Set in an autumnal Rimini, this contemplative film shows us what Fellini's vitelloni might be like as adults, a rather unsavory lot of businessmen and socially accepted wastrals. Into their midst comes a new high school teacher (Alain Delon, in one of his great performances), burdened with a suicidal wife and looking for a way out. He finds one, in the form of a beautiful student; but then another way out, with the face of death, finds him. "If one had to choose a film that best represents Zurlini's work, it would be (this one). For one thing, the original Italian title, La prima notte di quiete, taken from a quote by Goethe, is an allusion to death, the great leveler, one of Zurlini's major obsessions. The whole film is an ode to the eternal quiet 'after the deceits of life.' On the most profound level, the film is based on Zurlini's desire to return to the world of his childhood, the summers spent in Rimini, places now lost in the mists of confusion, time, and memory." (Olaf Möller, Film Comment) The film was retitled The Professor in a French re-edit by Delon; we present the original Italian version.