in Criterion Month

Il Sorpasso (1962)

An uptight person and a free spirit get in a car together, set off on the open road, and hijinks ensue. There are lots of types of road movies, but this formula feels like the most pure to me. I’m not sure how many movies tried this approach before Il Sorpasso, but I have to assume it wasn’t the first to attempt this dynamic, even if there’s still something so fresh about this movie that it feels like it might as well have invented the modern road dramedy. Which is a little odd to say, since it also embodies a very specific time in Italian history and filmmaking, where the neorealism of the country’s post-World War II morphed into something lighter and more carefree, as the country’s economic boom saw its citizens livin’ la dolce vita.

Il Sorpasso begins during Ferragosto, which apparently is an Italian holiday that causes most people living in Rome to abandon the bustling city, as it’s nearly empty when we see Bruno (played by Vittorio Gassman) tearing through the abandoned city in a convertible in the film’s opening scenes. The first person he manages to lock eyes with is a young law student named Roberto (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who is minding his own business studying in his apartment when Bruno casually asks from the street below if he can use his telephone. Roberto hesitantly obliges, but Bruno fails to contact the friends he was planning on meeting up with, so he offers to get a drink with Roberto as repayment for letting him use his phone, which Roberto takes him up on.

From there, Bruno drives north with Roberto through the countryside and eventually along the Italian coast, meeting various people along the way while Bruno exhibits what a brash, cocky loudmouth he is. And yet, Roberto can’t help but be drawn to Bruno despite the two having little in common. Much of their interactions with people are light and breezy, but the two men’s relationship deepens over the course of the two days they spend on the road with each other. First, because they stop by the family estate of some of Roberto’s relatives, while the personable Bruno can’t help but charm them more than Roberto ever did. Then, later in the film, Roberto eventually learns that the philandering, seemingly bachelor-esque Bruno has a wife and a daughter that he is somewhat estranged from, but still has some desire to be a part of their lives.

The phrase “il sorpasso” translates to “the overtaking”, which describes what happens when an aggressive driver tailgates another car and then honks their horn before passing in front of them. It’s something Bruno does a lot, since he drives the same way he lives — erratically and without abandon.  While Jean-Louis Tritingnant makes for a very serviceable straight man in the film, it’s the character Bruno and the performance by Vittorio Gassman that are really the heart of it. He’s a lot of fun during the first half of the movie, even if the custom horn on his car becomes a bit tedious to listen to, and the film similarly has a kind of fleet-footed fun to it that zips along at a nice pace.

But it’s in the film’s second half where this movie really takes off as being more than just a very watchable comedy. I often think about whether movies about men and their behavior are all that essential these days, since the male perspective has dominated movies for so damn long. But a movie like Il Sorpasso reminds why there is still some value in trying to penetrate the male psyche. Bruno’s life spent cruising from town to town, looking for women and generally a good time seems like most men’s ideal existence. But as the movie delves into Bruno’s past and his failed relationships, it paints a more complete — and often sadder — picture of why he is the way he is. The partying and his affable nature is all a cover for his various flaws, and watching the way director Dino Rissi threads this needle of keeping the film light and bubbly while also going deeper as a character study is hard not to be charmed by.

Another thing that’s hard not to be charmed by is the way Rissi shoots all of the various people and places that Bruno and Roberto come across during their trek across Italy. There’s a real warmth and humanness to these interactions that feels quintessentially Italian, and you can see Rissi’s love of all the various small towns that make up the country, as we only get a few short early scenes within the more metropolitan Rome. As I mentioned earlier, the film also captures an exuberant vibe that Italy was feeling during the late ’50s and early ’60s, even if the film’s downbeat ending is a little more in line with the earlier neorealist films.

I was mainly drawn to reviewing Il Sorpasso because Alexander Payne had always cited it as a big influence when he was making Sideways, and it’s not hard at all to see the resemblance. Much like in a Payne film, Il Sorpasso‘s characters start off seeming like comedic archetypes, but as the film progresses, they appear to be richer and nuanced than you ever would’ve imagined. Quite simply, it hits just the right tone between comedy and drama that I’m looking for, so it has ended up being the rare Criterion Month movie that I could easily see myself watching again in the near future.