Film still of Il Sorpasso (The Easy Life) © RR
Il Sorpasso (The Easy Life), on the roads of 1960s Italy
Dino Risi, the great director of classic Italian comedies, presented Scent of a Woman (Profumo di donna) (1975), Dear Father (Caro papà) (1979), and Madman at War (Scemo di guerra) (1985) at Cannes, and in 1962 delivered a fierce journey through an Italy filled with carefree insouciance with Il Sorpasso (The Easy Life).
Rome, 15th August. Bruno, a charmer and a swaggering, nonchalant Mediterranean, meets Roberto, a hard-working law student who is shy and hung up. Together, they spend two days travelling across Italy, experiencing wild adventures from Rome to Viareggio…
With Il Sorpasso (The Easy Life), Dino Risi leads us through 1960s Italy, buoyed by economic growth and certain prosperity. At the wheel of a convertible with a cigarette in hand, the characters, played by Vittorio Gassman, Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Catherine Spaak, are as superficial as the setting. Their journey and feelings are paced by modish hits, including Saint Tropez Twist and Guarda Come Dondol. They symbolise frivolity but also arrogance, as the transalpine director's sense of irony is certainly there, "superb and sharp", and reveals the idiosyncrasies of an overly extravagant generation, already on the threshold of overconsumption.
Just a few kilometres from the border, the Cinéma de la Plage offers the chance to live, for one evening, la dolce vita which carved out Italy's reputation as we still see it even today.
