Content

Il Sorpasso (The Easy Life; dir. Dino Risi, 1962)

For the exact locations of most scenes, see also, https://www.davinotti.com/forum/location-verificate/il-sorpasso/50000452 (in Italian).

Notes on the film

• “Il Sorpasso”: Notes & Analysis
• “Il Sorpasso” (1962): Themes & Patterns

Frames

• Frames from the whole film, taken at 2-second intervals:
  • Part I (PDF, 506 MB; SB login required)
  • Part II (PDF, 400 MB; SB login required)

Synopsis (Criterion)

• The ultimate Italian road comedy, Il sorpasso stars the unlikely pair of Vittorio Gassman and Jean-Louis Trintignant as, respectively, a waggish, freewheeling bachelor and the straitlaced law student he takes on a madcap trip from Rome to Tuscany. An unpredictable journey that careers from slapstick to tragedy, this film, directed by Dino Risi, is a wildly entertaining commentary on the pleasures and consequences of the good life. A holy grail of commedia all’italiana, Il sorpasso is so fresh and exciting that one can easily see why it has long been adored in Italy.
  • From
  • www.criterion.com/films/28429-il-sorpasso

Synopsis (Moma)

• Il sorpasso (The Easy Life). 1962. Italy. Directed by Dino Risi. Screenplay by Dino Risi, Ettore Scola, Ruggero Maccari. With Jean-Lois Trintignant, Vittorio Gassman. In Italian; English subtitles. 108 min.
• […] The Easy Life is Italian comedy at its best—hedonistic, ironically detached, and at times vicious and gloomy. A consummate road movie, Risi’s masterpiece charts the fickle bromance between the devil-may-care Bruno and his polite and gentle friend Roberto as they blaze in a sports car across the Italian countryside from Rome to Tuscany. Vittorio Gassman, as the unscrupulous scoundrel (in a role originally intended for Alberto Sordi), and Jean-Louis Trintignant, as the uptight law student, are a match made in cinematic heaven, their blooming (and fleeting) companionship colored by memorable encounters along the roadway. “This was the first time Gassman had made a comedy with his own face,” Risi observed. “Gassman’s character was prone to wishful thinking, inconsistent, superficial, aggressive, a bit of a Fascist, but with a certain impact, and I had a few people I knew in mind when I was creating him.”
  • From
    • www.moma.org/calendar/events/2598

Short review (NYT)

This review is an optional reading.

• “On the Road, and on the Run”
  • By J. Hoberman
  • June 5, 2014
• The first stage of Italian neorealism documented wartime destruction and endemic poverty; the second, rosier stage added a touch of fantasy; the third recorded the spiritual emptiness of Italy’s economic miracle. Dino Risi’s “Il Sorpasso” (1962), originally released in the United States as “The Easy Life” and newly out from Criterion in a dual-format edition, is of that third stage.
• The title is Italian slang for “road hog,” and the hog in question is Bruno Fortuna (Vittorio Gassman), introduced tooling around Rome’s newly built suburbs in a posh, slightly battered Lancia Aurelia. Bruno is scarcely less high-powered or shopworn than his souped-up sports car. Frustrated in his attempt to locate a working pay phone with the city shut down for a midsummer holiday, he enlists the help of an uptight law student, Roberto (Jean-Louis Trintignant), whom he shanghais for a manic journey up the Tuscan coast to the end of the night and beyond.