‘The White Sheik’ or — Entering the ‘Loveworld’ of the Icons?
Provincial newlyweds, Wanda (Brunella Bovo) and Ivan Cavalli (Leopoldo Trieste), arrive in Rome for their honeymoon so Ivan can introduce his new bride to his well-heeled relatives. Not only that but through his family’s connections at the Vatican they also have the honour of an audience with the Pope!
However, Wanda is less interested in meeting her husband’s family or the supreme pontiff and far more keen on bumping into Fernando Rivoli (Alberto Sordi), the famous White Sheik from the fotoromanzi (photo novels) she voraciously devours. So, while her husband takes a nap, Wanda slips off to visit the publishers of The White Sheik to deliver a portrait she’s drawn of her idol and to pitch a few story ideas of her own, although when she’s mistaken for a member of the cast of harem girls for the latest shoot it’s not long until she finds herself on a beach miles outside Rome with no means of returning to her hotel while her husband, on finding his wife missing, assumes she’s run off with another man so desperately attempts to keep this fact hidden from his relatives until he can figure out just what the hell’s happened to her.
‘The White Sheik’ (1952) is a funny, sometimes very funny, tale of two people trying to find one another and the various obstacles they encounter along the way: for Ivan it’s running himself ragged deceiving his family as well as searching for his wife; for Wanda it’s fending off the advances of the overly amorous White Sheik who, despite his charm, exotic garb and flattering words, is in reality a predatory lech with a wife. Fellini heightens all this mayhem and confusion by pulling aside the curtain of constructed fantasy to reveal the chaotic “reality” lurking behind as well as commenting on the collusion between the dream factories of escape and those of us who consume these illusions.
And it should be noted that these fotoromanzi novels, usually inspired by the erotic Arabian adventures of Rudolph Valentino, were extraordinarily popular in Italy at the time, especially with young women, and Fellini, along with writers Tullio Pinelli and Michelangelo Antonioni (hang on — Antonioni could be FUNNY?!), do a slyly mischievous job of paralleling the still tableaus of lustful desert adventure with those of religious iconography as it’s not just Wanda who’s passionately desiring to meet her unreachable idol but also Ivan, only in his case his ‘White Sheik’ happens to live in the Vatican where this world of religion is just as male dominated and filled with sexual hypocrisy as the set of any photo shoot (notice how it’s implied that Ivan has slept with a prostitute during their separation yet it is Wanda’s virginity that must remain intact).
This was Fellini’s first film as a solo credited director and it’s one already packed with various Fellini-isms: impossibly high swings in the trees; elaborate moving shots of Roman landmarks; Giulietta Masina appearing as Cabiria and all this driven forward by an almost constant Nino Rota score. Then there’s the ‘meta’ nature of it all with the film frequently commenting on itself even if it’s in a not too subtle way, such as when Sordi whacks accidentally himself on the back of his head in a boat only for Fellini to then hard-cut to an opera audience bursting into rapturous applause or when the word “teeny” is rhymed with “fettuccine”.
Although the film’s funniest moment is also its most touching when Wanda and Ivan are finally reunited but they’re both so overcome with overwhelming emotion they can only communicate to each other through inarticulate sobs. Although this bittersweet scene also contains a streak of cruelty that could often appear in Fellini’s work, as though he is mocking this poor, petit bourgeois couple for their lack of refined sophistication.
Still, ‘The White Sheik’ is a fun movie that’s beautifully shot and with a few stinging barbs hidden within its flowing robes, yet as the years go by the more I find other Italian directors more appealing and interesting than the great “maestro” himself, possibly because with Monicelli, Germi, Risi, Comencini and Scola, etc there’s the sensation of a reaching out beyond one’s self, of connecting with an external world rather than obsessively filming the inside of their own cavernous egos.
