The Rime of the Ancient Mariner of mist and snow"; the south wind that had initially led them from the land of ice now sends the ship into uncharted waters near the equator, where it is becalmed. The sailors change their minds again and blame the mariner for the torment of their thirst. In anger, the crew forces the mariner to wear the dead albatross about his neck, perhaps to illustrate the burden he must suffer from killing it, or perhaps as a sign of regret: Eventually, the ship encounters a ghostly hulk. On board are Death (a skeleton) and the "Night-mare Life-in-Death", a deathly-pale woman,
Three Crowns of the Sailor cinematic works that Ruiz is drawing on in the film: from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798), Erich Maria Remarque's "The Night in Lisbon" (1962) and the writings of Hans Christian Andersen, Robert Louis Stevenson, Selma Lagerlöf, Karen Blixen, Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar to the Orson Welles films "The Lady from Shanghai" (1947), "Mr. Arkadin" (1955) and "The Immortal Story" (1968). Although "Three Crowns" has become one of Ruiz's best-known works and is regarded as one of his most accessible films, when it was screened at the Cannes Film Festival it had a high