| The White Sheik | |
|---|---|
Italian release poster |
|
| Directed by | Federico Fellini |
| Produced by | Luigi Rovere |
| Written by | Screenplay: Federico Fellini Tullio Pinelli Ennio Flaiano Story: Federico Fellini Tullio Pinelli Michelangelo Antonioni |
| Starring | Alberto Sordi Brunella Bovo Leopoldo Trieste Giulietta Masina Lilia Landi |
| Release date(s) | 6 September 1952 (premiere at VFF) September 20, 1952 25 April 1956 |
| Running time | 83 mins |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
The White Sheik (Italian: Lo sceicco bianco) is a 1952 film by Federico Fellini starring Leopoldo Trieste, Alberto Sordi, and Brunella Bovo.
Contents |
Two young newlyweds from a provincial town, Wanda (Brunella Bovo) and Ivan Cavalli (Leopoldo Trieste), arrive in Rome for their honeymoon. Wanda is obsessed with the "White Sheik" (Alberto Sordi), the hero of a soap opera photo strip and sneaks off to find him, leaving her conventional, petit bourgeois husband in hysterics as he tries to hide his wife's disappearance from his strait-laced relatives who are waiting to go with them to visit the Pope.
The White Sheik was Fellini's first solo effort as a director. He had previously co-directed Variety Lights in 1950 with Alberto Lattuada.
Originally the treatment for The White Sheik was written by Michelangelo Antonioni. Carlo Ponti commissioned Fellini and Tullio Pinelli to develop the treatment. It was satirical in nature, targeting the trashy fotoromanzi comic strips that were extremely popular in Italy when the film was made.
The male lead, Leopoldo Trieste, a playwright who did not consider himself an actor, reluctantly auditioned for Fellini. During the audition Fellini asked him to compose a sonnet that the lead character would have written to his wife. The poem which begins "She is graceful, sweet and teeny..." was included in the film.
Appearing briefly as the prostitute Cabiria, Giulietta Masina would later return to this role in Nights of Cabiria. Her short scene inspired Fellini to write the screenplay and also convinced producers that Giulietta was ready for the leading role.
Italian film critic Giulio Cesare Castello, writing for Cinema V, argued that Fellini's past as a successful gag writer made him a natural choice as the film's director: "Fellini was undoubtedly the best qualified and for two reasons: firstly, his experience as a gag writer and consequently his familiarity with the secrets and intrigues of the world he was about to bring to the screen; secondly, his gift for sarcastic comment and delight in satirizing tradition... The result is unusual and stimulating but derives more from the failure to establish a basic mood or tone rather than from any direct intention. Fellini should find this tone in future works if he is to avoid the discontinuity we found here." [1]
Nino Rota scored the film.