Il sorpasso is a 1962 Italian film directed by Dino Risi featuring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Vittorio Gassman. Its English title is The Easy Life, though sometimes it remains untranslated.
Roberto Mariani (Trintignant), a young and timid law student, is swept up into a whirlwind two-day adventure by Bruno Cortona (Gassman), an energetic middle-aged man. Life will never be the same for Roberto; in fact, life will never be for him at all...
It is considered one of the main films in the genre of commedia all'italiana, although its tone is atypically dark for the genre, and it approaches a straight drama with some breezy moments.
Tropes:
- Broken Pedestal: Roberto loses some of his respect for Bruno and his devil-may-care attitude to life when they stop by the house of his estranged wife, leading to an awkward confrontation between Bruno, his teenage daughter Lilli, and the latter's much older boyfriend Bibi.
- The Casanova: Bruno flirts with every woman he and Roberto meet during their two-day adventure: passing German motorists, a waitress at a seaside restaurant, fellow beachgoers... and if he is unable to hold their interest for more than a few minutes, he simply moves on to the next potential conquest.
- Cool Car: Lancia Aurelia. Bruno also drives it down the eponymous Via Aurelia.
- Determinator: Bruno. In the end he is all too eager to overtake another car on the road.
- Downer Ending: Moments after telling Bruno that he's enjoyed the previous two days more than any other in his life, Roberto is killed when Bruno has to swerve out of the way of a truck, sending his car plummeting over a cliff. As a dazed Bruno begins giving a statement to a passing policeman, he realises he doesn't even know Roberto's last name.
- Drives Like Crazy: Bruno drives at breakneck speed and is cheerfully reckless about passing slower cars while honking his horn (a manoeuvre known in Italian as "il sorpasso", hence the film's title), leading to several confrontations with the police and other motorists. This ultimately leads to tragedy when he pulls around a slower car straight into the path of an oncoming truck, swerves to avoid it, and crashes over a cliff.
- Foreshadowing: "You know what the best age is? I'll tell you. The age you are, day by day. Until you croak of course." Roberto only lives one more day after hearing this advice.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Know-it-all Bruno is in his mid-30s, while green, immature Roberto is in his early 20s. Though in real life Gassman was only 8 years older than Trintignant.
- Shout-Out: Bruno mentions having seen (and largely slept through) Michelangelo Antonioni's L'eclisse, which was also released in 1962.Bruno: I really like Modugno. This song drives me crazy. It seems so simple, but it's got everything: loneliness, inability to communicate, and that stuff that's all the rage now... alienation, like in Antonioni's films. Did you see L'eclisse?
Roberto: Yes.
Bruno: I fell asleep. Had a nice snooze. Great director, Antonioni.. - Untranslated Title: The film is often referred to in English as Il sorpasso.
