Il sorpasso
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Synopsis
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.
Picture 8/10
Dino Risi’s road comedy Il sorpasso gets a dual-format release from The Criterion Collection, the film presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The Blu-ray presents the film with a new 1080p/24hz high-definition transfer on a dual-layer disc. A standard-definition version is presented on the first dual-layer DVD and has been enhanced for widescreen televisions.
Coming from a new 2K restoration the presentation is on par with most of Criterion’s releases as of late. The black and white transfer delivers excellent definition with a high amount of detail in both close-ups and long shots. Contrast can look a bit boosted at times but darker scenes present nicely balanced black levels that don’t crush out the details. Digital artifacts aren’t an issue, with film grain, though pretty fine most of the time, being nicely handled.
The DVD’s transfer is a fairly general standard-def downgrade, containing some noticeable compression and a noticeably fuzzier image, though I feel most of this is just a limitation of the format. It still delivers strong black levels and a decent amount of detail.
The print has a few noticeable marks, including some scratches, thin tram lines, and minor marks, burned in Italian subtitles in a few places, and some moments with a heavier amount of grain, but nothing I would say is offensively bad. In all the restoration has ironed most of the defects and the transfer remains clean and fairly filmic.
Audio 6/10
The film receives a lossless linear PCM mono track on the Blu-ray and a Dolby Digital 1.0 mono track on the DVD. It’s a bit edgy, with the squeal of the car horn being particularly obnoxious (though maybe that’s intentional) but volume levels are adequate and the track is free of damage. Any issues with it can solely be blamed on the age of the materials.
Extras 8/10
Criterion manages to pack a lot onto this release, starting with an introduction by Alexander Payne. It’s a quick 5-minute video where the director recalls first seeing the film (on a VHS bootleg,) how it played a part in influencing Sideways, and the film’s presentation of Italy and its people at the time.
Criterion next digs up a 20-minute interview from 2004 with director Dino Risi, speaking with writer Jean A. Gili. Here the director talks about the film’s development, sharing some stories that played a part in influencing the script. He talks about the “eventual” success of the film (it opened disappointingly but word-of-mouth saved it) and the producer’s concern over the ending, while also covering the casting of Trintignant and Gassman.
Risi offers a nice overview of the film’s production, as does actor Jean-Louis Trintignant in his interview taken from French television before an airing of the film. How he got the role is actually a bit of a surprise, where he actually replaced actor Jacques Perrin, and he only got the role because he looked like a stand-in they were using for certain shots. He speaks fondly of working with Risi and Gassman (in his first comic performance) and recalls shooting the finale. It runs about 8-minutes.
Screenwriter Ettore Scola appears in the next interview filmed in 2013, talking about Italian comedies of the time and the development of the script. He ends up repeating some of the stories told by Risi, though spends more time on the development of Bruno’s character. Yet again we hear about the producer’s wish to change the ending and the film’s reception, though he does share an interesting story about meeting Dennis Hopper, who was very fond of the film (and may have played a bit into the development of Easy Rider.) Combined with the other firsthand accounts it’s another good overview of the making of the film, though repeats a lot of what we heard in the other interviews.
Film scholar Rémi Fournier Lanzoni next offers a 16-minute analysis of the film, talking about Italy’s emergence from Fascism, the sudden economic boom it was experiencing, and how the film offers a representation of that, with Bruno’s character sort of floating through, surrounded by the new consumerism and the change morals, the film not only criticizing the new Italy, but also criticizing some of its old ways. Lanzoni offers an excellent amount of context to the film, actually helping in my appreciation of it a bit more.
Back to Castiglioncello presents 11-minutes worth of excerpts from L’estate di Bruno Cortona: Castiglioncello nell’anno del sorpasso. Through these excerpts we get quick interviews with Marco Risi (the director’s son,) Paola Gassman (daughter of Vittorio,) actress Mila Stanic (who speaks solely of the train station scene,) Scola again, Trintignant, actor Giancarlo Giannini, and director of photography Alfio Contini. This segment focuses on the beach sequences, even providing colour home movies of the shoot. Contini talks about the photography (which he doesn’t think was anything particularly special) and even talks about how they filmed the ending.
Criterion next includes the 55-minute 2006 documentary A Beautiful Vacation, which is a bio of director Dino Risi. It starts off in a dark manner, with Risi recalling his desire to kill himself (though the story turns a little comical when he recalls trying to buy the gun to do the job.) From here the documentary sort of goes through the numbers, focusing on how he got into his career (purely by accident) and then looks through a number of his films, focusing on his more famous ones, including Poor but Beautiful and of course Il sorpasso. It doesn’t stand out from any other features of its type and really just goes by the expected rhythms. But it’s still an informative introduction to the director and his work.
We then get more excerpts, this time from a 2005 documentary Speaking with Gassman. Risi yet again shows up, talking about his work with Gassman, from first meeting him to casting him in comedies, despite his dramatic work before then. Mixed in here are other interviews featuring Gassman and Risi, the two talking about their work, both failures and successes. It unfortunately gets a bit depressing when they look at the latter part of his career, where the audiences stopped going to his films and the actor fell into a depression. Despite this it’s an excellent reflection on the work between Gassman and Risi.
The features then closes with the film’s original theatrical trailer.
The included booklet features some more scholarly material, starting with an essay by Phillip Lopate, looking at the film’s examination of Italy’s economic boom and a number of references made in the film. Antonio Monda then writes about Italian comedies during the period between 1960 and 1963, and examines how this film connected with audiences at the time. Criterion closes the booklet off with a number of excerpts from books and interviews quoting Risi about his work.
It’s made up mostly of interviews with cast and crew, and there’s a lot of repetition in stories unfortunately, but the set has some excellent scholarly material and a lot of information about the production.
Closing
It’s a nice special edition, featuring a strong high-definition transfer and an excellent wealth of material.
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