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 t。

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