Castiglioncello, Italy
Mission Title: The Easy Life - Risi's Il Sorpasso and the Open Road
Mission By: Martina Magno, Emanuela Marchetti
Mission Finished on Date: 25-07-2008
SCRIPT
- Remember that Italians are still thrilled of having party lights glittering on the hood of their brand new car. From their their automobiles, Italian people can start new friendships, pick up chicks, yell coarse quips and make vulgar gestures, and pump out Gigi D'Alessio tunes from their stereo car. Remember you're from Italy: you're supposed to drive in a typical Italian way. Look for people who share your bad habits.
- Don't forget to start your journey from Rome, following the same itinerary covered by Bruno and Roberto along the via Aurelia, from Rome to Maremma, up to the Calafuria turn, in Castiglioncello.
- Get in Castiglioncello and interview the old people about the way this movie changed the city.
- Interview the Rosignano Marittimo's Mayor, Alessandro Nenci, who is about to name a street or a square after Dino Risi.
- How many movie actors and how many wannabe
- actors tourists did the movie attract? After which ideals were they chasing?
- How much does the aura of the movie affect the tourism in the area, and its imaginary?
- How have the most celebrated places of Il sorpasso changed? Make sure to watch the movie before leaving Rome to find the most relevant stopping places and record the possible changes.
- What's left under the Calafuria turn? Stop there and tape the cliffs.
- Get footage of yourself passing cars, but don't forget to drive carefully.
TRAVEL BAG
How can cinema still affect a road 50 years after?
There are curves that you cannot fail to remember. We're are not talking about breasts here, we're talking about the Calafuria reef near Castiglioncello. This is where Bruno Cortona (interpreted by Jean-Louis Trintignant) died in a car accident, in the Italian cult movie Il Sorpasso (The Easy Life) by Dino Risi. The shore between Livorno and Rosignano has always been famous as a tourist spot, but after hosting the set of Il Sorpasso, Vittorio Gassman's most popular movie, it turned into a symbolic place, forever branding the Italian cinematographic imaginary.
The movie by Dino Risi - who recently passed away at the age of 91 - was shot in the summer of 1961, casting places like the Pineta Marradi, the Pratovecchio and the Romito on the movie screens, giving a new dimension to the cinematographic holidays. Il Sorpasso pictured the road as a symbolic space, taking place at the end of the Italian boom ruined by the individualism and coarseness of industrial society, turning this movie into a national cultural phenomenon and allegedly inspired the American road movie Easy Rider.
The movie's most memorable symbol is the Via Aurelia, the Roman road which also gives the name to Vittorio Gassman's spyder, the Aurelia B24. The trip starts from the capital's high class quarters, winds down the "borgate romane" (the working-class suburbs of Rome) and runs along the Fregene and Capalbio shores, motoring through places that capture the generational myth of the summer holidays and the awkward euphoria of people who have just discovered the freedom of the open road.
Mission Report
Experimental 00's retrace of "Il Sorpasso". We start from noticing the
changes in the structural elements of popular travelling nowadays and
the totally modified scenery of the Aurelia road, then we shift and
look for social changes that affect places like Civitavecchia or the
modern Autogrills along the way. Approaching to the coast, we can
catch some features of the 50s: big cars, hot sun, we smell
strawberries and seawater. "Anyway, everything it's changed." said the
old man we met at "Circolo delle gomme lisce" in Castiglioncello. His
garage is a still living heart of the age of Gassman and Trintignant:
it's full of photos of famous Italian actors and directors such as
Mastroianni, Spaak, Visconti, and they all shared a way of life, ideals
and friendship. The old garage had been a meeting place for them and
for all the people who liked it. Most of all changes. Traffic, huge
industries of Tuscany and the growth of mass tourism hit the
geography, the little rich sunny city depicted by Dino
Risi’s tribute is now surrounded by the features of contemporary age, though rightly hencing at cultural revivals with the annual "Settimana del Cinema".
Martina Magno, Emanuela Marchetti
