(by Andrea Gropplero - Cinecittario: Archivio Luce)
Hundreds of films have been shot in Tuscany and dozens of masterpieces which, of course, include Mario Monicelli’s Amici Miei (1975). This is one of Italy’s most beloved films, a love affair that has lasted for 45 years without generational fluctuations, a benchmark and key example of Italian-style comedy (commedia all’italiana).
Print itineraryA natural set, Tuscany offers a thousand different landscapes and has always cast a marvellous spell: its beauty, food and wine make any company seem the best. Amici miei was originally conceived of and written by Pietro Germi who could not direct it because of the illness that caused his premature death in 1974. It was admirably brought to the screen by the great Mario Monicelli who included an opening credit – “A film by Pietro Germi” – before his own name as director. The title of the film seems itself to refer to Germi’s own farewell to cinema, shortly before his death: “my friends, see you later, I’m off now”. Good company in Amici miei is the saving grace for five friends from Florence in their fifties whose jokes and japes help them evade daily life. A penniless aristocrat, a journalist, a bar owner, a mediocre architect and a brilliant hospital specialist take every opportunity to meet up and hang out, with no particular aim, in the countryside outside Florence, always on the hunt for jokes to play, good food and heady wines, with the hope of finding a little love, easy sex and unencumbered joy.
The film was very successful at the box office and with the critics, winning two David di Donatellos, for Monicelli’s direction and for the lead character Ugo Tognazzi. Tuscany is a land of many historical centres, infinite landscapes and cultural, natural, food and wine itineraries. This may explain why it has been the setting for so many important films, shot between Florence, Siena, Pisa, Leghorn, Arezzo, Prato, Lucca, especially in the countryside stretching from Chiantishire to the Crete Senesi. It is land that seems purpose-made for aimless wandering, thanks partly to the hill roads created by Lorenzo de’ Medici which follow the ridge of a rise and not the valley (as roads previously would) thereby allowing the traveller to enjoy the breath-taking views.
The land of the Renaissance, birthplace of the genius Leonardo Da Vinci, the great artist Michelangelo Buonarroti, the inventor of the Italian language Dante Alighieri, also generated the world’s most famous puppet: Pinocchio, thanks to another great storyteller, Carlo Collodi. There are many film versions based on this great book, the most recent being those directed by Roberto Benigni and Matteo Garrone. Pinocchio is also present in many ways, as an archetype of Italian culture, and in many films that are not based on Collodi’s invention. These include Bernardo Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty (1996), shot in the hills outside Siena in Casale Podernuovi in San Regolo, a hamlet of Gaiole in Chianti and Villa Bianchi Bandinelli in Castelnuovo Berardenga.
Where is the link between Stealing Beauty and Pinocchio? Well, the story narrates the arrival of an American girl at the house of family friends in Tuscany to sit for a sculptor who knew her dead mother. It is actually the Pinocchio story told backwards and in a female version, where the girl discovers her true self on seeing herself sculpted in wood and, at the same time, she discovers that the sculptor is her biological father. It is curious that the first version of Garrone’s Pinocchio, whose preparation was interrupted by filming for Dogman, was to feature a little girl in the lead role (Alida Baldari Calabria), who would later play the young Blue Fairy in the 2019 final version. Perhaps Garrone also sees an enigmatic female side to Pinocchio like the Mona Lisa, her smile and the Tuscany in the painting’s background.
The background behind the Mona Lisa is Etruria, the land of the Etruscans. Tuscan cooking descends from the history of this population. Everything that is known about the Etruscans comes from ancient Roman sources and archaeological discovery and, despite the use of new technology, it is still not easy to fully establish what their nutrition was like. It is known that the Etruscans were a people of farmers in a very fertile land, one of hunters, breeders and fishermen. It is known that their daily diet was based on cereals and pulses, especially amongst the poorest sections of the population, and a large part of the soups and vegetables minestras still present in the Tuscan diet, including those with pulses (especially beans) and farro (spelt) derive from that. Although the same ingredients are also present in the ribollita, this dish dates to more recent times between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
During this time frame, actually in Tuscany, the use of cutlery became widespread and Catherine de Medici took the custom to France when she married the king, where previously aristocrats had eaten with their hands using thumb, index and middle fingers. Calling it cutlery, however, is not that easy: first came the knife, worn in a sheath at the waist by all men and “placed” on the table for use with food, then over time came the spoon (the most ancient of cutlery) whose name in Italian cucchiaio comes from cochlea, shell. The spoon was used by the poorest classes whose diet consisted mostly of soups and brothy dishes. During the 10th and 11th centuries with the advent of bread in Tuscany, dishes like ribollita came into being: a base of kale, spelt, beans, savoy cabbage and chard that was usually cooked on the Church imposed meat-free Fridays in large quantities and then heated up again over the following days with the addition of leftovers, especially old hard bread.
