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.