Category: Food

This month’s Drink & a Movie post is dedicated to Ithaca, New York legend Park Doing, who has one of the greatest Halloween rituals I’ve ever encountered. Each year he watches Harry Smith’s twelfth (I mention this because it’s sometimes referred to as No. 12) film Heaven and Earth Magic with whatever friends and neighbors find themselves at his house. It’s a non-intuitive, but inspired choice, which makes it absolutely perfect for this series. What I thought I’d do here is combine Park’s tradition with one my family borrowed from chef Grant Achatz a few years ago and a couple of new ones. Let us begin with a beverage. In Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails, Ted Haigh observes that the Corpse Reviver originated at the turn of the twentieth century as “more a class of drink than a single recipe” which was sometimes referred to simply as a “reviver” or an “eye opener.” In other words, it was originally meant to be imbibed in the morning! Albeit cautiously: as Harry Craddock notes in The Savoy Cocktail Book, “four of these taken in quick succession will unrevive the corpse again.” My recommendation is therefore to consume just one to give you fortitude at the beginning of the evening. Here’s how we make it:

3/4 oz. Dry gin (Broker’s)
3/4 oz. Lillet Blanc
3/4 oz. Cointreau
3/4 oz. Lemon juice
1 tsp. Absinthe (St. George Absinthe Verte)

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry impaled on a skull pick.

I shamelessly pilfered the skull and cherry presentation from local establishment Nowhere Special Libations Parlor, which uses it to striking effect. We prefer Craddock’s proportions for this drink, which if we follow David Wondrich’s lead once again like we did in August should lead us to use only 1/4 teaspoon of absinthe. Ted Haigh similarly calls for just 1-3 drops and Jim Meehan goes with a rinse in the PDT Cocktail Book, but we think a full teaspoon works wonders here. Broker’s has been our house London Dry gin for awhile, and we’re not the only ones–I’ve had at least three conversations recently about how it’s one of the best spirits values around right now!

Next, of course, we have a movie. Here’s a picture of the Harry Smith Archives DVD release of the Heaven and Earth Magic that I borrowed via interlibrary loan:

I actually do own a DVD-R copy of the film that I bought off eBay awhile back, but I didn’t want to use images from it because its provenance is uncertain. I’d love to add a Harry Smith Archives edition to my personal collection, but unfortunately it has been out of print for ages.

Most people’s primary source of information about Heaven and Earth Magic seems to be P. Adams Sitney’s Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943-2000 which includes notes that Harry Smith composed for the catalog of the Film-Makers’ Cooperative which describe his “semi-realistic animated collages” as being part of his “alchemical labors of 1957 to 1962” and indicate that the film was made under the influence of “almost anything, but mainly deprivation.” They also summarize the movie’s plot:

The first part depicts the heroine’s toothache consequent to the loss of a very valuable watermelon, her dentistry and transportation to heaven. Next follows an elaborate exposition of the heavenly land in terms of Israel, Montreal and the second part depicts the return to earth from being eaten by Max Muller on the day Edward the Seventh dedicated the Great Sewer of London.

Sitney characterizes this synopsis as “ironic,” but notes that it is accurate in broad terms; he also provides his own interpretation. The main characters are a man and a woman:

Like many of the film’s elements, both started life as engravings from a late-nineteenth-century illustrated magazine. Per Sitney, the man is identifiable as a magus by “his continual manipulations in the alchemical context of No. 12, coupled with his almost absolute resistance to change when everything else, including the heroine, is under constant metamorphosis.” As she sits in a “diabolical” dentist’s chair, the magus injects her with a magical potion:

This causes her to rise to heaven, where she becomes fragmented:

He spends much of the rest of the movie attempting to put her back together again, but “does not succeed until after they are eaten by the giant head of a man (Max Muller), and they are descending to earth in an elevator”:

