#0000C/#189: FELLINI, Federico: The White Sheik (1952)

FELLINI, Federico (Italy)

The White Sheik [1952]

Spine #0000C/#189

DVD (OOP) / Blu-ray

2003 synopsis

Ivan Cavalli (Leopoldo Trieste) brings his new wife Wanda (Brunella Bovo) to Rome on the least romantic honeymoon in history — a rigid schedule of family meetings and audiences with the Pope. But Wanda, dreaming of the dashing hero of a photo-strip cartoon, drifts off in search of the White Sheik (Alberto Sordi), setting off a slapstick comedy worthy of Charlie Chaplin. The themes and style that would make Federico Fellini world famous can be found in this charming comedy. Fellini's first solo directorial effort also features such long-time collaborators as his wife, the actress Giulietta Masina and composer Nina Rota.

2020 synopsis

Federico Fellini drew upon his background as a cartoonist for his first solo feature, a charming comic fable about the lure of fantasy and the pitfalls of temptation. In Rome for her honeymoon, a wide-eyed newlywed (Brunella Bovo) sneaks away from her straitlaced groom (Leopoldo Trieste) and goes in search of the White Sheik (Alberto Sordi), the dashing hero of a photographed comic strip of which she is enamored — but soon discovers that her romantic ideal may be only an illusion. Featuring a memorable appearance by Giulietta Masina (playing the character she would reprise in Nights of Cabiria) and Fellini’s first collaboration with composer Nino Rota, The White Sheik finds the director already taking up one of his favorite themes: the alchemical interplay between life and art, imagination and realty.

86 minutes
Black & White

Monaural

in Italian

1:33:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2003/2020

Director/Writers

From an idea by Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, and Tullio Pinelli.

With the collaboration of Ennio Flaiano.

Screenplay by Fellini and Pinelli.

Fellini was 32 when he directed The White Sheik.

Other Fellini films in the Collection:

#0000C/#246: I Viteloni (1953)
#0000C/#219: La Strada (1954)
#0000C: Il Bidone (1955)
#0000C/#49: Nights Of Cabiria (1957)
#0000C/#733: La Dolce Vita (1960)
#0000C/#140: 8½ (1963)
#0000C/#149: Juliet Of The Spirits (1965)
#0000C/#747: Fellini Satyricon (1969)
#0000C/#848: Roma (1972)
#0000C/#4: Amarcord (1973)
#0000C/#50: And The Ship Sails On (1983)
#0000C: Intervista (1987)

The Film

“Rome,” exclaims Ivan (Leopoldo Trieste) as he and his new wife, Wanda (Brunella Bovo), arrive by train.

It might very well have been the provincial Fellini’s first utterance upon his first visit to the city. Steeped in the tradition of comics, and the fotoromanzi which make up the film’s plot, Fellini had the good sense to make a film about something he knew best.

The scenes at the beach with the director (Ernesto Almirante) always on the verge of a nervous breakdown probably resonated with Fellini, who directed his own films with that sort of disaster-just-around-the-corner demeanor.

When we first see Fernando (Alberto Sordi) swinging from an impossible height and then <cut> casually jumping off, we know we are in a delightful fantasy. The “filming” of the photo-romance prefigures 8½ with its film-within-a-film concept.

The payoff comes in the final shot, with no need for dialogue — the actors’ faces tell all.

Fellini’s wife (Giulietta Masina) makes her first appearance as the prostitute, Cabiria. Five years in the future, he will write her a fully-fleshed out role for the character in Nights of Cabiria (1957).

Film Rating (0-60):

55

The Extras

The Booklets

#0000C only: Eighty-two page booklet featuring an essay by David Forgacs.

“Fellini’s first feature as sole director had its origins in.a twenty-four-page film treatment by Antonioni in which a man named Ivan goes to Rome and gets to star in a photo-romance, while the girlfriend he has left back hoe fears he has jilted her for his costar. Antonioni had already made a short documentary L’amorosa menzogna (Lies of Love, 1949), about fotoromanzi, a genre that had originated in Italy in 1947. These stories were like soap operas but told in staged photographs laid out in panels, as in comic strips with the characters’ words in speech bubbles. Around two-thirds of Italy’s fotoromanzo readers were women, mainly young and working class or lower-middle-class.”

