Dino Risi

Google Translate suggests The Overtaking as a translation of Il Sorpasso. It’s not perfect – the less elegant “overtaking manoeuvre” is more precise – but it knocks the English-language title of the film, The Easy Life, out of the park. Maybe, in 1962, when the film came out, international distributors were trying to cash in on the success of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (which translates as The Sweet Life) from two years earlier. Any port in a storm, I suppose. Foreign-language movies have always been a tough sell in countries where English is the first language. Though both films are in black and white, the comparisons pretty much stop there. Il Sorpasso is a … Read more