Il sorpasso - commedia all’italiana classic

Film regarded as director Dino Risi’s masterpiece

Jean-Louis Trintignant (left) and Vittorio Gassman
driving along Via Aurelia in Il sorpasso

Il sorpasso, which has come to be seen as one of the most influential Italian films of the 20th century and a defining example of the commedia all’italiana genre, was released for Italian cinema audiences on this day in 1962.

Directed by Dino Risi, produced by Mario Cecchi Gori and with Vittorio Gassman outstanding as one of the film’s male lead characters, made its debut in the United States in December of the following year under the title The Easy Life. It was also a pioneer for the so-called “road movie” in Italy.

It has been judged as such a significant contribution to Italian culture that in 2008, Il sorpasso - 'Overtaking' in Italian - was included in the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage's 100 Italian films to be saved, a list of 100 films that "have changed the collective memory of the country between 1942 and 1978."

Its inclusion put it in the company of Bicycle Thieves, La strada, La dolce vita, Divorce Italian Style, Rocco and his Brothers and The Leopard among those movies to have made a lasting mark on the minds of Italian audiences.

Il sorpasso tells the story of two strangers - 36-year-old Bruno, a brash, carefree extrovert played by Gassman, and Roberto, a shy law student - who meet in Rome during a holiday and set off in a flashy Lancia Aurelia sports car on a spontaneous road trip through the city and the countryside of Lazio and Tuscany. 

Bruno’s reckless charm and devil-may-care approach to life draws Roberto into a whirlwind of fast cars, flirtations and impulsive adventures, sharply at odds with his own cautious nature. 

A publicity poster for Dino Risi's
Il sorpasso, released in 1962

In time, Roberto wishes he were more like Bruno, yet learns that his new friend has a broken marriage, a daughter whom he never sees and is running out of money, despised by his estranged wife for the shallowness of his character.

As they travel, the film highlights Italy’s booming consumer culture and generational tensions. What begins as a comic journey gradually darkens, culminating in a sudden, tragic accident as Bruno, addicted to il sorpasso - overtaking - inevitably attempts one risky manoeuvre too many.

Dino Risi directed more than 50 films over the course of a career spanning half a century but Il sorpasso is considered to be his greatest work and a cornerstone of commedia all’italiana, a genre that blended traditional comedy with biting satire on the contradictions of contemporary Italian society.

Risi, who collaborated with Ettore Scola and Ruggero Maccari on the screenplay, made Il sorpasso as a critique of Italy’s postwar so-called "economic miracle".

Releasing the movie during a period of rapid modernisation and consumerism, Risi’s aim with its themes was to highlight the emptiness behind material prosperity and the reckless pursuit of pleasure.

The two main characters - the impulsive Bruno and the reserved Roberto, played by the French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant - embody the clashing values of postwar Italy: exuberant modern life versus cautious tradition. 

The road trip is seen as a metaphor for self-discovery and societal change, with the title itself chosen to reflect what Risi saw as Italy’s rapid, sometimes reckless overtaking of tradition in pursuit of modernity, its tragic conclusion designed to symbolise the fragility of life and the risks of seeking change with too little pause for reflection.

Dino Risi directed more than 50 movies
in a career spanning half a century

Italy’s "economic miracle” was the period of unprecedented growth it experienced between about 1958 and 1963, a time of industrial expansion and rising wages, when mass consumer goods such as cars and televisions became symbols of prosperity.

Bruno’s Lancia Aurelia convertible was not just a car but a metaphor for speed, freedom, and the allure of modern Italy. It represented both the excitement of progress and the dangers of reckless living.

Il sorpasso was at first largely ignored by Italian film critics, yet became a hit with cinemagoers, who made it one of the two highest-grossing Italian-made films in Italy for the year ended June 30, 1963.

Those critics warmed to it in time, however. The country’s National Union of Film Journalists handed Gassman their coveted Nastro d’Argento award for Best Actor and the film is now generally considered an undisputed classic, mentioned in the same breath as the work of directors as revered as Michelangelo Antonioni and Luchino Visconti. 

