Director: Federico Fellini
In his first solo feature as a director, Federico Fellini would begin to explore the ever-shifting, sometimes imperceptible divide between illusion and reality. The White Sheik concerns a woman (Brunella Bovo) with an obsession with fumetti–a popular trend in Italy at the time in which romantic stories where presented as serialized photographed comic strips. When her honeymoon takes her to Rome, she abandons her husband (Leopoldo Trieste) to search for the eponymous “White Sheik” (Alberto Sordi), a Valentino-like figure who is not quite the charismatic enchanter he appears to be on the page. The great irony is that Fellini uses this model of fantasy to skewer the notion of marriage. While the ending unites the lovers once again, the husband carries on his bourgeois tourist desires and she now dubs him the “White Sheik” as a means of carrying out her unbroken fantasy. That the film cuts between the two lovers for comic effect–cuts often link together similar thoughts to achieve a certain harmony–ensures that neither character looks more the fool by the end of the picture. Fellini’s penchant for slapstick is apparent in Trieste’s performance, which revels in his comically saucer-eyed face as he tries to come up with excuses for his wife’s disappearances, as well as the campy, circus-like extravaganza of the fumetti photoshoot.
Director: Federico Fellini
Arguably the first of Federico Fellini’s true masterpieces, La Strada was at the time his most autobiographical effort and certainly the film that would lay the foundation for the rest of his career to follow. Anthony Quinn stars Zampanò, a traveling strong man who buys an impoverished young woman – Giulietta Masina’s Gelsomina – from her mother for his traveling circus act. Zampanò seems to be little more than a cruel brute at first. He whips Gelsomina violently until she perfects her performance, and given that the naive girl is all too eager to please, she’s loyal to a fault and hardly puts up any protest. In the end, Zampanò abandons the broken Gelsomina not out of cruelty but out of mercy – he finally recognizes that he’s no good for her, and has clearly led her down a terrible spiral (unbeknownst to him, her spirits had already been irreversibly crushed). Even if the terrific Masina is the iconic figure of the film – if only because of the relationship that the actress has with Fellini and with his oeuvre as a whole – it is Quinn who gives the most nuanced, fascinating performance of the picture, with his humanity slowly being revealed piece by piece. Despite the devastating conclusion, it’s not a sadistic film – Zampanò’s misery is not something the audience finds just or deserved. The emotion, instead, is perfectly recognizable. Sometimes we don’t recognize how cruel we’ve been until it’s too late.
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