Inside Ugo Tognazzi’s cult of cuisine

Span­ning four decades as actor, direc­tor, and screen­writer, the smirk­ing face of Ugo Tog­nazzi was a near-con­stant pres­ence in Ital­ian pop cul­ture. Most asso­ci­at­ed with the ​“com­me­dia all’italiana” films that reflect­ed the hypocrisies of post­war soci­ety, Tognazzi’s famous­ly dead­pan inter­pre­ta­tion of unwar­rant­ed male brava­do, cou­pled with an inscrutable pen­chant for mis­chief, long obscured the true nature of this com­pli­cat­ed figure.

Thanks to a new trans­la­tion of Tognazzi’s suis gener­is mem­oir, how­ev­er, Eng­lish-speak­ing audi­ences now have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore the psy­che of this cen­tral fig­ure of Ital­ian cin­e­ma, reveal­ing a com­pli­cat­ed man who felt more at ease in the kitchen than on screen, yet remains elu­sive even in death.

Start­ing out as an accoun­tant in his native Cre­mona, it was the war that thrust the young north­ern­er into act­ing, com­plet­ing his mil­i­tary ser­vice by enter­tain­ing Navy offi­cials in the theater.

Per­for­mance came nat­u­ral­ly for Tog­nazzi, and by the ear­ly 1950s, he had made a house­hold name for him­self co-star­ring on Un, due, tre for Italy’s new­ly-formed pub­lic tele­vi­sion net­work. Despite its pop­u­lar­i­ty, the pop­u­lar vari­ety show would only run through 1959, when an auda­cious gag at the expense of the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic earned it the hon­or of being the first show to be can­celed in Ital­ian tele­vi­sion history.

Though Tog­nazzi would tran­si­tion pre­dom­i­nant­ly to the sil­ver screen by the end of the decade, includ­ing a turn in 1958 in Steno’s cultish sci-fi par­o­dy, Totò in the Moon, it was his per­for­mance as a blind­ly zeal­ous Black­shirt in Luciano Salce’s 1961 film, The Fas­cist, that took his career to the next level.

Amidst the rad­i­cal changes of the 1960s, Tog­nazzi became involved in more ​“seri­ous” projects, appear­ing as a per­verse alter-ego of his direc­tor, Mar­co Fer­reri, in The Con­ju­gal Bed, and The Ape Woman, star­ring along­side Vit­to­rio Gassman in Dino Risi’s immense­ly pop­u­lar satire, I mostri, and direct­ing him­self in three features.

Yet how­ev­er bright­ly shone his star, Tog­nazzi felt most at home in the kitchen. When he wasn’t act­ing in over 60 movies in that decade alone, Tog­nazzi was prepar­ing pas­ta at his film pre­mieres, dish­ing out recipes on Ital­ian radio, and host­ing infa­mous­ly extrav­a­gant feasts for his famous friends, forc­ing them to rate his cook­ing by secret ballot.

These worlds would col­lide in 1973, when Fer­reri cast Tog­nazzi as a wise-crack­ing chef in La grande abbuf­fa­ta. Along­side real-life pals Mar­cel­lo Mas­troian­ni, Philippe Noiret, and Michel Pic­coli, the plot finds the four epony­mous char­ac­ters mov­ing to a crum­bling Parisian vil­la to com­mit sui­cide through con­sump­tion, gorg­ing them­selves on haute cuisine.

In stark con­trast to the oil cri­sis that plagued Italy that year and the aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures its gov­ern­ment levied in response, Ferrari’s wry, vis­cer­al cri­tique of unquench­able bour­geois greed struck a nerve with audi­ences. Despite their scorn, and that of Cannes Jury Pres­i­dent Ingrid Bergman – who mere­ly labeled it the most vul­gar movie she’d ever seen – the film man­aged to take home the FIPRESCI Prize.

Rid­ing the wave of La grande abbuffata’s pop­u­lar­i­ty, Tog­nazzi would pub­lish The Injester the fol­low­ing year. Known in Ital­ian as L’abbuffone, itself a port­man­teau of abbuf­far­si (to gorge one­self) and buf­fone (clown) in an obvi­ous wink to Ferreri’s film, it would be the actor’s most suc­cess­ful of sev­er­al cook­books to come.

