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.

1963 - 8 1/2

There's  just not a lot you can say anymore about Fellini's 8 1/2 probably his best film.  It usually shows up on those greatest film lists all the time. 

So lets look at a few pictures.

Here's the famous opening with Marchello Mastroianni floating above the roman traffic.

The equally famous ending scene where the director Guido Anselmi directs all the people in his life to parade a round in a circus ring to the music of Nino Rota.

And finally here's Fellini and Mastroianni who is basically playing a thinly disguised version of Fellini.

The film was written by Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano, and Brunello Ron

138 minutes.

1976 - FELLINI'S CASANOVA - the life of Casanova as rewritten by Fellini

Critics at the time of release commented that Fellini didn't seem to like his main character Casanova which was rather odd since the film was supposedly about the life of Casanova.  Fellini's Casanova is a rather empty film especially for a director like Fellini whose films are usually the "life is a carnival" thing.

Fellini's Casanova was his follow up to Amarcord which had been a big commercial and critical success.  Where that film was upbeat and funny this is one dour and cold film.  It probably didn't help Fellini's Casanova that the film was shot entirely in the studio.  This gave the film a phoney but I will have to say an interesting look.   Fellini always had the best cameramen and set designers working on his film. 

As was the process with a lot of Fellini's later films, the actors didn't actually have dialog to speak, the were instructed by Fellini to just say numbers after which he would dub in the dialog.  Fellini frequently worked from a story outline with out a fully prepared script which tended to make his later films more a series of episodes rather than a fully realized story.

 Fellini's Casanova seems to be primarly about the sex life of Casanova, but in this film all the silly sex scenes aren't presented as much fun.  The point seems to be that Casanova's hedonistic lifestyle was extremely unfulfilling and empty.  Well whatever, the film does have a few interesting scenes and it does look good.

155 minutes.

1972 - FELLINI'S ROMA, indulgent

Fellini's film has been called a mock documentary, an impressionistic look at the city of Rome and an autobiographical version of his journey from the a rural town in Italy to Rome as documented in I Vitelloni.  Fellini's Roma is also a very indulgent and shapeless film.

There is lots of interesting stuff in this film.  The photography of Giuseppe Rotunno and the art direction of Danilo Donati who also did the costumes are really good.  The music by Nino Rota is very simple and elegant compared to the excessive overkill of most of the film. It's also got those odd ball faces that show up in most Fellini films.

There are good parts in the film but almost all of them go on too long.  Scenes in a brothel and a vaudeville show never end.  Plus, you have to sit there and watch a bunch of high strung Italians shout at each other.

A couple of high points in the film are the ecclesiastical fashion show, Fellini's unsubtle criciticism of the Catholic Church and an excavation of a Roman home buried under the city.  The excavation scene is very well done and the fashion show while entertaining runs about 10 minutes longer than absolutely needed.  But that's the way it goes throughout this film.

Il Maestro directs

Fellini's color films seemed to bring out an extreme nature in him along with some fascinating surrealistic imagery.   He lingers on things that are only of interest to him and he repeats the same jokes an character bits over and over.   The trouble was that with the exception of Amarcord, his color films really weren't all that good

128 minutes, written by Frederico Fellini and Bernardino Zapponi.

1955 - IL BIDONE or THE STEAL, barely seen Fellini film.

The story of a small time conman.  Il bidone is a series of episodes in his life as Fellini aims for some type of story telling that invokes a sense of tragedy about his life.

This is a little seen and barely discussed Fellini film that came after La strada.  I guess this would be called a minor Fellini film in his canon.   I suspect people today don't have a lot of patience for any of Fellini's self indulgent, slow moving and interesting films if they are even watched at all anymore.

When you think of director/actor combinations, names like John Ford and John Wayne, or Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock come up.  However one would be hard pressed to find the team of Broderick Crawford and Frederico Fellini in the annals of film history.  But there's Crawford is in all his big lug glory playing a con man disguised as a priest no less.  Nothing like unusual casting in a Fellini film.

Also showing up in the film are Richard "Admiral Nelson" Basehart, and Fellini's long suffering wife Giulietta Masina as Basehart's wife

The big issue with the film is the script which is very episodic.  Fellini also seems to have had problems getting a handle on Crawford's conman character.  It's as if he can't decide how sympathetic he feels towards him.

Il bidone does contain a lot of good scenes and has that special feeling Fellini could bring to a film.  Some of the landscapes are very striking and the acting is pretty good.  Compared to some later Fellini films like the super indulgent Satyricon or And the Ship Sails On this is a very good and very watchable Fellini film.  Certainly worth a look.

109 minutes.

1967 - SPIRITS OF THE DEAD or Histoires Extraordinaires, Edgar Allen Poe stories by European directors

Another European anthology film, three sort of based on Edgar Allen Poe stories sexed up for film audiences and filmed by three major European directors.

Metzengerstein directed by Roger Vadim, features his then wife Jane Fonda in her 60's Barbie doll persona. Vadim dresses her up in a lot of questionable medieval costumes for the apparently  sole purpose of showing film audiences what a hot piece she is.  In other words, this is a typical Vadim film.

The story has something to do with Fonda falling in love with a horse who is the reincarnated spirit of her cousin ( played by her brother Peter Fonda).  She gallops around like a mad woman bare back, (on the horse, not the cousin).  Pretty unsubtle eroticism and pretty stupid.

William Wilson, directed by Louis Malle, stars Alain Delon as a soldier named William Wilson who is being followed by a doppelganger also named William Wilson.  This segment features a phallic cigar smoking Bridget Bardot.  Nothing very special here that hasn't been seen on an old Twilight Zone episode. 

Toby Dammit  directed by Federico Fellini,  is probably the best segment although it appears to be barely based on Edgar Allen Poe.  Toby Damnit is an alcoholic British actor who has traveled to Rome to film a biblical story in a western setting, sort of a spaghetti western religious epic.  The producer tells Toby Damnit that the film's style will be a cross between Zinnemann and Pasolini with a touch or John Ford.  

Fellini is sometimes a director who should be watched in short doses and not taken too seriously, Toby Dammit is one of his best films since it's short and actually funny.

121 minutes.