wlkrrch

Germany was losing the war, its cities were being bombed to smithereens, so it's easy to see why Goebbels felt the need for quality escapist entertainment like this gentle, funny school comedy.

Heinz Ruhmann plays a successful writer who was educated by tutors and never attended school, and who decides to return to his hometown disguised as a pupil to find out what he missed. What ensues is a lot of sweet-natured tomfoolery, with lots of tricks played on the teachers - something which nearly got the film banned because of its supposedly 'anti-authoritarian' tendencies.

There's no real message except that 'schooldays are the best days of your lives', and perhaps that's its secret - for it remains among the most popular of all film comedies in Germany and is cult viewing around Christmas time. Ruhmann is in his element in this film, but particular mention should go to the wonderful Erich Ponto as the eccentric chemistry teacher, who is quite best thing in the film.

I'm a massive Billy Wilder fan but count this as a rare mis-fire from one of Hollywood's greatest directors. It has the odd good one-liner, but the political satire is crude, the portrait of the Germans is so stereotypical it would get prosecuted under race hate laws these days and the pace is overly furious, so that you're left gasping for breath at the sheer pace of it all halfway through the film. Worse, it has little charm - Liselotte Pulver as the secretary is great, as are one or two of the German supporting cast, but Cagney is a long way off his best here and the film would have been redeemed if instead of Cagney Jack Lemmon had taken the lead - because Lemmon always had charm, even when he was barking his lines - see him in Avanti! if you don't believe me. This movie had the singular misfortune to be overtaken by historical events, as the slightly uncomfortable spoken prologue reveals: its comedy of east-west tension looked a little tasteless when the Soviets built the Berlin Wall between the start of shooting and its release in the cinemas. My least favourite Wilder movie, by a considerable margin.