(by nablaquadro on 18 December 2006)

This is the middle episode of the Don Camillo / Peppone saga and probably my favorite along with DC Monsignore ma non troppo.
Peppone, hardened mayor in Brescello, the small village on the Po river, aspires to become senator. Neither before or after WWII, where he fought against the Germans and fascists, he never went seriously to school, so he needs (at least) a diploma. Believe it or not, don Camillo helps Peppone to pass the examination (with the forecast of moving to Rome) prompting him the solution of geometry's problem. As implicit reward, Peppone writes a composition about "A man I'll never forget": obviously don Camillo, when Peppone was a resistant in WWII, and don Camillo the young military chaplain. Getting the diploma was the first step. The election campaign just started and the two big parties - Christian-democratic and Communist, forgetful of respective favors, settle down an electoral "war of the words", mean tricks (culminating with the famous horny Peppone/Lucifer) and easy propaganda.
Two things still shock today. 1) Giovannino Guareschi (the writer/author of don Camillo's saga) wasn't anti-communist at all, but he never hid the real nature, sanguine, gross, mentally brainwashed of communists (the same stating how lush and rich was the Stalin's Russia). He was a partisan, stop. He fought the fascists and the Nazis, but he never "fell in love" with Stalin or Krushev. Guareschi understood primarily what needed to Italy to rise from the ashes of war. 2) Communists in Italy (today) still resemble the 40s and 50s era, and fight their propaganda still means to be a bigot or an obscurantist. Guareschi tales, therefore, seem written today in many aspects. Not for the rural and tried Italy, but its never-ending inability to find a political barycenter.