Exemplary, if familiar commedia all'Italiana from little known director Mauro Morassi (he died young after this, just his fourth film). With its starry cast (Vittorio Gassman, Anouk Aimée, Jean-Louis Trintignant) and rising creatives (music: Ennio Morricone; script: Ettore Scola), it’s long been due for rediscovery outside of Italy. Reteamed after Dino Risi’s IL SORPASSO/’62*, Gassman & Trintignant (here in a smaller role) are longtime pals who are missing out on Italy’s ‘Il Boom’ windfall. But whereas Trintignant’s intellectual is content (financially if not romantically), Gassman, happily married to Aimée, only sees how well his less talented contemporaries are doing, catching breaks to prosperity he’s missing out on. Unaware of the hardening Aimée sees growing in him, and at work neither as popular nor as indispensable as he thinks he is, Gassman jumps at the chance to go into debt to buy some land adjacent to a big development his company is moving on. It’s sure to jump in value, but he’ll need to pull every string, tap every wealthy school chum & pressure every relative he’s badmouthed for years. How low will he sink? How much humiliation can he take? And what past loves can his wife ‘leverage’ to help him out. Even if he does reach his goal, what will be left of him at the other end? Gassman tackles this with little vanity, it’s really more an Alberto Sordi role (Gassman less comically stylized), but there’s little to complain about in the cast, film technique, pacing or the coruscating portrait of winning at any cost thru abasement/loss of self. You can have it all, but only if it means nothing. Morassi’s death at 40 obviously a major loss; especially with the commedia all'Italiana movement not yet played out.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *IMDb lists Dino Risi as uncredited co-director, and the film could well have come from the remarkable run of films Risi was putting out at the time: IL VEDOVO/’59; IL MATTATORE/’60; UNA VITA DIFFICILE/’61; IL SORPASSO/’62. The last now generally regarded as his masterpiece. (You probably know Risi from the Al Pacino remake of SCENT OF A WOMAN/’74 which originally starred Vittorio Gassman.) Plus, those three earlier Morassi features to hunt up. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/02/il-sorpasso-easy-life-1962.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/03/profumo-di-donna-scent-of-woman-1974.html
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