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Saturday, September 28, 2024 |
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'The White Sheik': Fellini's charming farce about fandom |
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Alberto Sordi, Brunella Bovo in The White Sheik
by J. Hoberman
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NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- The White Sheik, which had its premiere in 1952, was Federico Fellinis first solo feature, and the essence of his style is present from the moment when a tattered canvas canopy appears on an empty beach, accompanied by Nino Rotas brassy carnivalesque score.
At Film Forum through Jan. 7 in a new 4K restoration, The White Sheik is not only the first but also in some respects the most charming, least overweening film Fellini ever made a comic fable of mass-produced fantasy and fanatical devotion.
Two wide-eyed newlyweds arrive in Rome from the provinces. Impossibly officious, Ivan (Leopoldo Trieste) plans a timetable for their activities, which include the consummation of their marriage. Timorous yet determined, his bride, Wanda (a teenage Brunella Bovo), has another obsession. She is addicted to fumetti (photo-illustrated comic books), with a special crush on the character called the White Sheik (the splendidly conceited Alberto Sordi in his first major role).
Ivan takes a nap. Wanda, who has been writing to the Sheik as Bamba Appassionata (Passionate Doll), sneaks off to the publications office in search of what she calls her real life. Albeit patronizing, the fumetti writers regard her as an oracle; she finds herself on the seaside set of the Sheiks latest exotic adventure, swept up amid the cast and crew. (Production is the opposite of silent cinema. When the director calls action, the players freeze.)
Given a bit part as a harem girl, Wanda lives out her fantasy. So does the self-regarding Sheik (a plump former barber). Still in costume, he takes his devoted fan to an outdoor cafe where, recognized by the patrons and throwing caution to the wind, he sweeps her into a slow tango, whistling seductively in her ear.
Back in Rome, Ivan is engaged in his own subterfuge covering up Wandas absence to his proper relations. The White Sheik is full of parallelisms. At various times both Ivan and Wanda are considered to be crazy. Ivan is as concerned with outward appearances as Wanda is inwardly directed. His desire for an audience with the pope rhymes with hers to meet her idol. The performers lunch on the beach, while Ivan dines in a restaurant with his bourgeois family. Fellini cuts from the Sheiks failed seduction to enthusiastic applause in the opera house where Ivan attends a performance of Don Giovanni.
The White Sheik did poorly in Italy, though it was better received a few years later in New York. By then, Fellinis reputation preceded him. Writing in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther found the movie surprisingly broad and ingenuous, in the manner of early silent comedies, identifying Sordi as a student of the Mack Sennett school.
Integrating aspects of fantasy into a documentary backdrop, The White Sheik is an example of what would be called rosy neorealism. Several of these films, among them Viscontis Bellissima and Antonionis The Lady Without Camelias (both made in the early 50s) similarly concerned the entertainment industry and, as in The White Sheik, had actors playing actors. Fellini pushes this strategy the furthest. The hapless Sheiks row with his harridan wife becomes an entertaining show for the productions cast and crew. Rome itself is inhabited by performers. A vivacious prostitute (the adorable Giulietta Masina, Fellinis wife) shows up and cuts a few capers in an empty piazza in effect providing a trailer for the directors later Nights of Cabiria, in which she would appear as the same character.
The White Sheik anticipated or inspired a number of later Hollywood comedies, including Gene Wilders The Worlds Greatest Lover, Neil LaButes Nurse Betty and especially Woody Allens The Purple Rose of Cairo. But farcical as it is, The White Sheik has a serious interest in fandoms quasi-religious pathology. The movies spiritual twin is Billy Wilders Sunset Boulevard, made two years earlier and similarly self-reflexive in pondering the effect of the so-called dream factory.
Its not simply that both reference silent cinema and the original Sheik, Rudolph Valentino. The White Sheik is Sunset Boulevard in reverse. When the delusional former movie queen Norma Desmond imagines her fans, those wonderful people out there in the dark, she is invoking star-struck Wanda. Whose fantasy is more potent?
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