The White Sheik (1952)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The White Sheik (1952) – F. Fellini

Fellini’s first film is a comic fantasy that already shows signs of his penchant for unusual faces and detours from reality.  A newlywed couple travels from the provinces to Rome for their honeymoon, but unbeknownst to the husband (Leopoldo Trieste), his young wife (Brunella Bovo) has been writing to the photoplay magazine star, The White Sheik (played by Alberto Sordi), and immediately escapes to seek a meeting with her fangirl crush.  Of course, he turns out to be much less than imagined, although she is swept off her feet at first onto a photography set 26 km from Rome from whence it proves difficult to return.  At the same time, the husband has to make excuses to his uncle and aunt and extended family who had planned to take them to visit the Pope among other destinations. Trieste’s eyes bulge and he sweats profusely as he struggles to keep this secret under wraps.  Giulietta Masina has a cameo as Cabiria, a sympathetic prostitute (a character she would later play to acclaim in Nights of Cabiria, 1957).  The whole thing is short and sweet, funny and impossible without Nino Rota’s distinctive score (a definite preview of his later work with Fellini).  A great start to a masterful career.