Reviews of The White Sheik
Displaying all 3 reviews
Mugino
16Sep09
I’m not as well acquainted with Fellini as I’d like to be. I fell in love with “8 1/2” from the description alone, long before I ever got around to seeing it. So, I’m pretty sure that I would have no difficulty becoming an aficionado of his films, given the chance to get myself up to speed. Unfortunately, the video rental shops in my neighborhood offer only Nollywood flicks. (No offense to fans of the genre, but “My Private Part” and “Royal Tears” aren’t at the top of my watchlist. Though “Antichrist Babies” did look interesting…)
Thus, it was with great pleasure that I got to see “The White Sheik” at a special screening at the Toronto Film Fest, presented and discussed by director Neil Jordan (who is brilliant in his own right).
The film instantly reminded me of the farcical/satirical aspects of Max Ophuls’ work — not mean-spirited, but not without its tiny barbs of truth hidden within scenes of simplicity or comedy. I heard that the light-heartedness didn’t persist beyond Fellini’s first few films, with his later work taking more audacious flights of fantasy/creative freedom. Jordan chose this film for the talk because in a first film “sometimes you can see the hints of what would come later bursting through like an eruption from another film entirely”. There are scenes that I am sure will stick with me for the rest of my life, like the circus-like photo shoot on the beach and the scene in which the newlyweds are sobbing like wayward children, unable to speak.
I don’t know if Fellini would have achieved success if he began his career today, but I have tremendous gratitude for the fans and cinephiles who keep these kinds of works alive.
- Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
carobabbo
20Mar09
It is I believe a subtle critique of the fascination that Mussolini had for Italians. Fellini understood that the politics of Fascism had a Romantic tinge, but was horribly small and mean at its heart like the character played by Sordi. The feminine character Wanda is of course Italy betrayed by the Boss; she has a modern name thus a metaphor for the kind of modernita pushed by the Fascists. There is also the hapless husband who represents Fellini and his own bewildered involvement with fascism as a passer-by, witness, critic, dupe etc. The shot of Sordi on the swing a feminine/masculine figure is a powerful and hilarious metaphor for the whole fascist era with its fancy dress and crude brutality. Very underrated!!
asuraf
1Dec08
Federico Fellini’s first credit as a solo director is a fine mixture of familiar Italian genres, from slapstick and soap opera fantasy, to sexual farce and neo-realism, playing with cliches and conventions at the beat of his own slightly surreal, impeccably timed pace. Leopoldo Trieste plays a harried groom, taking his lovely young bride home to Rome to meet his family on a perfectly calculated timetable, but the girl, wonderfully played by Brunella Bovo (“Miracle in Milan”), inadvertently gets whisked away by a troupe of photo-novella actors in Arabic dress when she tries to meet her fantasy hero, the White Sheik (Alberto Sordi), causing much confusion and disruption for the exasperated groom. What we get is Fellini taking a standard trope, the country newlyweds lost in a haze of fantasy and reality in the big city, and turns it into an equally devastating portrait of dashed hopes (his about his innocent wife, hers about the purity of illusion), miscommunication, and reconciliation, as the decidedly un-cynical finale proves. Fellini would expand on the differences between reality, fantasy, and human relationships for the rest of his career, venturing further and further into the realm of self reflexive surrealism; “The White Sheik” doesn’t quite live up to “La Strada” or “8 ½”, but it doesn’t have to, judged on its own merits, with terrific lead performances from Trieste, Bovo, and Sordi, and Fellini’s growing confidence as writer and director, it’s a debut worthy of any great artist.
- Currently 3.0/5 Stars.