The White Sheik, Federico Fellini's first solo flight as director, is a gentle lampoon of the idolatry heaped upon movie stars. An impressionable young bride, Wanda, accompanies her husband Ivan on a dull honeymoon, full of meetings with family members and the papal father. Wanda fantasizes over matinee idol Fernando Rivoli, AKA the White Sheik, the hero of a photo strip comic. She repeatedly drifts away from her husband and back, in periodic attempts to find the Sheik, ultimately repairing to the location site where Rivoli's latest film, The White Shiek, is in production. Her inevitable disillusionment with the vainglorious Rivoli is intercut with her husband's comic (and desperate) attempts to explain his wife's absences at family gatherings to his disgruntled relatives. Featured in the cast is Fellini's wife Giuletta Masina as a prostitute named Cabiria, who'd be given a vehicle of her own, Nights of Cabiria, in 1955. Based on "an idea" by Michelangelo Antonioni, The White Sheik was the main inspiration for Gene Wilder's The World's Greatest Lover (1977).--All Movie. Admission is free and all are welcome. Sponsored by the Friends of the Cranford Public Library!
