Analisis De "The White Sheik"

* Film análisis: “Lo sceicco bianco” by Federico Fellini
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The White Sheik is the story of Wanda (Brunella Bovo), a young and naive romantic daydreamer, and his husband Ivan (Leopoldo Trieste), a strict and over controlling guy obsessed with time and order. This newlywed couple from the province travel to Rome for their honeymoon, an audience with the Pope and to present Wanda to Ivan’suncle and family.

After arriving to Rome everything gets complicated, Wanda, a passionate young bride sneaks off to find the offices of a romance magazine where she expects to meet “The white sheik” Fernando Rivoli (Alberto Sordi), the hero of a fotoromanzi that Wanda reads each week. What was supposed to be a short scape ended up being a mess that lasted a whole day, in this time Wanda ends upin the photo-shoot of the latest episode of her favorite fotoromanzi where she gets to meet Fernando Rivoli, but she is no longer in Rome, while a distraught Ivan things his wife has gone to meet some secret lover but still tries to keep his honor by covering for her, claiming she’s sick in an attempt to explain his wife’s absences at the family gatherings.

Things get more complicated as Wandaconfronts reality and her inevitable disillusionment with Fernando Sordi and finds a way back to Rome. That night each wanders the streets, Wanda hit by shame tries to commit suicide while prostitutes tempt Ivan. The next day they are reunited and finally Wanda meets the family and they get to the papal audience.

The Film is set in that period, 1952, and the place is Rome, as shown through theuse of establishing shots where is possible to distinguish the Vatican and other locations. Fellini narrates their adventures in parallel way in a cross-cutting between two parallel story lines, the stories of the two protagonists Wanda and Ivan, Fellini accomplishes this by employing traditional dissolves or fadeouts and abrupt or ironic cuts between sequences and manipulating the use of music,but the plot is set in linear time and it is just one day.

Fellini emphasizes in the character of the protagonists and the social masks they use, first we have Ivan which through the whole movie is trying to keep his reputation and appear the guy he is supposed to be according to society even after all the distress, in the scene were Ivan goes to the police and he begs for the officer not towrite his name or other kind of information that could reveal who he is and his situation because it would bring shame to the family and his name, we can see how he tries so hard to be strong and not give in but at the end he does, he is desperate, he is supposed to be the person in control with everything organized and he has to recognize that his wife ran from him that she might be with anotherman, that everything is out of control, he had to reschedule the papal audience and had to lie to his family, but still he keeps trying to commit to his social mask while Wanda is running from it we can see how she tries to live her secret desires running from the respectful and pure wife she is supposed to be, searching for her last romantic moment before she has to commit to the roll she isexpected to play for the rest of her life. This film is a comic confrontation between the characters of both protagonists.

Social masks and character are not the only themes Fellini aboard in this movie, we also have love, the variety theater in all the show Fellini puts in the movie as we have Wanda around the Photo novel and the actors, the entertainment, the religion represented by the Papalaudience at the begging and end of the movie, also there is the theme of prostitution where we can see Cabiria and the meaning of life, is it life worth living represented by the intended suicide.

The stile of the movie is both realistic and surreal because we have the story of Ivan, which takes place in a normal environment, and the story of Wanda that is set at a world made by the production of...