Fanfaron

Fanfaron ( It Sorpasso ) is an Italian film of Dino Risi of 1962. This film constitutes one of the frescos most representative of the Italy of the wellbeing and the Italian Economic miracle of this time.

The film

The big part of criticism of the company and the manners, although mixed with the presentation comic and diverting with the comedy, make film a proclamation of the cinematographic kind of the Comédie to Italian the. The membership of this kind nevertheless is discussed by many cinematographic critics, which identify in the chief of work of Risi some innovative and original formal aspects.

If however the Italy described in film is petty, lazy, middle-class, hypocritical and over-devout, as in other preceding cinematographic representations that one can define of comedy in Italian, some characteristics representative of clear lines of rupture compared to this kind are in fact present in film. For example, the two protagonists, Bruno Cortona and Roberto Mariani, largely exceed the simplistic and caricatural representation comedies. Those have a complete and defined psychology (the realizer was graduate in psychology), in particular Jean-Louis Trintignant, which incarnate with a great intensity a timid young man, ripe loser but with regard to its feeling of social membership, attracted by a social diagram of success, but in the same time locked up in types of behavior borrowed from the Roman hard-working lower middle class.

The duel psychological Cortona-Mariani, constantly present, is a new aspect for the kind of the comedy. In the same way, compared to other films of the kind, the recourse to the Voice-over to express the thoughts of Roberto Mariani and contradiction between those and its acts in company of Bruno Cortona, like his initiatory course, is completely new. The protagonists, because of their difference, attract each other and push back, and involve in their turn the spectators towards two poles distinct and contradictory of social identification, which strongly distinguishes them from the characters that Alberto Sordi could create, which is the subject generally of a light contempt or a comic compassion.

Fanfaron mark an additional difference compared to the others comedies with Italian the. The personality of the Réalisateur is marked in this film, and its role is not limited to the only participation and the completions of the Scénario. The dynamics of the scenes and the succession of the plans are extremely elaborate and are the fruit of only one creative spirit. Sometimes the film moves away towards the kind Documentaire and the details of environment are precise at the point to resemble cinematographic information which one could see at the time with the cinema, as in the scene of the guinguette at the seaside, when the two protagonists comment on the attitudes of the dancers. Dino Risi is not satisfied to film, but it developed also itself the sequence shots, prepared in advance the rate/rhythm of the scenes and the counterparts, as well as contents of some of them, then leaving a greater place to the creativity of the actors. The result is light and amusing in the style of the author, but at the same time he proposes like testimony, documentary and satire, moving away much from the usual limits of the comedy. At certain times, for example when Roberto Mariani tries to take the bus with Civitavecchia, the representation of the company of the time becomes ultra-realistic, almost with the manner of Pasolini.

It results from it a film rate/rhythm by fast sequences and the memorable counterparts of Vittorio Gassman finish distinct scenes which begin and finish with a certain continuity, which constitutes a very cinematographic diagram.

Other formal elements return film innovating. The film is indeed regarded by some as true a Road movie, the first of the kind in Italy, since the report/ratio with the road, throughout the history, is in fact structural. It is the road, in his active and passive relationship with the two protagonists, who signs the course of the history since a precise starting point (one August 15th deserted Rome) until the tragedy turn of Calafuria, shortly after the area of Quercianella, on the Tuscan coast .

Cortona and Mariani sometimes briefly move away from the road, but they go back there always finally, and the road is the symbol of a nation which moves quickly towards the end of a dream of collective and generalized wellbeing. The jump of the car in the vacuum, under the curious glance distracted bathers, is symbolic system. The broken life of the honest and naive young man and the danger represented by its Alter ego Cortona are also symbolic system. Those represent the two faces of a country to a crossroads of its history. The first, as described at the beginning, will be allured and will die, at the end of a dream, leaving the free field with the other Italy, crafty one, individualist and without morals. It is undoubtedly this pessimistic vein, this deep mistrust towards the Italian man, his true possibilities, the history even of the Italian people and this hard critic of his practices which makes of this film a Comédie with Italian the and a chief of work of the kind according to much.

Other elements of film can be regarded as symbols. It is not by chance that the events proceed on the Via Aurelia, the artery which leaves Rome and moves idly towards the coasts of Fregene and the top Latium. It is indeed the road which, more than very other during the Sixties, represented the collective myth and générationnel holidays, escape and wellbeing. The Via Aurelia is also a form of social synthesis. Its layout, which leaves the center of the city, crosses initially the residential districts of the capital in growth, close to the historical center, then briefly crosses the popular quarters, and, passing quickly by the last agricultural sectors of the Latium, joined the popular beaches of the coast or the small easy centers of the area of Fregene, Santa Marinella and finishes with Capalbio, after a multitude of illegal constructions. The people that the two protagonists meet during their voyage are in fact a very precise outline of the Roman company of the time.

Even the car, a Lancia Aurelia B24 is also a symbol (the similarity of the name with the Via Aurelia is not a chance). The car, available in 1956, initially was the prototype of the elegant and refined car, but it well quickly became representative of the aggressive car, imposing, with the modified engine. In many scenes of film, one can see his body. The right side keeps the traces of the work of a carriage-builder, repairs are still visible, which shows the mishaps of the car and its owner. Dino Risi chose this car model since it precisely represents the change of direction of an idea, that of] of the economic miracle which was going soon to be finished, leaving the place to a divided and contradictory company in which only the good with nothing opportunist and their values morals would profit from the social wellbeing.

