The Whie Sheik (Lo sceicco bianco). 1952. Directed by Federico Fellini.

(7/22/00)

Fellini's first film as solo director is a delightful comedy which sustains its pace from start to finish. I found it more immediately enjoyable than 8-1/2. It's really a fun picture.

A young couple come to Rome for their honeymoon. The wife sneaks off for what she believes will be a very short meeting with her hero from the fumetti (photographed comic strips)--the Whit Sheik. However, circumstances dictate that her absence is not so brief and she is swept away by circumstances and finds herself going out on location. And no way to communicate with her husband who had scheduled a day with important relatives (his uncle works in the Vatican). During the day the White Sheik reveals himself to be a sham and the poor girl, disillusioned, realizes that her husband is really her White Sheik as they are finally reunited--just in time to head in for an audience with the pope.

They are like two babes in the woods. The film keeps switching from the wife's adventures to the husband's desperate attempts to keep the relatives from finding out what has happened.

One delightful moment is when the Sheik, who has managed to get the wife out in a boat with him, tries to seduce her. He tells her a ridiculous story about how he really loved another woman, but his wife put a spell on him. Subsequently confronted by the Sheik's irate wife, the young bride tells her off, repeating the story. She completely believes it.

The Sheik's wife is a wonderful portrait (or caricature) of a dominating Italian matriarch. Giulietta Masina is also wonderful in that brief scene where the husband meets the prostitute Cabiria. That's a bizarre scene in which Cabiria gets a man to sort of breathe fire.

A couple of moments which I remember fondly from seeing this film in the past didn't quite have the same impact: the Sheik's first appearance on a swing mounted high up between two trees and the scene where the bride attempts to drown herself in a canal or something. She does it with all the expected Italian melodrama and then the water only comes up around her ankles.