The fusion of the real and the imaginary is also at the center of Fellini’s first and one of his most underrated films, The White Sheik (1952). In the final scene, the two worlds are joined together as Guido reconciles his inner struggle and comes to terms with both his life and his art. In the course of his existential search for truth and meaning in his life, Guido sifts through his childhood memories, fantasies, and dreams, which Fellini weaves into a stream-of-consciousness narrative that continually shifts between the objective or “real” world and the subjective, interior world of his protagonist’s mind. In Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 (1963), Italian film director Guido Anselmi struggles to simultaneously resolve his messy personal life and break through an artistic block that’s preventing him from starting his next film.