Divid­ed into three acts, The Injester is osten­si­bly more a call-to-arms than a com­pendi­um of recipes. From the jump, Tog­nazzi encour­ages the read­er to join him in “[exhum­ing] the epi­cure­an ideals that preached joy, life, and that made great the Roman world and the Renaissance.”

To be sure, a num­ber of indul­gent, bor­der­line-bil­ious recipes, such as that of Cas­soulet de Castel­naudary – count­ing sev­en dif­fer­ent kinds of meat, from goose to pig’s feet – deliv­er on the sybarit­ic val­ues he espous­es. Mir­ror­ing his on-screen per­sona, how­ev­er, Tog­nazzi can’t help but steep his pages in a play­ful, almost devi­ous­ly iron­ic brew.

Open­ing his third chap­ter, a dish-by-dish review of La grande abbuf­fa­ta, Tog­nazzi reflects on what he con­sid­ers ​“cer­tain­ly the most revolt­ing feast of the film.” Set in a deca­dent din­ing room, lit like a chiaroscuro paint­ing, the scene itself is defined by con­trasts. With nude slides from a bygone era pro­ject­ed on the wall behind them, Tognazzi’s char­ac­ter chal­lenges that of Mas­troian­ni to an eat­ing con­test with nary a hint of conviviality.

The stars pro­ceed to sober­ly slurp some 30 raw oys­ters apiece, and as sex com­min­gles with death, beau­ty with decay, plea­sure with dis­gust, past with present, high-brow with low, the cur­tain is raised on this grotesque jour­ney from urban­i­ty to abject bes­tial­i­ty, from desen­si­ti­za­tion to degradation.

Such a lack of restraint may well offend mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties, and right­ful­ly so, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­sid­er­ing the glar­ing objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of women as but anoth­er vice with which to gorge one­self. At best, Ferreri’s recur­ring denun­ci­a­tion of the unchecked lust of mod­ern man trades in repul­sion and self-dis­dain. For Tognazzi’s part, how­ev­er, The Injester explic­it­ly calls for a return to an ​“unin­ter­rupt­ed and sec­u­lar flow of drool, sperm, and shit,” seem­ing­ly strip­ping the film of its irony.

Nev­er­the­less, such work with Fer­reri to his turn as a Chateaubriand-sling­ing butch­er in Elio Petri’s scathing­ly anti-cap­i­tal­ist Prop­er­ty is No Longer a Theft, Tognazzi’s ten­den­cy to sat­i­rize and emas­cu­late the avarice of man hints at a cer­tain attempt to draw a line between plea­sure and abject greed.

Even in The Ingester, Tog­nazzi con­tra­dicts his call for hedo­nism with a sub­tle politic of restraint, reflect­ing fond­ly on the util­i­tar­i­an cui­sine of his youth, man­i­fest­ed most mem­o­rably in the form of a sim­ple soup stained black with the sweat and soot from a hard day’s work.

Tog­nazzi would spend the last decade of his life work­ing steadi­ly to cement his sta­tus as one of Italy’s most beloved actors, even earn­ing him­self a Best Actor Award at Cannes in 1981 for a rare dra­mat­ic turn in Bernar­do Bertolucci’s Tragedy of a Ridicu­lous Man. Yet this peri­od also found the actor retreat­ing to his home on the Roman out­skirts, spend­ing his free time play­ing the role of fam­i­ly man from the com­fort of his kitchen.

For all of Tognazzi’s com­plex­i­ty, the new edi­tion pro­vides no new essays or insights. Instead, a short, rue­ful ​“Post­face” must suf­fice from its ini­tial pub­li­ca­tion, where author and direc­tor Alber­to Bevilac­qua draws par­al­lels between Tog­nazzi and the grotesque satirist François Rabelais, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the actor’s use of a ​“sar­cas­tic nos­tal­gia” as a ​“spice to be sprin­kled over a love for food.” The late Bevilac­qua, who direct­ed Tog­nazzi in two films, at once acknowl­edges and refutes Tognazzi’s self-sus­tained rep­u­ta­tion as a skirt-chas­ing bon vivant, instead paint­ing a pic­ture more in line of a thought­ful man who would lever­age humor in place of pol­i­tics, some­one for whom the spat­u­la mat­tered far more than the spotlight.

The Injester, the Eng­lish-lan­guage trans­la­tion of Ugo Tognazzi’s L’abbuffone, will be pub­lished by Con­tra Mundum Press as part of their Agrodolce Series on Novem­ber 19^th.