It came to be seen as particularly significant among social commentators who see the years of the “economic miracle” in a rather less positive light. While it was a period that saw prosperity and living standards rise after the bleak aftermath of World War Two, it can also be interpreted as the start of Italy’s transformation from a traditionally agricultural and family-centred society into a shallower, individualistic one driven by consumerism.

Il sorpasso influenced many later directors in their work, among them Martin Scorsese, the brilliant American director of Sicilian descent, who cited Il sorpasso as "the model" for his 1986 hit The Color of Money, which starred Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. 

Parioli is known for its
elegant tree-lined streets

Travel tip:

Though born in Milan, Dino Risi lived in Rome, including the last 30 years of his life in an apartment in the Aldrovandi Residence in the Parioli district, one of the Italian capital’s most elegant residential areas, renowned for its leafy boulevards, refined atmosphere and cultural landmarks. Nestled between the Villa Borghese gardens and the curve of the Tiber, Parioli developed in the early 20th century as a haven for Rome’s elite. Its name derives from the Monti Parioli hills, once dotted with pear orchards, now home to stately villas, Art Nouveau palazzi, and spacious apartments. The neighbourhood, favoured by diplomats, professionals and artists, is dotted with chic cafés, gourmet restaurants and tranquil parks such as Villa Ada, one of Rome’s largest green spaces and once the Rome residence of the Italian Royal family. Parioli is also the home of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna and the Auditorium Parco della Musica, which hosts major concerts and events. As well as a number of elegant hotels, Parioli has many luxury apartments to rent, which make it popular with well-heeled visitors to the capital.

Parioli, Rome hotels from Hotels.com

The modern Strada Statale I follows the coastal
route of the ancient Via Aurelia

Travel tip:

In Il sorpasso, the road trip embarked upon by Bruno and Roberto largely follows the course of the ancient Via Aurelia, which was originally built in 241BC by consul Gaius Aurelius Cotta, with the aim of connecting Rome with the colonies along the Tyrrhenian coast, ending in Pisa but linking with the Via Aemilia Scaura, which led from Pisa to Genoa. Combined with the Via Appia, which led from Rome to Apulia, it meant the Romans had use of a continuous route from the Ligurian coast in the northwest to the port city of Brindisi in the southeast. The Roman road stretched over 1,000km, with about 700km of the Via Aurelia’s route still in use as a paved road, incorporated into the Strada Statale 1, also known as SS1 Aurelia, which runs from Rome to the French border near Ventimiglia. The adaptation of the ancient road for modern use was helped by the way it was built. The Via Aurelia, like other Roman roads at the time, was paved at a width of approximately 4.6 metres (15 feet), to allow standard size chariots to pass each other comfortably.  The Romans, ever inventive, could be said to have been the pioneers of modern service areas in that every 15 miles or so along Via Aurelia, a ‘statio’ would be constructed to provide travellers with food, shelter, stables and a means to buy horses or other travel equipment for their journey.

Search Pisa hotels with Expedia

More reading:

How Dino Risi saw the potential in future stars such as Sophia Loren and Alberto Sordi

Otto e mezzo - the Fellini masterpiece hailed as ‘better’ than La dolce vita

Michelangelo Antonioni - the last great of Italian cinema’s post-war golden era

Also on this day:

343: The death of Saint Nicholas of Bari

1478: The birth of courtier and diplomat Baldassare Castiglione

1586: The birth of astronomer Niccolò Zucchi

1794: The birth of opera star and Royal voice coach Luigi Lablache

1921: The birth of lawyer and composer Piero Piccione

1975: The birth of businessman Andrea Agnelli

Home

Vittorio Cecchi Gori - entrepreneur

Ex-president of Fiorentina who produced two of Italy’s greatest films

Former Fiorentina owner and film
producer Vittorio Cecchi Gori

Vittorio Cecchi Gori, whose chequered career in business saw him produce more than 300 films and own Fiorentina’s football club but also saw him jailed for fraudulent bankruptcy, was born on this day in 1942 in Florence.

