Inspired by the last book of Giovanni Guareschi, Don Camillo e i gio­vani d’oggi (Don Camillo and the Youth of Today) is different in spirit from the preceding collections. The two protagonists have grown old and are moving to the left in their own fields of activity. The communist mayor Peppone must put up with the Maoist protesters: the parish priest Don Camillo finds himself sent as a new clerk a young priest enthusiastic for “dialogue” and a fervent supporter of the innovations in the Concilio. The secret alliance with Peppone is no longer motivated, as it once was, by their preoccupation with the good of the country, but by the tempestuous echoes which the events and the altercations of the great world effect in a little country place between the Po and the Taro, in the padana valley. Parish priest and mayor painfully win the last battle. (…) Some of the episodes are acceptable because happily established by Mario Camerini (77 years old) in the life of the countryside; others are affected, sugary, and out of time. It is a lesson in optimism that is unacceptable because it does not even brush reality: like a machine to cut broth, it grinds empty. For our taste, the gulf between generations is deep, does not lend itself to the smile, cannot be filled with four leaps in the family The film was eventually shot in the actual locations of the action (in San Secondo Parmense) and not at Boretto or Brescello, the centres of the province of Reggio which have nothing to do with anything here. Claudio Cirillo’s photography is excellent. Gastone Moschin is perhaps too sweet for those who remember Fernandel, while the old Hollywood heavy, Lionel Stander, makes an acceptable Peppone.

Pietro Bianchi, “Il Giorno”, Milan, 30 March 1972