1952 - THE WHITE SHEIK, early Fellini film

The White Sheik was made early in the career of Fellini, it's the second film that he directed.  The story is a simple one.  A married couple traveling to Rome are selected for an audience with the Pope. However the wife secretly wants to meet the hero of a comic book called The White Sheik.  In Italy at that time some comic books were actually posed picture books with actors being hired to stage scenes instead of artists drawing  graphic panels.  The wife essentially runs away from her husband and as is typical, she finds that the fantasy of the comic book hero and the reality are a big contrast.  Meanwhile the husband desperately searchers Rome for her before the audience with the Pope.

Interestingly one of the characters the husband runs into is a prostitute named Cabiria, who about five years later will get her own film.  The prostitute is played by Fellini's long suffering wife Giulietta Masina, in what is essentially a cameo performance.

 

I suppose The White Sheik would be considered a minor Fellini film but compared to some of his almost unwatchable films like City of Women, And the Ship Sails On and Fellini Satyricon this film actually plays pretty well.  This simple story is in a lot of ways preferable to some of the overstuffed films he directed in the 1970's.

The film was written by Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano.  The running time is 83 minutes.