The original soundtrack was composed by Riz Ortolani, but the most important scenes of film are rates/rhythms by pieces which were sails very about it at that time among which Saint Tropez Twist of Peppino di Capri, Guarda like dondolo of Edoardo Vianello, and Vecchio frac (or the uomo in frac ) of Domenico Modugno. The process can seem common today, but it was at the time very original, and the realizer has to employ this method more precisely to describe the characters and their feelings. The initial scene, in which Vittorio Gassman wanders with his convertible in the streets of Rome in the search of an open tobacco and a telephone, is precisely underlined by a more nervous musical piece which on the one hand accentuates the surrealism of the scene, and on the other hand sounds as dark predicts end of transfered.

Synopsis

Rome, one August fifteen. The city is deserted. Bruno Cortona (Vittorio Gassman), vigorous forty, amateur of sporting control and pretty women, saunters by car in the search of a cigarette pack and a public phone. Roberto Mariani (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a student in right remained downtown to prepare examinations, accommodates it at his place. Under the impulse of the exubérance and off-handedness of Cortona, they undertake a voyage conveys some which will take them along towards destinations increasingly more remote. The Mariani young person will be several times about to give up Cortona, but either a chance or an unavowable attraction and a fascination will always bring back it on its steps for a course of initiation to the life, and he will see the distance between reality and what he imagined concerning the social love and reports/ratios, until the fine tragedy during a risky going beyond which causes the death of the student.

Anecdotes

In the beginning, the scenario was written for Alberto Sordi in the role of Bruno Cortona. The production was then allotted to Mario Cecchi Gori which insisted to allot the role to Vittorio Gassman. Indeed, Alberto Sordi had a franchise agreement which bound it to Dino de Laurentiis.
Risi had thought of two different ends. In addition to that which appears in film, another was to be turned, in which Roberto Mariani, exceeded by Bruno Cortona, kills it. But it turned forever for financial reasons. In addition to these two ends under consideration by the realizer, the production had considered of it a third, which saw the two protagonists moving away towards their goal, which is an image much more optimistic and consensual.
the film was not very well accommodated by criticism at its exit. Risi tells that during the first projection there was only one about fifty people in the room. Success near the public arrived little by little, thanks to the word of mount initiated by the first spectators. The benefit were then exceptional: the film had cost approximately 300 million liras, and it brought back almost two billion them. The dedication by criticisms arrived only after the Années 1980.
the film left to the the United States under the name The Easy Life . Refusals Hopper, the realizer of the film Easy To wrinkle , took as a starting point the Fanfaron for its scenario, which is regarded as the masterpiece of the Road movie.
Rodolfo Sonego, in the book It Cinema secondo Sonego writes under the direction of Tatti Sanguinelli, affirms being the true author of the scenario, which it would have then sold in Dino De Laurentiis. There was nevertheless no legal continuation, and neither Rodolfo Sonego, nor Dino De Laurentiis did not take advantage of their right by judicial proceedings, and Sonego affirms that the result produced by Mario Cecchi Gori is very faithful to its scenario.
In 2002, at the time of the fortieth birthday of the exit of the Fanfaron , a Lion of Gold was decreed in Dino Risi for the whole of its career.
the initial scene of the film in which Gassman traverses the deserted streets of Rome was turned in the district of Balduina. This district was inhabited by many actors and singers and was a symbol of the Italian economic Boom. In the apartments cossus lived many senior officials, rich contractors, famous lawyers, building contractors, called with contempt palazzinari . Gassman circulates initially in Via Luigi Rizzo, which had just been finished for the Olympic Games of 1960, stops to telephone, then saunters in the streets of the district (Via Ugo Bartolomei, Appiano, Quinto Fabio Pittore, Eutropio, Ugo de Carolis, Largo Damiano Chiesa, Via Giuseppe Rosso, Della Balduina). It stops again for drinking with a fountain in Via Proba Petronia, when it sees Trintignant accoudé with her window.
In the Italian program televised It Caso Scafroglia , diffused in 2002, Corrado Guzzanti carried out a parody of film, using like main characters Umberto Bossi (Bruno Cortona) and Giulio Tremonti (Roberto Mariani).

Data sheet

Title: Fanfaron
original Title: It sorpasso
Realization: Dino Risi
Scenario: Dino Risi, Ettore Scola and Ruggero Maccari
Production: Mario Cecchi Gori (Fair Film)
Music: Rice Ortolani
Photography: Alfio Contini
Assembly: Maurizio Lucidi
Country of origin: Italy
Format: Black and white - Mono
Kind: Comedy
Lasted: 105 minutes
Coming out date: 1962

Distribution

Vittorio Gassman: Bruno Cortona
Jean-Louis Trintignant: Roberto Mariani
Catherine Spaak: Lili, the girl of Bruno
Claudio Gora: Bibi

Distinctions

elected better foreign film by the circle of criticisms of New York
price of the best realizer to the Festival Internacional de Cine of Mar del Plata according to the jury in 1963 for Dino Risi
price of the best interpreter masculine 1962 on behalf of the national union of Italian criticism for Vittorio Gassman

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