白酋长

我并不了解费里尼，之前只看过一点八部半、半部卡比利亚和本片的开头。实际大银幕和小屏幕观感相差是很大的。这部片子的角色其实都挺有喜感，一看就会想笑但是还不会笑出来那种。最好的是费里尼的妻子，虽然这个片子里面只是出现了一小段，但只要一出现观众马上就会认同这个角色。另外直观感受费里尼是个神经质，那些构图，跟拍扭屁股（喜欢屁股的没有坏人）正常人拍不出来。看了他的手稿展出，画了很多和白酋长老婆一样的巨大的丰乳肥臀的女人，应该对他有很大影响吧。

伍迪极力推崇这部喜剧，在看的过程倒没有特别爆笑的段落，当然全程保持着一种喜感，他的幽默更偏于黑色幽默，有很多段落看了觉得非常讽刺，比如万念俱灰的女主下定决心跳河，结果那河水根本淹不死人，只是把自己搞的更加狼狈。这比刺激笑穴和抖机灵一类的喜剧就多了一层视角。

今年1月20日是意大利著名导演费里尼诞辰100周年。说来惭愧，虽然不时听到朋友们叨叨费里尼，我却连他的一部电影都没有看过。眼下这时候，只好赶紧找来他的一些片子看看，没有“致敬”的意思，只是为了维护我这个伪影迷的面子。那么只有暂且让德尼罗先在一边歇会了。

我这里收集了他执导的影片20部，顺手挑了一部《白酋长》看。这是1952年上映的电影，黑白片。讲的是一个再普通不过的事情。一对新婚夫妇到罗马开始蜜月旅行，妻子旺达是个狂热的追星族，一到罗马就去找她的偶像“白酋长”，还阴错阳差的和他一起拍片。其实这位“白酋长”在现实中不过是一个浪荡色鬼，和我们通常看到的那些演艺界人士一样。有女粉丝上赶着找上门来，他当然不会放过。好在50年代人们的观念还比较保守，再加上“白酋长”的胖老婆突然到了片场，使得“白酋长”策划的一场阴谋未能得逞。这边当丈夫的伊凡失魂落魄的四处找他的老婆，情急之中还跑到警察局报案，回来还要用尽心思敷衍叔叔和姑姑，搞的他焦头烂额。最后的结局还不错，迟到的夫妇随着一众亲戚们走进了教堂。

从影片中我们可以看到，明星崇拜早已有之，旺达只是其中之一。实际上，她所迷恋的并不是真实生活中的那个演员，而是他在影片中的演技，他所扮演的那个不死之身完美无缺的人物形象，以及他在影片中所经历的那些劈波斩浪所向无敌的奇迹。近年来，这股追星的狂热又有了新的发展，那就是羡慕明星们所拥有的财富。追星族们都暗自下定决心：一旦当上明星拥有了数不完的钱，一定要先买俩包子，吃一个扔一个！于是，这股风潮弥漫在横店街头、电影学院门前和北太平庄的马路牙子上。甚至对明星们溅到身上的泥点子也如醉如痴的迷恋。

那些明星们在银幕上创造了许许多多完美的形象。我们应该称羡的是他们的演技以及为此付出的劳动。可既然是演戏，他们就是在“演”，而并非表现的是戏下的自己。真实的娱乐圈就是一潭浑水，其中的烂人烂事可谓多矣。且不说谭鑫培就是个大烟鬼，就是我们平时印象中一贯正直传统的摩根·弗里曼也早已是绯闻缠身。如陈道明那样洁身自好的演员寥若晨星。更多的是近年来狗仔们纷纷揭示出那些出轨打架吸毒的明星们。《白酋长》中的这位就是一个很典型的例子。风流潇洒，善玩善骗。为了泡妞，可以把众多演员和导演晾在一边，驾上小船和旺达一起去浪漫。差点就得手了。

在今天的太平盛世里，早年的英雄崇拜早已荡然无存，道德观念也有了许多变化。信仰的缺失又使得人们找不到方向。生活节奏越来越快，人们懒得去思考。情感无处发泄无法寄托，于是有了追星。想起了一句话：“现在的人们没有思考，只有选择。”如影片中的旺达，追星追到了极致。咱们这里也有那个为了华仔死去活来的女子。到最后都使自己陷入了尴尬的境地。依我看，追星实在不是个好差事，有这功夫，你即使不信什么主义，哪怕找个天主教伊斯兰教佛教信一信也好啊，至少可以让人们空虚的灵魂得到一些抚慰。

