The Flying Classroom

The pupils of a boarding school and those of a neighbouring school cannot get along, and each side devises the wildest schemes to beat the other. When it goes as far as the boys’ essays being stolen and burned, school life comes apart entirely. But the film’s softer centre is elsewhere: the children bring their beloved teacher back together with a friend of his youth from whom he was separated years ago, a man turned into a bitter recluse by misfortune. Kurt Hoffmann’s black and white film was adapted from Erich Kästner’s children’s novel of the same name. Kästner wrote the screenplay himself, appeared as himself and served as narrator. Paul Dahlke, Heliane Bei and Paul Klinger are in the cast, and among the young actors are Peter Kraus and Michael Verhoeven. It premiered in Munich on 2 September 1954.