Forks and spoons were already in use in the Byzantine era, a custom that spread only in the Middle Ages and was met with great hostility by the Catholic Church who considered the fork to be an instrument of laxity and a symbol of the devil. After the darkness of the Middle Ages, cutlery reappeared on the tables of the Florentines, along with new dishes and scents. At this time, Lorenzo the Magnificent engineered the mass production of saffron in the countryside around San Gimignano, artichokes, and pioneered the cultivation of the tomato: some believe this was for culinary purposes although the first recipes to use tomatoes in Italian cooking are attributed to Antonio Latini (1642-1696) in his famous book Lo scalco alla moderna.
In the workshops of Florentine painters, pigments were prepared using minerals and foodstuffs such as oil, egg, saffron. However, the greatest contribution to Tuscan, Italian and, in particular, French cooking came from Catherine de’ Medici, Queen of France through her marriage to Henri II and mother to three future kings: François II, Charles IX and Henri III.
Caterina de’ Medici is to French cuisine as Dante Alighieri to the Italian culinary tradition. The inventor of the Italian language saw food eaten without moderation as a capital sin that could only lead to trouble. Dante considered the circle of greed in the Divine Comedy as the least dignified of sins. In his Hell, three beasts guard the entrance: a leopard symbolizing lust, a lion pride and a wolf on whom Dante has a particular focus, representing both greed and avarice, the most dangerous of the three. Dante identifies in greed a hunger for earthly goods, material not spiritual wealth which included food gobbled without pause. He follows up with the killing of the wolf by the enigmatic Veltro: “non ciberà terra né peltro, / ma sapienza, amore e virtute - He shall not feed on lands or lucre/but on wisdom, love and power” (canto I, 103 – 105).
Catherine de’ Medici was born in Florence in 1519, she married Henri II of France in 1547 and moved to Paris where she did not enjoy the French cuisine of the time and called Tuscan and Sicilian cooks to court to make her favourite dishes and imposed the use of cutlery for her French fellow diners who, at the time, ate with their hands.
She introduced dishes to France that would become the basic grammar of French cuisine including: stiracchio - Miroton de boeuf (beef miroton), papero al melarancio - canard à l’orange (duck with orange sauce), pezzole della nonna in salsa colla - crêpes à la béchamel, salsa colla – béchamel sauce, crema pasticcera (confectioners’ custard), zabaione and carabaccia - soupe à l’oignon (onion soup).
Her favourite dishes included artichokes, which she had brought from Florence in huge quantities, cooked in wine; onion soup and cibreo. She suffered various times from indigestion from these three dishes and almost died from eating too much cibreo. Dante would certainly have cast Catherine into the circle of the greedy, but without her Italy, France and the whole world would have lost a great deal of flavour.
Cibreo is a dish based on chicken giblets (entrails, liver, feet, cockscomb, testicles, heart). The name, according to the Accademia della Crusca, comes from cirbus: entrails, although others suggest it means cibo da re, food for a king, sharing an etymology with rigaglie, giblets. The recipe below is from Pellegrino Artusi.
INGREDIENTS
METHOD
Cibreo is a simple, gentle and delicate sauce, well suited for ladies with listless appetites and convalescents. Take liver (discarding the gall bladder), combs and chicken gonads; skin the combs with boiling water, chop into two or three pieces and livers in half. Heat in butter of a proportionate amount, first the combs, then the liver and finally the gonads and season with salt and pepper, then broth if required to keep everything from drying out until cooked.
According to the quantity, place in a pot one or two yolks with a half or whole teaspoon of flour, lemon juice and boiling stock, whipping vigorously (to stop the egg curdling). Pour this sauce over the giblets when they are cooked, boil and add a little more broth (if necessary, to soften) and serve. A sufficient portion for one derives from three or four combs, the same quantity of livers and six or seven gonads, an egg yolk, half a teaspoon of flour and half a lemon.
Testicles, boiled and sliced, are also good cooked this way.
This game is for anyone who wants to make a homemade trailer for Amici Miei: Stealing Beauty on the theme of Tuscan food. We’re providing the time codes for the film clips. Any edit program will work for this. Insert the following data into the timeline and you’ll have your trailer in minutes.
