Luna e l'Altra

Nichetti's characteristically broad, sentimental comedy concerns a well-meaning but strait-laced teacher living with her disenchanted father in mid-'50s Milan. A magic lantern which she confiscates from some kids from a travelling circus liberates the teacher's free-spirited shadow. The shadow takes a room in the local bordello and generally scandalises the town (still partly inhabited by fascist sympathisers), causing much embarrassment to the woman's more stolid self. It's winsome and ingratiating, and not helped by all the obligatory circus and brass-band stuff, or by the director's own performance as the school janitor in love with the heroine. Technically clever, though.