Ciao, Professore!

Marco Sperelli, a teacher from the north, is posted to the wrong school because of a clerical error: a primary school in Corzano, near Naples. When he reaches his classroom most of the children are not there; they are selling fish, moving contraband cigarettes or working in an uncle's shop. He sets out to find them one by one and bring them in. The subject is not education but who is teaching whom. Sperelli tries to teach the children rules and the children teach him how to survive; by the end it is the teacher who has changed. The form is realist and loud: narrow streets, crowded houses, children talking constantly. The child performers are not professionals and were cast around Naples, and some of their dialogue is improvised. Lina Wertmüller directs, from a book by Marcello D'Orta made up of compositions he collected from his pupils while teaching. The children's logic on screen is therefore not invented but taken from real homework. Paolo Villaggio plays the teacher; known for Fantozzi, this is one of the films in which he stepped outside that mould. Who it is for: viewers who like Italian social comedy and school stories. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by north and south being set against each other through stereotypes; the film types its characters in places.