The White Sheik - Criterion Collection

The White Sheik - Criterion Collection
by Federico Fellini

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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Alberto Sordi, Brunella Bovo, Giulietta Masina, Leopoldo Trieste, Lilia Landi
Director: Federico Fellini
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Italian (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 86 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-04-29
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Home Vision Entertainment

Movie Reviews of The White Sheik - Criterion Collection

Movie Review: Fellini's First Film as a Director
Summary: 4 Stars

This is a delightful Frederico Fellini Criterion Collection black and white Italian movie. A just-married nervous couple from the countryside arrives in Rome where the husband (Ivan) has arranged to introduce his bride (Wanda) to important family relatives, tour major attractions, and meet the Pope. The bride, however has her own ideas about what is important to see in Rome, and they include a quick visit to a magazine studio where she has been corresponding with an actor known for his highly romantic photographed role as the White Sheik. Unbeknownst to Ivan, Wanda is utterly star-struck by this actor, avidly reading every magazine and memorizing verbatim all his stories.

The movie has hilarious moments that stand the test of time. When Wanda disappears and Ivan has no idea what has happened to her, he is forced into the most ridiculous excuses to cover her absence. Wanda meanwhile has actually met the White Sheik and initially his charm is every bit as potent as his magazine image and soon she finds herself starring with him.

As Wanda's fantasy fades in the face of reality, we see the white sheik as he really is: an overly vain buffoon. The story is imaginative, funny and touching, and apparently Fellini's debut as a director. Well-worth watching.

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Summary of The White Sheik - Criterion Collection

Ivan Cavalli (Leopoldo Trieste) brings his new wife Wanda (Brunella Bovo) to Rome on the least romantic honeymoon in history-a rigid schedule of family meetings and audiences with the Pope. But Wanda, dreaming of the dashing hero of a photo-strip cartoon, drifts off in search of the White Sheik, thus setting off a slapstick comedy worthy of Chaplin. The style and themes which made Federico Fellini world famous are already apparent in this charming comedy (his first solo directorial effort), featuring such long-time collaborators as his wife, actress Giulietta Masina, and composer Nino Rota.

Federico Fellini's solo-directing debut seems like a pure excursion into the director's extravagant imagination, but its comedy, alternately ethereal and tumultuous, is grounded in reality. A honeymooning clerk (Leopoldo Trieste) and his big-eyed bride (Brunella Bovo) make a package-tour pilgrimage to Rome to have an audience with the Pope. There are bureaucratic delays, and the couple become separated. The still-virginal husband falls in with prostitutes (including Giulietta Masina's Cabiria, later canonized in Fellini's most enduring masterpiece). The bride finds herself in the world of her favorite fantasy-figure, "the White Sheik"--the hero of the photographic comic books, or fumetti, eagerly followed by the Italian populace. It was Michelangelo Antonioni who proposed the fumetti as a ripe film subject, and the film's central episode--dominated by Alberto Sordi's preposterous fantasy-figure and the Mack Sennett-like production methods of the fumetti company--is the first tour de force of Fellini's spectacular career. --Richard T. Jameson

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Comedy

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