It’s a conundrum: this late in Criterion’s Essential Fellini box set, I didn’t expect to find a film I’d like as much as And the Ship Sails On – but at the same time, I ended up finding it more frustrating than many of the films I liked considerably less. There is a lot I love about And the Ship Sails On – but it feels like by the time Fellini made it, he had mellowed with age, and in this case I wish he hadn’t. The film is too loving and mild as satire, when the themes it addresses would have required a sharper sensitivity, one that isn’t averse to drawing blood… and this shortcoming is much more obvious in 2025 than in 1983.

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