Like Visconti and Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica began his career in the early 1940s, when the film industry was still under fascist control. One of his earliest films as a director is this charming character study about a young man fighting for Italy's unification. Wounded and left behind by his comrades, he is given sanctuary in a convent which also happens to be the location of a girls' boarding school, setting the stage for a romantic triangle when two students vie for the soldier's affection. Though sentimentally presented, this seriocomic melodrama's politics remain fascinatingly canny; there is plenty of Italian nationalism on display to please the Fascist censors, but the hero actually belongs to an underground militant movement and is hiding from hostile authorities. – DP