This narrative absolutely is discernable upon repeat viewings, and Heaven and Earth Magic easily lends itself to a variety of interpretations as well. Scholar Noël Carroll, for instance, reads it as a “mimesis of the drug experience” and a “metaphor of cinema as mind.” The viewer does need to put some effort into it, though, which lends credence to Sitney’s claim that Heaven and Earth Magic is Harry Smith’s “most ambitious and difficult work.” Whether or not you enjoy this film is utterly dependent on how interesting you find its images and musique concrète score. Apparently Smith preferred an original cut which was more than four times as long, but I think it’s just about perfect at 66 minutes. The use of what Carroll calls “literalization” is consistently surprising and hilarious, such as when the theft of the watermelon is accompanied by the sound of water:

As is the doggedness (pun very much intended) with which these Victorian ladies pursue the thief:

These dancing skeletons remind me of my oldest daughter’s equine phase, which included a brief but intense fascination with a Nature mini-series called “Equus: Story of the Horse”:

I love these wild phantasmic images which appear later in the elevator sequence referenced above:

And the symmetry of Heaven and Earth Magic‘s final and first images, which mirror each other, is quite satisfying:

My loving wife (who has a graduate degree in art history) observed that Smith is an obvious influence on the animated sequences Terry Gilliam created for Monty Python’s Flying Circus and flagged this scene as her favorite:

Because it reminded her of the Berlin Foundry Cup, which depicts a Athenian bronze workshop:

And this brings us to a second movie. You see, this is an example of red-figure vase painting, and that is precisely what the negative photography in Maya Deren’s The Very Eye of Night has always made me think of! Considering the facts that with its 15-minute runtime, this film plus Heaven and Earth Magic are roughly the same length as a short feature, and that both are frequently lumped together as examples of avant-garde/experimental/underground cinema, this struck me as a perfect opportunity for a double feature. So here’s a picture of my Kino Lorber/Re:Voir DVD release of The Maya Deren Collection:

Although The Very Eye of Night (like Heaven and Earth Magic) does not appear to be currently on commercial streaming video platforms, some people may have access to it via Kanopy through a license paid for by their local academic or public library.

In an article about the film, scholar Elinor Cleghorn refers to The Very Eye of Night as Maya Deren’s “most technically complex and medium-specific film” and clearly establishes that it was regarded as a major work during its initial screenings in 1959. The titles of recent appreciations by Ok Hee Jeong (“Reflections on Maya Deren’s Forgotten Film, The Very Eye of Night“) and Harmony Bench (“Cinematography, choreography and cultural influence: rethinking Maya Deren’s The Very Eye of Night“) demonstrate that it is not thought of as such today, which Cleghorn attributes to our friend P. Adams Sitney, who was otherwise a champion of Deren but dismissive of this film, which he felt represented an unwise divergence from “the powerful element of psycho-drama” that he prized in her earlier work.

The Very Eye of Night is similar to Heaven and Earth Magic in that it has an elaborate story that can probably only be followed by viewers who know what to look for. As described by scholar Sarah Keller in her book Maya Deren: Incomplete Control, it begins with an elaborate credit sequence which introduces the characters and “upholds the philosophical, mythical, and/or metaphysical principles espoused by the film as a whole,” as in the case of this image which references an eye with an iris, the yin-and-yang symbol, and Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man”:

It is more than a minute after the final title card before the first dancers (Richard Englund as Uranus and Rosemary Williams as Urania) appear, arcing across a field of stars accompanied by music by Deren’s future husband Teiji Ito:

Doubling/mirroring proliferates throughout the film, not just in the way the dancers are paired with one another:

But also through costume elements such as the tights worn by the actors who portray Gemini (Don Freisinger and Richard Sandifer):

And this ribbon:

The most enchanting images for me are the ensemble shots:

But the entire film has a timeless quality which supports Deren’s statement of purpose which was originally published in Film Culture magazine and reprinted in the book Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film: “whether or not the viewer formulates it, I am convinced that he will know that I am proposing that day life and night life are as negatives of each other, and that he will feel the presence of Destiny in the imperturbable logics of the night sky and in the irrevocable, interdependent patterns of gravitational orbits.” In an essay called “‘The Eye for Magic’: Maya and Méliès” published in Maya Deren and the American Avant-Garde, scholar Lucy Fischer argues that “for Deren the sky was a site of rapture” and that “just as outer space presents a field in which earthly laws are violated and superseded, so the domain of film dance liberates the body through the magic of cinematography and editing.” I think something of this mindset can be seen in the triumphant gesture which concludes the dancing:

