; alarming and here and there anguished, but also funny, cheerful, pervaded by a quiet and cautious love for life, And the ship goes is a different film: it appears as the first stage of Fellini’s third age. This diversity is also felt in the attitude towards the figures and figurines that crowd the ship, among which we must mention at least the enigmatic blind princess Pina Bausch. Fellini mutes his taste of caricature, of playful mockery, of the monstrous: there is affection but with critical detachment towards these characters and there is above all respect.
(Morando Morandini “The Day”, 7 October 1983)
Yet this is a film with many secret drawers, full of double bottoms and surprises. Easy to understand even for a child, immediately multipliable in an extreme variety of suggestions and meanings. And the ship goes is first and foremost a thing to look at because it is beautiful, overflowing with animation and colors. Then something to think about: not systematically, not in the spirit of those who seek an answer to a problem. Among the contradictions of Fellini, enemy of every form of “engagement”, there is also that of not being able to escape the moment in which he lives. And not even to the temptation of the “guru” who, after being so urged, unwillingly issues a sentence, a viaticum, something that helps to live: the image of Orlando on the same boat as the rhinoceros, like an Ishmael who pulled Moby Dick on the wreck of the ship. The Witness and the Monster, the Intelligence and the Nature in its totality: bound together on the last thing that floats, on the water, after the shipwreck of all the great ships of history, indispensable to each other, indispensable, bound forever. A film that can be faced without the hassle of super-scientists and super-engagements, just the fairy tale of which Fellini has talked so much. But also a film to be browsed image by image, back and forth, seeing and seeing it again in the unfailing expectation that the miracle of agnition will be accomplished. Because in that crowd of funny and caricatured characters, happy or threatening, there in a corner of the group photo, between a lady and an officer, between a Serb and a stoker, there are also us.
(Tullio Keich “La Repubblica”, 7 October 1983)
If La nave va wanted to be a great show, a great show is, confirming the great creative vitality of Fellini, so young to renew his language without tensions and apparent travails, following a biological and fantastic rhythm together, transients from the exuberant grotesque masks to a solar, vivid approach with the characters-symbol of his visions. The prologue, amazing, contains the key of the film, with the arrival of passengers who board the ship Gloria N; shot with the modes of the Pathé newsreels, movements uncoordinated, Veiled ladies, knights with mustaches advancing in procession with the bonnet containing the ashes of the famous opera singer Edmea Tetua that will be scattered at the end of the cruise on a Mediterranean island. Gradually the sounds emerge, and through the cuttlefish and black and white colors emerge.
(Alfio Cantelli “Il Giornale”, 7 October 1983)