在经历了那一天的失落之后，旺达清醒了。她的丈夫伊凡很平庸。可普通又怎样？平庸又怎样？在这个世界上，我们都是普通的人，过着普通的生活。如果你有才华有理想，你尽可以用这才华去追寻理想。如果你没有，就这样生活也不错。毕竟千百万人都是这样踏实的生活着。生活中最忌讳的就是志大才疏，整天活在虚无缥缈的幻想中，长此以往只会毁了生活，毁了自己。影片结尾，旺达挽着伊凡的手对他说：“你就是我的白酋长。”她确实明白了。

在战后一段时期中，欧洲各国的电影界开始了一阵创新狂热。法国有新浪潮，意大利则有了新现实主义。它的特点就是离开摄影棚，更看重实景拍摄，演员表演朴实自然。影片题材也采用生活中普遍存在的现象和事件，尽量让观众看起来未加雕琢，并置身其中感同身受。我看过的有《罗马十一点》、《警察与小偷》、《偷自行车的人》等。还有一部印象最深的，名字忘了。讲的是一个失业者到处找工作，碰见不少怪事，也遇到了心爱的女子，可最后还是对生活失去了希望，从水塔上跳下自杀了。费里尼自然也是新现实主义的代表之一。这部《白酋长》就一反好莱坞的风格，不去追求惊险刺激离奇怪诞，只是平铺直叙了一个最简单的故事。而触动观众的也许就是这样一些生活琐事。

影片的拍摄技巧稍显生涩。但也有一些成为了日后的经典。整体叙事比较拖沓，或许和50年代人们的思维习惯相一致吧。在影片中我们还感受到了意大利人的性格，和法国人的天性浪漫不同，意大利人更乐观更随意。并以这种散漫的态度生活着。

说点题外话。值此非常时期，我觉得朋友们还是少上街，少去超市抢购，少去看热闹，踏踏实实在家里呆着。何以解忧，唯有看电影。打开电脑，选一个好看的，也是一桩乐事啊。

本人评分：7.0。

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！

Taxing as it might be for the audience to sympathize with Ivan Cavalli, when Wanda whispers to him at the end that she did not sin, and thus remains innocent, one is more or less prone to be touched by what seems to be a bitter-sweet reconciliation between a dreamy, starstruck young wife and a husband for whom the preservation of honor constitutes the singularly most important imperative: as Ivan smiles at Wanda's repentance and the camera zooms out, ending the movie with the couple running on the piazza to catch their appointment with the pope against the circusy music by Nino Rota, some might even be tempted to call it a happy ending.

Great movies attain their greatness not merely through brilliant technical details but also through a rare perspicuity that is sometimes mistaken for simplicity. Taken at face value, The White Sheik might just be a simple comedy: a couple travels to Rome for their honeymoon, whereupon the wife sneaks away to meet a Fumetti star, the White Sheik, and the husband left to cover up for her disappearance in front of his not so gullible family. When Wanda realizes, however, that the White Sheik in reality does not live up to his image, she recognizes one of the many faces of the "cruel fate," as she rightfully puts it, and commits suicide unsuccessfully, to later return to Ivan and their marriage. The first difficulty for a more discerning audience, nevertheless, lies in the hint of Flaubertine note in the story. Just Like Emma, Wanda is fed up with the philistines around her and is bedazzled by a dream that is largely a product of, as Vladimir Nabokov might put it, her poor taste as a philistine herself. And just like Emma, Wanda attempts at closing the gap between reality and dream by performing -- indeed acting out -- the latter. What can be "rosy" about this neorealistic, intensely farcical flick, however, is that the writers (Tullio Pinelli, Ennio Flaiano and Michelangelo Antonioni along with Fellini) never allowed Wanda to pass the point of no return, which makes possible her later reinitiation into the family (the uncle -- the patriarch, after sizing her up for a while, extends a warm embrace) as well as the movie's deceptively light-hearted tone.

In this way, Wanda, both in motivation and consequence, commits a lesser "crime" compared to Emma, and the way she is shielded from culpability -- as sanctioned by Ivan and the movie -- can be adequately attributed to her lack of ability to act/perform: she sneaks away only upon the White Sheik's invitation ("she doesn't know anyone in Rome," complains the unknowing Ivan), her little escapade prolonged only because the crew, without asking for consent, drives her to the countryside, 26 kilometers away from Rome, where they shoot the Fumetti. The movie never shows us how she gets a cameo on set, and when they sail out, the White Sheik's attempt at seducing her is sabotaged, not by her rejection, but by a timely swinging mast.

