Wanda’s plunge into reality begins upon her arrival in Rome with her new husband, the fastidious Ivan Cavalli (Leopold Trieste), who has their two-day trip, including the consummation of their marriage, planned down to the minute. But while Guido’s fantasy life helps him attain a higher power of self-awareness, it is the shattering of Wanda’s romantic illusions that makes her realize how living out one’s fantasies is a dangerous business. Like Guido, The White Sheik‘s Wanda (Brunella Bovo) has a life-changing wake-up call when she crosses the line into the imaginary.
In this comical, sentimental tale of an ill-fated Roman honeymoon, Fellini had evidently not yet fully realized (or perhaps was in the process of working through) the vital role the imaginary plays in our lives. The fusion of the real and the imaginary is also at the center of Fellini’s first and one of his most underrated films, The White Sheik (1952). In the final scene, the two worlds are joined together as Guido reconciles his inner struggle and comes to terms with both his life and his art. In the course of his existential search for truth and meaning in his life, Guido sifts through his childhood memories, fantasies, and dreams, which Fellini weaves into a stream-of-consciousness narrative that continually shifts between the objective or “real” world and the subjective, interior world of his protagonist’s mind. In Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (1963), Italian film director Guido Anselmi struggles to simultaneously resolve his messy personal life and break through an artistic block that’s preventing him from starting his next film.
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