白酋长

Fellini’s official first feature film accorded with a solo credit as the director, THE WHITE SHEIK has a simple premise, a newly-wed couple from a small town arrive in Rome for their honeymoon, the starchy husband Ivan Cavalli (Trieste) arranges a full-day’s sight-seeing activities including an audience in front of the Holy Father in Vatican (thanks to the connections of his uncle, who works there), but the young bride Wanda (Bovo) has her own plan, visiting Rome for the very first time, she is tempted to seek out “the White Sheik”, the protagonist of a popular photo strip (“fumetto”) played by the actor Fernando Rivoli (Sordi, who makes a good fist with a faux-matinee idol impression from which sincerity is the last thing one can expect), and after sneaking out of their hotel, Wanda embarks on a one-day field trip with the fumetto’s production team near Rome, whereas a wrong-footed and clueless Ivan has to field his uncle’s family, from whom he must hide Wanda’s disappearance.

The film robustly freewheels between a girl's swooning abandon in an almost surreal surrounding (roistering troupers in costumes included) and a man’s piteous befuddlement and predicament, and Fellini clearly indulges in the revelry and hubbub. But Wanda’s untoward jollification will eventually shade into a letdown of reality check, when her jolly, affectionate idol’s charming facade starts to unravel, as a playacting actor, Fernando is reduced to a henpecked buffoon as soon as his chat-up with Wanda on a sailing boat finishes and his thickset wife appears, thus Wanda’s folly becomes a parable of a fangirl’s caprice, whose castle-in-the-air finality is extraordinarily foreshadowed by the White Sheik’s magic “swinging aloft” entrance. “Don’t meet your idol” is a fair warning to heed and a starstruck Bovo makes a meal of her transition from doe-eyed demureness to remorse-driven pietà in the aftermath of a dashed dream (even the Tiber river pulls her leg in the nadir).

As Ivan, Trieste often relies on gaucherie and a wide-eyed catatonia to soup up his mounting anguish and comedy of errors (and his parochial penchant and family honor first preoccupation), and his story is more of a prosaic romp compared with Wanda’s more quixotic, implausible and rowdy escapade, not until a cameo by Giulietta Masina as the naive prostitute Cabiria (a character will leave an inarticulate pathos in NIGHT OF CABIRIA, 5 years later), where she is distracted by a fire breather in the wee hours, does Fellini finally embellish a touch of surrealism to his misery.

The next morning, Wanda is granted a second chance to consecrate her new matrimony by the Pope, before being vouchsafed a second chance from her husband, to whom she admits that now he is her “white sheik”, but throughout Fellini’s arch manipulation (and the fact that Wanda retains her innocence whereas Ivan is actually not), it is hard to tell he is poking fun at the moral fable or being serious about it, anyhow, the influence of neorealism and earthy comedy still loom large, but Fellini's baroque trademark has already emerged to a jubilant effect in conjunction with Nino Rota’s majestically spellbound score.

referential entries: Fellini’s NIGHT OF CABIRIA (1957, 8.7/10); I VITELLONI (1953, 8.2/10).

片子看完了，在赞叹费里尼天才手笔的同时，我们更为这对新婚夫妇感到悲哀。新娘怀着偶像梦来到罗马，新郎怀着名誉梦一起来到罗马。可新娘的失踪让新郎一度难堪，新娘的美梦也被现实无情的覆灭。通过影片，我们可以分析出新郎胆小、怕事和极度的荣誉感。由此可见他并不是一个好的结婚对象，甚至可以说与新娘属于同类人物。在影片结尾，新郎与新娘迈步走向圣彼得堡大教堂，新娘说你要相信我的清白，新郎说你也要相信我。那么疑问来了，新郎那一夜与卡比利亚同行的人（姑且成为A)一起消失在罗马的街道上。在新郎回到酒店时，新郎叔叔已经等待，那时间就是第二天的10点之后。那句“你也要相信我”，似乎是费里尼给观众开的玩笑，让我们猜测新郎夜晚到底去做了什么！我大胆假设，以男主的性格必然不会做出出轨的行为，而从第二天男主回到酒店失神的样子，可以断定男主可能被A带回家中并施以某种行为。而男主认为女主也是被迫的，所以才说出那句你也要相信我！！！

在玩笑之余，还是像这位伟大的导演致敬！