The White Sheik

Newlyweds Wanda and Ivan Cavalli leave their small town for a honeymoon in Rome. Ivan, a conscientious civil servant, has planned the trip around a papal audience and an introduction to his relatives. Wanda has a different interest: she is an avid reader of a photo comic strip whose hero, the White Sheik, she adores. While Ivan rests, she slips away to find the publisher and the actor behind the character, leaving her husband to cover for her absence and keep up appearances before his family. What she finds when she meets her idol falls short of the romance she imagined.

Federico Fellini directed, and wrote the screenplay with Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano; Luigi Rovere produced. It was Fellini's second feature as director, following Variety Lights in 1950 and preceding I Vitelloni in 1953. Alberto Sordi plays the White Sheik, Brunella Bovo and Leopoldo Trieste play the couple, and Giulietta Masina appears as a prostitute named Cabiria. The credited cast runs to twenty-nine performers.

Made in Italy and running 83 minutes, the film is a comedy with romantic elements. It holds a 7.2 rating on IMDb from around 7,500 votes and the same score on TMDB from roughly 295, while a critics' rating of 7.8 from 15 reviews places professional assessment slightly above the audience scores.