The White Sheik

Antonioni would expand this Roman caprice with La Signora Senza Camelie the following year, Federico Fellini here envisions the heroine's trajectory (mouse to harem girl and back) as warm Flaubertian satire. Provincial newlyweds at "the altar of the nation," the husband (Leopoldo Trieste) has a busy day planned ahead (greeting relatives, going to the opera, meeting the Pope), meanwhile all the wife (Brunella Bovo) wants is to see the hero of her favorite foto-romanzi. She sneaks off and is swept along to the beachside set for a shoot, the White Sheik (Alberto Sordi) has a ludicrous-enchanted entrance in the woods, airborne on a swing in resplendent Arabian robes. "Excuse me, are you making a movie?" "Sort of." The starstruck ingénue is garbed as a kidnapped princess and joins the gypsies and Bedouins she's read so much about, then ruins the take because she can't stop smiling for the camera. Back in the city, Trieste goes through an entire encyclopedia of saucer-eyed squirming to keep the family from learning of the bride's absence. (A construction pile driver, a marching band and a Don Giovanni aria are among the fearful sounds of cuckoldry.) "La vera vita è quella del sogno," not so much a lyrical declaration as a warning—the Sheik is revealed to be a henpecked horndog playacting at being Valentino, the bottomless pit the distraught girl hurls herself into turns out to be Mallarmé's "shallow rivulet slandered as death." The bereft husband is consoled in the empty piazza by jaunty Cabiria (Giulietta Masina), the reunion is a lovely little symphony of groans and whimpers. Tashlin picks up the skewering of fumetti fantasylands (Artists and Models), Fellini's punchline has matrimonial harmony as the biggest illusion of all. With Lilia Landi, Ernesto Almirante, Fanny Marchio, Ugo Attanasio, and Gina Mascetti. In black and white.