Innocent, impressionable, and immobile, Wanda is in many ways "coaxed" into a "crime" to which she herself is no less an accomplice but which only actualized unconsciously. The "crime" here is not so much her disloyalty to her husband (her runaway is more of a child's blunder than a woman's willful deceit) as the effect of her disappearance on the Cavalli's good name, a fact that Wanda and Ivan as petits-bourgeois are only too painfully aware of, in a particular locus where catholicism has its tight grip especially on the more provincial parts (where Ivan and Wanda comes from, as the movie implies) and minds. Upon reuniting with Wanda, Ivan mistakes her for having had sex with another man, but despite his agony, his imperative pervails when he apopletically demands her to put on the proper attire and go see the pope, as scheduled by his uncle, who, though having suspected that something fishy is going on, is still under the impression that Wanda is only sick in bed. The ruse, on Ivan's side, lives on, and Wanda quietly takes up a renewed role of accomplice in the cover up of her own "crime."

The dissolution of the "crime," a requisite for the farce to end, is then two-pronged: on one hand, through a miracle; on the other, through Wanda's passivity/innocence. Fellini does not intend this movie to carry much religious undertone, since the urgency of the couple's appointment with the pope derives from the fact that it is arranged by Ivan's uncle, who occupies a dubiously "important" office at Vatican, and not from the papacy itself. Such eagerness to oblige someone who lodges higher in the social stratum at the same time someone who assumes the role of the patriarch is, to be sure, both clearly presented and only worldly. The miracle we are talking about, nevertheless, is impossibly religious and hilarious. When Wanda attempts to commit suicide by the river, it turns out to be only ankle-deep, leaving Wanda baptized and, consequently, saved by an alerted passerby. This absolution arrives both as an aftermath and a herald to Wanda's innocence; the former, for Wanda has uphold her integrity by means of passivity; the latter, for the suicide allows Wanda to participate in the act of "redeeming" herself, and though her plan is botched, it nevertheless provides a pathway for her innocence to enter her consciousness: the will to repent can be, after all, a proverbial source of courage.

What gets even more interesting is how Fellini utilizes moments of deus ex machina to jack up the hilarity (as well as the folly) of circumstances. The first one is Wanda's foiled suicide. Here, we are witnessing a woman who spends most of her time on screen in paralysis finally acting on her own will (though ironically one leading to her own destruction) and spectacularly fails because of a deceptively deep river. The other, the mast that almost purposefully knocks on the White Sheik, provides a perfect situation in which Wanda's danger of being seduced dissipates on itself and hence, no decision is to be made and no morality jeopardized. Admittedly, what keeps a farce going is the constant frustration of plans and desires, whose consummation would invariably end the chase once and for all. It is in this way that we might object that these two instances were but exemplifications of the most fundamental comedy law. But the joke does not simply end there. In these two monumental moments, Wanda is metaphysically stranded on the island between paralysis and activity: when paralyzed, she is merely shoved around, in fact transacted hand to hand, by those who "have a plan;" and when she takes on her own plan, it is bluntly thwarted. Besieged both way, Wanda is trapped in a quandary not only relevant to the problematics of feminism but also to the problematics of modernity, where the efficacy of action as a myth, a strategy, and a performance is called to attention, if not already bankrupted.

Indeed, one laughs for many reasons when Wanda fails to drown. There's the classic irony of a person being denied of interacting with her circumstances meaningfully, and there's the affected, clumsy performance of suicide Brunella Bovo brilliantly adopts. The folly of innocence, when blended with the right amount of sentimentalism and poor taste, often leads to genuine and self-important emotional investment in actions that shrivel under the severity of intention. Almost as if she's too ill-at-ease with her newfound activity, at the same time too well informed of the burlesque, questinonably "exotic" and inexorably romantic adventure plot lines of the popular Fumetti, Wanda performs, with the tritest lines, her penitence when leaving a message for her husband, and, when she sees a painting of skull on the wall, is immediately inspired to stage her suicide, dictating instead of regrets her final words, in equally trite terms, to a concierge who appropriately couldn’t care less. To discuss the mawkish, indeed poor, theatricality of Wanda’s suicide is not, however, to discredit her genuine sorrow and her will to carry the deed out; it is precisely her seriousness, juxtaposed to the insignificance of her “crime,” that funds the hilarity of her failure, at the same time unsettling the audience with the disproportionate (self)punishment. Comical and sad at the same time, Wanda’s decision to die reveals not only the fact that she cannot act, but also the fact that she is trapped by clichés disseminated through popular culture that deprive her of any seriousness to be treated with.

