“The fact that at the Venice Film Festival in 1954 his Shakespeare (Giulietta e Romeo) was preferred over Visconti’s Camillo Boito (Senso) was for a time a negative influence on Castellani’s fate with critics. He tried again with his young characters in I sogni nel cassetto (this time around with a delightful Lea Massari and an effective Enrico Pagani, a basketball champion), a symbolic title if there ever was one. It was almost a success, with the devotion of moved audiences and an endearing plot with admirable civil and social considerations. At the end of the decade (1947-1957), it could be said that no director other than Castellani knew how to portray ‘the sweet bird of youth’ of postwar Italy that wanted to start living again and was driven by a vital force that seems, nevertheless, to gradually fade” (Lorenzo Pellizzari).
Two university students, one studying medicine and the other chemistry, fall in love and get married against the wishes of their parents: then he gets a job as a doctor, and the pair look to the future. Inspired by the story of Castellani’s brother and shot in Pavia, it is, recalls the director, “the first story in Italian cinema that centers on two young people who rebel against the laws of society and cut all ties with their families”. In a moment of crisis and transition for Italian film, after neorealism and before the great era of the 1960s, Castellani goes back to his beloved characters of young people, this time the petite bourgeoisie, and follows them as they grow up and integrate. The result is “the real reversal of the sunny, happy springtime world that had just been his. Worked with stylish elegance, with the faultless precision of a master craftsman of the screen, this unique and sad film almost inadvertently slips in omens of death in the development of a sweet, captivating idyll” (Vittorio Spinazzola). According to Paolo Mereghetti, it is “one of the best and least understood films” made by the director.
After lifting the film from producer Sandro Ghenzi, Angelo Rizzoli forced Castellani to replace the end of the film with a happy ending. Castellani shot a second ending, but in the end Rizzoli preferred the original. On this occasion, this very rare alternative ending, preserved at the Cineteca Nazionale, will also be screened.

Emiliano Morreale