The bitter love

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The bitter love
Original title Lo sceicco bianco
Country of production Italy
original language Italian
Publishing year 1952
length 85 minutes
Rod
Director Federico Fellini
script Federico Fellini
Tullio Pinelli
Ennio Flaiano
production Luigi Rovere (PDC)
Enzo Provenzale (OFI)
music Nino Rota
camera Arturo Gallea
cut Rolando Benedetti
occupation

The bitter love (original title: Lo sceicco bianco , alternative title: The White Sheikh ) is an Italian black and white film by the director Federico Fellini from 1952.

Bitter Love is the first film Fellini directed alone, as he shared the direction of his first work as director, Lights of the Variety Theater (1950), with the experienced Alberto Lattuada . At the same time, this is also the fictional film that, together with the following The Idlers (1953), A Day in the District Court (1953) and Americans in Rome (1954), helped the popular Italian actor Alberto Sordi to achieve a great breakthrough. In The White Sheikh , Sordi plays the childlike, irresponsible, cowardly little man dominated by his mother or wife for the first time, a role that Sordi will play throughout the 1950s (and often later).

action

Wanda and Ivan , a newly married couple from southern Italy , are on their honeymoon and arrive in Rome in the morning . An uncle of Ivan, who lives in Rome, was able to arrange a private audience with the Pope the following morning through his relationship with the Vatican . While Ivan is resting in the hotel, Wanda, who is a passionate reader of photo novels, goes to the editorial office of her favorite paper. Since she shows herself to be an extraordinary admirer of the photo novel The White Sheikh , she is invited to go with the team to Fregene , where some episodes are to be recorded.

Meanwhile, Ivan has noticed his wife's disappearance and is desperately looking for her. He does everything possible to hide the disappearance of Wanda from his relatives in Rome, who want to get to know the bride. He wanders through the city, takes part in a parade by Bersaglieri (it is a festival), finally he seeks help from the police, but is almost determined as crazy because of his confused history and his conspicuous behavior. He can escape.

Wanda finally gets to know her idol: the white sheikh. This is played by a certain Fernando Rivoli , a childish talker who plays the great seducer, but who is actually dominated by his wife and seeks protection behind her. Wanda initially gets involved with Fernando, but when he goes too far and Wanda discovers his true nature (she also notices how “unromantic” the photos for the photo novel are in reality), she slapped and harassed by Rivoli's wife to make matters worse disappointed, she flees back to Rome. Out of desperation, she clumsily tries to kill herself by jumping into the Tiber . She is "saved" and taken to the hospital. There she is picked up by Ivan, who in his desperation has spent the night with a maternal prostitute.

The young couple change their clothes and make their way to the postponed papal audience with other couples and Ivan's relatives, ready to get through life together, perhaps with a little melancholy .

Reviews

The film is a bitter comedy about the power of illusions in post-war Italy. “The feature film underlines how precarious certain dream factories are (here it's the photo novel , the same goes for the film ). […] The author's thematic and stylistic universe - the dreams of the common people, the longings of the provinces, the sentimentality and irony , the desire for introspection , the 'visionary' - begins to take shape. "

Remarks

  • The original idea for the film came from the film author Michelangelo Antonioni , who did not work on the script .
  • The figure of the prostitute Cabiria (Fellini's wife Giulietta Masina ) is reused and further developed by Fellini in his feature film The Nights of Cabiria (1957) , which appeared five years later .
  • With this film the collaboration between Fellini and the composer Nino Rota begins . Rota will work on all of Fellini's films until his death in 1979.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fernaldo Di Giammatteo : Dizionario del cinema italiano (= Universale economica 2 Dizionari ). Editori Riuniti, Rome 1995, ISBN 88-359-4008-7 , free translation here.