Fellini’s First 8½: The White Sheik

Note: this is part of a series which began here.

My wife and I have this huge disagreement over Fellini. She thinks he’s an over-the-top hack who’s never met a plot he liked. She’s seen pictures of painted dwarves, overweight, dancing whores, and strange conga-lines snaking about under a patently fake, Italian moon. In other words, she’s seen the Felliniesque, and thinks that that’s all there is. By contrast, my first Fellini was Amarcord, which is pretty light in the plot department, but has the grotesque dialed way down.

I keep trying to get her to watch some early Federico, on the assumption that their more neo-realist leanings might change her mind; for this, The White Sheik would seem to be the perfect vehicle. Like Variety Lights two years before, Fellini’s second outing as director is neo-realist in style but in subject matter, not so much. The plot centers on newlyweds Ivan and Wanda Cavalli, come to Rome for their honeymoon. Only problem is, each seems to have a different idea about what makes for a good time. For Ivan (Leopoldo Trieste), it’s a rigid schedule of family meetings and sightseeing, culminating in an audience with the Pope himself. He’s an overbearing type, overly-puffed-up in the manner of small-town bureaucrats everywhere, and he’s got everything timed to a “T.” When Wanda expresses her desire for a hot bath, he checks his watch fastidiously before declaring “Yes, yes my wife may have a bath,” as if he’s the most magnanimous husband on earth to find the time.

Is it any wonder that Wanda (Brunella Bovo) is champing at the bit? But she’s got a secret, something literally up her sleeve, and she uses the bath as an excuse to slip out. Seems she’s become infatuated with “The White Sheik”, the two-bit star of fotoromanzi (photo-illustrated comics), and she’s determined to see him while she’s in town.

Thus the set-up for what becomes a delicious slapstick comedy, as Wanda through a series of mishaps, Wanda is hauled out of town with the fotoromanzi crew and meets up with the White Sheik (Alberto Sordi) himself. Meanwhile, Ivan becomes increasingly distraught, and his efforts to hide her absence from his stern family become increasingly frantic.

It was a precept of the Italian neo-realist credo to deal exclusively with social-justice issues; The White Sheik subverts that with a story about fotoromanzi crew and country-folk in the big city. In one telling scene, we see the crew on the beach, all decked out in Arab drag, and at first it looks like any other film crew, with an overbearing director and actress divas. The minute shooting starts, we hear the click of cameras and see the struck poses, and we realize that far from being glamorous, these folks are on the bottom rung of the entertainment ladder.

The use of Neo-realism’s stark style and realistic settings in the service of farce and social satire undermines our expectations of genre, and make the appearance of surreal touches stand out all the more. When Wanda locates the sheik in the coastal woodlands, we see him first, on an absurdly high swing strung between two trees. In the fotoromanzi crew, a camel and horse eat lunch right alongside it’s motley human contingent. As Ivan wanders Rome’s nighttime streets, he runs across a prostitute–Giulietta Masina as Cabiria, a role she’ll reprise four years later in Nights of Cabiria–who tries to cheer him up with a fire-breather who just happens to be hanging around. This last is reminiscent of Variety Lights, and its nocturnal underground of broken-down theater folk.

As Ivan, Trieste is the picture of pop-eyed panic. Much of the comedy derives from the erosion of his pompous dignity as his attempts to cover up his wife’s absence grow ever-more baroque. In one scene, he is at lunch with his oh-so-proper relatives, and they ask him to recite a sonnet he’s composed for his wife. His eyes dart around like a trapped rat’s; it’s painfully clear that the last thing he wants to do is recite a love-poem for his wayward spouse. The sonnet, when it finally arrives, is the model of bumpkin-chic: “She is graceful, sweet and teeny…”

As the object of his ardor, Brunella Bovo is all wide-eyed and naive, and seems unable to tell fantasy from reality. But who can blame her if she seeks escape from the pedantic bore she has married? We can only imagine how small her small-town existence really is, how constrained she must feel as her future unfolds, all mapped out and tied-up in a neat Ivan bow. As her dreams crumble, as the White Sheik (Alberto Sordi) turns out to be just another henpecked buffoon, we are treated to real pathos and despair. At her lowest point, she attempts suicide by jumping into a river, while in a nice Fellini touch even the angels turn their backs. Alas, she cannot even do that — she ends up sprawled in the mud along with her dreams.

It would be easy to treat these characters with contempt, and most contemporary satirists would, steeped as they are in post-modern irony and disdain. I can only imagine how the Coens would treat the Cavallis, how the Ferellys would savage the Sheik. Fellini has another agenda–as devastated as they get, and as clear-eyed as Fellini sees their faults, he identifies with them. They are treated with a respect and affection that as human beings they only deserve.

And it’s this humanist vision that I admire about him in the end. No matter how baroque the subject matter, how twisted his vision, he genuinely likes the people he portrays. He can see humanity in all its squalor, in all its pain, and still empathize, still sympathize.

Now if I can just get my wife to agree.

(you can read my wife’s poetry here; next week: I Vitelloni)