Foodie Cinema | Marches Obsession! Involtini, eels and Ancona fish stew

The difficult life of a masterpiece

The young tramp Gino Costa (Massimo Girotti) arrives clandestinely on board a truck at a trattoria on the banks of the River Po run by Giuseppe Bragana (Juan de Landa) and his wife Giovanna (Clara Calamai). At first, the owner insults Costa trying to get him to leave until he realises his skill as a mechanic and derision becomes friendship. Meanwhile, Gino and Giovanna fall in love immediately, which will lead them to kill Bragana.
Based on novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain this is one of the novelist’s many works that would provide the basis for film noirs by great directors. Titles include Double Indennity, 1936, which Billy Wilder, working with Raymond Chandler on the screenplay, would make into a film in 1944.
Obsession is also something of a road movie, unfolding along the River Po and the via Emilia. The Fascist regime decided to censure and destroy all copies of the film because they were disturbed by the themes of remaking a family, of setting off to other places and leaving the past behind and the character of the Spaniard. All the copies were destroyed, except for the negative that Visconti managed to hide and which luckily provided the copies existing today.
The film was shot mostly in Canaro, in the province of Rovigo, on the main set for the “trattoria Il sorpasso”; in Boretto (province of Reggio Emilia), Codigoro and Comacchio (province of Ferrara) and in Ferrara itself, between piazza della Repubblica and via Saraceno where the former bar Ferrara was located. A long sequence includes Ancona, especially the crossing over the train station, the molo Santa Maria, via Cialdini, piazzale Duomo (during the San Ciriaco fair) and scalone Nappi.

Obsession: involtini or eel?

A little more than four minutes into the film the coup de foudre strikes: Gino crosses the trattoria and heads into the kitchen where Giovanna is singing and doing her nails. With a proud look, he tells her that he wants to eat and puts money on the table, he takes off his shirt to reveal his vest and the powerful bare shoulders that she notices and comments on, there’s an exchange of glances and comments between the two and a cautious intimacy grows that hints at a prelude to love. Giovanna heads to the kitchen and hands him a pan with something in it, he eats from it with his hands and comments on her cooking skills and her husband’s luck in having her as a wife.
There is no certainty as to the identity of the dish that conquered Gino and there are contrasting opinions on this, perhaps unimportant, element. In her book, Il gusto del cinema italiano in cento ricette, Laura Delli Colli considers that the pan held involtini (stuffed rolls). However, the Ferrara version of involtini contains asparagus and bacon while the pan appears to hold something more solid and fleshy. In theory the trattoria is located not far from Codigoro (30 minutes by bicycle), in the area of Comacchio, which is known for its eels and capitoni (female eels). Aside from the easy symbolism and amusing onomatopoeia, capitone in umido (stewed eel) which is cooked in a pan with many herbs, no tomato and spritzed with wine and vinegar is still the most popular dish today in the trattorias where truck drivers and local workers eat.

Visconti, Stalin and the fish stew of Ancona

What do Luchino Visconti and Joseph Stalin have in common? Probably nothing except for their stays in what was, until 2013, the best hotel of Ancona, the Hotel Roma and Pace, now closed and slowly becoming derelict. Visconti stayed there during the Obsession shoot while an extremely young Stalin, fleeing Tsarist Russia in 1911, worked there as a night porter for almost 2 years before hiding in Switzerland and then London after which he returned to Russia for the 1917 revolution. Stalin arrived in Ancona by sea because one of the most active anarchist groups in the country, lead by Enrico Malatesta, was based in the city harbour. The anarchic network was very active in assisting Russian refugees in their flight through Europe and was connected in various countries, also helping the emigres find work and travel beyond borders.
Another thing that Visconti and Stalin probably had in common was a passion for the main dish of Ancona’s cuisine: brodetto. Brodetto from Ancona is a tasty soupy stew made from 13 types of fish, the only fish stew in Italy to include eel or female eel among the ingredients. In Italy’s harbour cities there are an infinite variety of fish stew that began as cucina povera, working-class food made with the small fish and net catches that were not suitable for sale and so destinated to be consumed by the fishermen and their families. It would have been a main course or a single course, made with fish, old bread, onion and tomato.

Brodetto from Ancona

Brodetto from Ancona can still boast of being the patriarch of all fish stews. Skirting the diatribe between caciucco and brodetto, we will simply provide you with the recipe from La Cucina Italiana.
INGREDIENTS

• 2 kg red mullet, flounder, gurnard, cod, small eels, grey mullet, mackerel, common smooth-hound, squid, cuttlefish, mantis shrimp, scampi, large prawn
• 700 g tomato
• 100 g onion
• garlic
• parsley
• olive oil
• white wine vinegar
• toasted, crusty bread
• salt and pepper

COOKING TIME: 1 h

DIFFICULTY: medium

PORTIONS: 8 people

METHOD

1. Clean and gut all the fish.
2. Soften thinly sliced onion in a glass of oil, two garlic cloves (minced) and a large bunch of parsley.
3. Peel the tomatoes and discard seeds, when crushed add to the onion and season with salt and pepper, then add the fish, begin with the squid and cuttlefish, then the shrimp and scampi, followed by the rest of the fish, keeping cod and gurnard to the last.
4. On a high heat, add half a glass of vinegar and simmer uncovered for about 15 minutes.
5. Serve the soup over slices of bread.

Obsession: recipe to make your own “eel” trailer

This game is for anyone who wants to make a homemade trailer for Obsession and eel. We’re providing the time codes to some clips from the film. Any edit program will work for this. Insert the following data into the timeline and you’ll have your trailer in minutes.

• Use the film title Obsession
• attach from 04m.03s to 06m.05s
• attach from 15m.00s to 16m.06s
• add the end title card “End”
• enjoy it in company, and if you haven’t yet seen the film, watch it!