One of the most difficult things a storyteller, let alone a filmmaker, can do is balance the tragic and comic within a single narrative. It requires a mastery of tone, pacing, and an innate common sense concerning what is socially inappropriate. There's a reason why Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful (1997) was hailed as a masterpiece while Jerry Lewis' The Day the Clown Cried (1972) has yet to see the light of day. Dino Risi's Il Sorpasso, one of the great triumphs of the Commedia all'italiana film genre, manages to find the right balance...at least until the last twenty or so minutes when the film becomes outright maudlin. But the film's structure as a road movie featuring two friends seeking respite from life in the Italian countryside forgives and outright validates this evolution of tone. For the road movie is one of the single most allegorical and symbolic of film genres. The road represents life, the passengers the Everyman (or Everywoman), the pit-stops and road-side distractions the different phases of an average person's life, and their eventual arrival at their destination death. Is it any wonder why so many road movies end with the sudden deaths of their protagonists? The tone of Il Sorpasso wavers between the light and comic and the dark and tragic seemingly at the flip of a coin. But that's just the way it should have been.
7/10
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