The son of Mario Cecchi Gori, whose production company he inherited, he provided the financial muscle behind two of Italy’s greatest films of recent years, Il Postino (1994), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, and Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful (1997), which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film.

He was also involved with the 1992 Oscar winner Mediterraneo, directed by Gabriele Salvatores, which also won in the Best Foreign Language film category.

Vittorio’s legacy from his father also included Fiorentina football club, of which he was president from 1993 to 2002.

Cecchi Gori with his late father Mario

With Cecchi Gori’s backing, while his involvement with the movie business was generating such huge profits, Fiorentina enjoyed great times.  He invested heavily in new players and persuaded the club’s icon, the Argentine forward Gabriel Batistuta, to stay after the viola were relegated in 1993.

With Claudio Ranieri as coach, they won the Coppa Italia in 1996, their first trophy in 20 years, following it up by winning the Super Cup later the same year and another Coppa Italia in 2001. In the 1999-2000 season they had played in the Champions League for the first time.

Yet the impetuous entrepreneur was to run into serious financial difficulties in subsequent years and went from revered to reviled in Florence after his own business collapse became Fiorentina’s collapse also.

His problems began in 1995, when he mounted an ambitious challenge against Italy’s television duopoly, held by the public broadcaster RAI and Silvio Berlusconi’s Fininvest.

Cecchi Gori with the Fiorentina star Gabriel Batistuta

Cecchi Gori bought up some small TV companies used their infrastructure to create a new channel, La7, and formulating an ambitious plan to acquire the rights to televise Serie A, the top division of the Italian Football League. He failed to secure them, however, ratings hit an all-time low and the new channel was sold for a huge loss.

An expensive divorce did not help, plunging him into huge personal debt, and in 2001 it was revealed that Fiorentina had debts equating to $50 million.  Their fortunes on the field were in decline also and things came to a head at the end of the 2001-02 season, when they were relegated from Serie A and promptly entered judicially-controlled administration, a form of bankruptcy.  Because of this, they were refused a place in Serie B for the following season and had to start again in Serie C, the third division, after effectively winding up the historic club and starting a new one.

At the same time, Cecchi Gori’s business empire was collapsing.   Prized assets such as his luxurious apartment in the Palazzo Borghese in Rome, the Multisala Adriano, his Rome cinema complex, and his film library were sold to raise funds, but to no avail.

Police investigations into his affairs dogged him for years.  In 2006 he was found guilty of illegally redirecting millions of dollars from Fiorentina into other businesses and in 2013 received a six-year jail term in connection with the bankruptcy of his production company, Safin Cinematografica.

Until his business problems, Cecchi Gori served as a member of the Italian Senate between 1994 and 2001, having been elected as a member of the centre-right Partito Popolare Italiano.

Florence's Stadio Artemio Franchi

Travel tip:

In a city best known for its magnificent Renaissance architecture, the Stadio Artemio Franchi, the home stadium of Fiorentina, is notable as a classic of early 20th century design. Opened in 1931, it was designed by the renowned architect and structural engineer Pier Luigi Nervi and constructed entirely of reinforced concrete with a 70m (230 ft) tower that bears the stadium's flagstaff. Originally called Stadio Giovanni Berta, after a local Fascist, it was changed to Stadio Comunale before taking the name of Franchi, then Italian Football Federation president, in 1991.

The narrow rear facade of the Palazzo
Borghese overlooks the Tiber

Travel tip:

The Palazzo Borghese, where Cecchi Gori had an apartment valued at almost €10 million, is a palace in Rome that was originally the home of the powerful Borghese family, who settled in Rome in the 16th century and also owned the Villa Borghese and surrounding gardens. The palace was nicknamed il Cembalo - the harpsichord - due to its unusual trapezoid shape, with its narrowest rear facade facing the Tiber river. The front facade - the keyboard of the harpsichord - opening on to the Fontanella di Borghese. The first floor has housed the Spanish Embassy since 1947.

Home