154-page booklet featuring an introduction by Bilge Ebiri and essays by Michael Almereyda (Primary Sources); Colm Tóibin (Imagined Homes); Carol Morley (Life on Earth); Stephanie Zacharek (Tough Love); and Kogonada (There is No End).

Ebiri:

“The young newlywed Wanda, obsessed with the title hero of a fotoromanzo, finds herself pulled into a photo shoot to play a harem girl alongside her idol. The film is an early example of Fellini’s fascination with show business — this is a man whose fondest childhood memory, after all, was the day he spent attempting to run away with the circus — but The White Sheik wouldn’t be so touching were it not for its other story strand: that of Wanda’s meek, petit bourgeois husband, Ivan, unsure of his wife’s whereabouts, struggling to keep up appearances with his conservative family by lying about her absence and pretending to call her on the telephone.”

#189 only: Eight-page wraparound featuring an essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum and an excerpt from Charlotte Chandler’s biography, I, Fellini.

Rosenbaum:

“An equal opportunity satirist, Fellini spends a lot of time with both characters, but it should be stressed that he also shows an equal amount of empathy with their separate delusions and humiliations. One might even say that the film’s greatness stems from the degree to which he recognizes and shares these two characters’ pain without ever losing sight of their naivetê. As Wanda puts it at one grief-stricken moment, dictating a message for Ivan on the phone to a hapless hotel desk clerk, ‘Our real life is in our dreams, but sometimes dreams are a fatal abyss.’”

Fellini via Chandler:

“An image that remains fixed in my mind from my early days in Rome is that of being interrogated by a figure of authority. It was one of the many attempts to induct me into military service during World War II. I was asked questions by a man in uniform, and as I answered, a secretary beside him would rapidly type ot what I said on a big noisy typewriter. It sounded like machine-gun fire. I felt as if my words were being put up before a firing squad and executed almost before I could get them out. That image inspired the scene in the police station where Ivan goes to find out about missing persons without revealing that his wife is among them. His reaction, that of feeling persecuted by uniformed figures once he has exposed himself to their authority was exactly mine. I gave it to Ivan.”

Commentary

None.

#0000C and #189:

Video interviews

With actors Bovo, Trieste, and Fellini friend and collaborator Moraldo Rossi.

Great to hear the stories about how Bovo and Trieste met and worked with Fellini. For example, Trieste talks about how Fellini was always ready to discard the dialogue and reduce a scene to a “concert of moans,” like when Ivan and Wanda are finally reunited in the psychiatric hospital …

Rossi explains how Fellini — though greatly inspired by the photo-plays he was bringing to the screen — wanted the narrative function of the film to be prominent and understood.

#0000C only:

Archival audio interviews

Of Fellini and his friends and family, conducted by critic Gideon Bachmann.

1. Criterion describes Bachmann as a “friend and intellectual sparring partner” with Fellini. However, his questions and Fellini’s responses — sometimes in English, sometimes in Italian — prove nothing more or less than that a great artist cannot describe his art in words. As Bachmann tries to pry the filmmaker into psychological depths of nonsense, it is obvious that Fellini has no real response.

The interview is covered visually by posters of his films in many languages. That is pleasant.

2. Much more interesting. An hour with family and friends:

• His mother, Ida Barbiani Fellini (1896-1984). When Federico was 10 or 11, he got into puppets, making their clothes, putting on shows.
• His sister, Maddalena.
• His friend, Luigi “Titta” Benzi. They shared a desk at school and hung out. Federico would play the guitar while Titta did his homework at the Fellini’s — which was cooler than his own home.
• Mario Montanari. Along with Benzi and Fellini, they were “The Trio,” and Mario recounts their petty crimes (stealing chickens) and teenage exploits. They were looking forward to spending their college years together, but Fellini broke up the group when he left for Rome in 1939.
• Bianca Mercatali (née Soriano). Fellini’s first girlfriend — He was 16, she was 14!
• “My husband said not to give my full name.”
• She obviously consented at some point. She admits that they kissed. But by the end of the interview, her final words are:
• What else can I tell you? Some things are too delicate and mustn’t be said. They have to remain secret. They just can’t be shared.”

Extras Rating (0-40):

34

55 + 34 =

89

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