Maddalena... zero in condotta

Thi is a comedy of errors, and the plot is rather improbable and long-sought. Vittorio de Sica is a young man in Vienna who receives an anonymous love letter which he discards as nonsense at first but then with second thoughts picks up from the waste-paper basket and preserves to make an investigation of it, since it appears to be honest and sincere. The sender is located in a girls' school in Rome, but who is the sender? The sender is one of the girls called Maddalena, but her whole class joins the confession declaring them all guilty of the letter. It appears that the letter was dictated by their teacher as an ordinary dictation exercise, but the girl sent the letter on just for kicks not expecting any consequences. The consequence materialised in Vittorio de Sica receiving the letter in Vienna, so it's all a question of female fancies resulting in a concrete manifestation. Take it or leave it. Vittorio de Sica chooses to take it, and the comedy ends with two marriages. It is rather silly actually, but de Sica as the director and leading actor carries the film through with thorough energy and humour, although there aren't any great laughs. It's an Italian comedy typical of the age before the fall of Mussolini, which drastically caused a major change in the whole Italian film industry. This was his second film as a director and a mere trifle in comparison with the great serious films he made after the war.