This film is a sequel to Matarazzo’s Giorno di nozze, with which it shares many aspects, including the majority of the actors. In Il birichino di papà Matarazzo doesn’t use his comic verve to reach a universal audience so much as to give a severe and wonderfully ironic look at the fascist era. In fact with this film Matarazzo makes respectability, conventionality and the social customs in place at the time his targets, using a tone that is both cutting and amicable. It is quite logical that this satire be a part of the most popular comedy genre in Italy in the 1930s: the girl’s boarding school. Like Giorno di nozze, this is a melodrama that is transformed into a comedy by its charming style. The nicest characters would quickly fall into disgrace and desperation if it weren’t for the fortunate intervention of the heroine, a little fifteen-year old rebel. Thanks to her independent spirit and energy she reveals the faults of a hypocritical and coercive soci­ety, saves her sister from drowning, and saves the film from becoming truly disma.

Jacques Lourcelles, Dictionnaire du cinéma, Laffont, Paris, 1992