Such insignificance of action, thoughts, and will, though the common language of comedy, nevertheless serves a wide array of purposes. For someone like Fellini, who’s invariably interested in the variety show, the circus, the farce, the spectacle, the outsider, and the weirdo, there is a wistful tenderness to the idea of performance (taken to its extreme forrm, freak shows). On the one hand, the clowns make themselves the punchline of the joke; on the other hand, there is the haunting mediocrity and dullness of, inevitably, life, that invades the space where laughters cannot penetrate. Whether one is consciously or unconsciously subscribing to a given script, whether one has an audience or not, one performs according to a larger order that more often than not strips one of idiosyncrasy, originality, and creation, contrary to how one might have appeared. There are many small ways we get to usurp such order, as Michel de Certeau rightfully points out, but the order remains the reference point, exerting the centripetal force that keeps one spinning on and on around something located outside of oneself. It is made clear to the audience that the urgency of Ivan's task of locating Wanda derives, at least partially, from the need to maintain a certain social order, the compliance with which creates a sense of security at the same time an illusion of dignity. Above all, one is also led to question Ivan's notion of love when his plan for the honeymoon precludes Wanda's participation. When Ivan is haplessly wandering in the metropolis, he is strained not as much by the prospect of losing his love as by the possibility of subverting, inadvertently, the social order upon which his family and his sense of self is founded, flourishes, and now going to flounder. When prompted, he shares the photos of Wanda with Calibria, identifying her as someone that is altogether an illusion of what Wanda appears to the rest of us: a straight A student and a beauty, which is, again, in line with his delusions about his partner from the very beginning, which is also the reason why he can never anticipate her leaving. He runs on and on, breathlessly, around a center point, like an obstinate pair of compasses, whose futility, both of action and love, is only predetermined by his circular trajectory that would never lead him anywhere.

Take the White Sheik, for another example. Alberto Sordi's excellent rendition of an haughty, debonair celebrity of a pulp production is inspired by an immemorial but stubborn idea of gallantry, complemented with equally trite speeches. Despite his suave mannerism, he remains just another Fellini's clown, who, by force of habit, continues to perform a character that is larger than life, whose later exposé again points to the precariousness of pretending what one isn't. But performance needs not be reduced to merely a lie. Fellini's sweetness is inherent in his treatment of performance as a dream as what dream in all truth is. It is spectacle fabricated and invented for us to behold and marvel at, an exit of life, which is easily blunted once our ability to fabricate and invent is dulled by the various orders we are initiated into. But it is also make-believe painstakingly created to pilfer the qualities of the reality: a dream would cease to be a dream if our attention is called to its nature as a fraud. To that extent, a dream also presents us with a paradox. Those who always wake up from it would find it more difficult to dream, and those who barely wakes up from it would no longer be able to distinguish the boundaries between fabrication and reality. The White Sheik and Wanda both belong to the latter, and there's almost a whiff of charming naïveté to it, particularly when one considers how dreams can also be fantastically offensive (the curious whiteness to the sheikdom, in addition to or as part of the fumetti's colonialist campaign to imagine the exotic, and the absolutely ridiculous story the White Sheik tells Wanda on the boat, which she believes).

In The White Sheik, the dream and the reality constantly intercut with each other, which primarily functions to create a rather successful comedic effect. But the juxtaposition is also tasked to unveil an important dilemma. When Wanda realizes the truth about dream, she wakes up and reenter her reality as Ivan's wife, but one is left speculating whether marriage with Ivan, with his conventional ideas of family and women, indeed a dull man, is where Wanda's happiness finally starts. But on the other hand, we understand, just like Wanda now understands, that for all their glitz and glamour, dreams are nothing but mirage, illusion, sleight of hand, who promise not happiness but transitory and blissful oblivion that fends off quotidian sorrow and ennui. Forced to retreat to a banal reality from a fantastical dream made of platitude,Wanda, at the end of the day, is left in a position that is difficult to congratulate. As the couple flees their troubles and marches towards their now secured future, the tragedies lurking in the corners finally start to seep into the light core of the comedy. But Wanda isn't the unhappy one, let us not kid ourselves. She lives on in a wonderously woven dream. It is only us who are left to deal with the burns and jests of a waking life.