It is fair to observe that The Very Eye of Night is not as rigorous as Heaven and Earth Magic, but to my eyes it’s also more beautiful, and I don’t consistently prefer one over the other. Meanwhile, both are perfect fits thematically and visually for a night associated with transformation, mystery, and experimentation. I’d actually suggest watching them in reverse order of how they’re discussed in this post, staring with The Very Eye of Night as an accompaniment to your Corpse Reviver #2 and saving Heaven and Earth Magic for after trick-or-treating is over. You’ll probably be hungry, which brings me to my final recommendation: this recipe for beef chili with beans. Author Grant Achatz notes that it’s a modified version of the one his mother made for him and his cousins every Halloween. We gave it a try a couple of years ago and have been making it annually ever since. Although Achatz says he ate it at the beginning of the evening “as a way to counteract the sugar buzz to come,” we prefer to save it for after we return home both as a way to warm up from a usually cold (and sometimes rainy) night outside and a strategy for breaking up our kids’ candy consumption. It’s hard to make chili look good, but here’s a picture of the pot which is now hanging out in our freezer awaiting its big night anyway:

Definitely don’t skimp on the ancho and pasilla powders, which you can easily make yourself as far in advance as you want by toasting seeded and stemmed dried chilies, letting them cool, and then grinding them. We usually grind our own beef as well, but that’s nowhere near as essential. The recipe itself doesn’t mention them, but serving them with sour cream and cilantro as shown in the picture in Food & Wine is a great move.

And there you have it, a ready-made itinerary for your upcoming All Hallow’s Eve festivities!

Cheers!

All original photographs in this post are by Marion Penning, aka my loving wife. Links to all of the entries in this series can be found here.

My family has engaged in a cooking competition during the holidays every year since 2010. This oddball tradition began as a fun way to evenly distribute the labor of getting Thanksgiving dinner on the table: everyone made a course, then we scored each dish based on creativity, taste, and presentation. The rules quickly grew quite complicated after that. 2011 wasn’t too bad: it consisted of a series of Chopped-style showdowns using “basket” ingredients. In 2012, though, we all had to cook a dish which: 1) corresponded to a specific course (appetizer, entree, or dessert), 2) was inspired by a specific Christmas carol, 3) included a secret ingredient purchased by another competitor which was linked to one of the carols, and 4) also utilized a specific kind of breakfast cereal. This more or less culminated in 2017 and three rounds of head-to-head matchups based on the cooking show Knife Fight in which we cooked as many things as we desired featuring sets of three secret ingredients during two-hour-long cooking sessions. I won that year, and if I remember correctly prepared 13 separate dishes during my six total hours in the kitchen.

We chilled out a bit after that, and the requirements of recent editions have been as simple as making Christmas cookies (first round) and a casserole (second round) in 2019 and creating an edible tableau which was judged solely on appearance and description in 2020 when we couldn’t gather in person because of the pandemic. This year’s rules were similarly straightforward: with everyone gathering in a crazy pirate-themed house in Davenport, Florida for a rare pre-Thanksgiving family vacation, we decided to each make a snack inspired by a Disney movie. My partner Lucy and I selected Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders’s Lilo & Stitch, which, fun fact, appeared on my very first official top ten list for The Pitt News. Here’s a picture of the Disney “2-Disc Big Wave Edition” DVD that I don’t remember picking up, but obviously acquired sometime after 2009 when it was released:

You can also stream Lilo & Stich via Disney+ with a subscription or from most major streaming video services for a rental fee. We dubbed the salty-sweet concoction we created in its honor Hurricane Elvis Popcorn. It’s basically a mash-up between the Hurricane Popcorn recipe from the food blog Delicious Not Gorgeous, the Perfect Popcorn recipe from the food blog Simply Recipes, and an Elvis sandwich. Here’s how you make it:

12 ozs. diced thick-cut bacon
1 2.7 oz. bag Bare^® Simply Banana Chips
2 oz. arare, broken into bite-sized pieces if necessary
1/8 cup furikake
1 tsp. kosher salt
1/2 cup popcorn kernels
2 Tbsp. salted butter
2 Tbsp. roasted peanut oil (not to be confused with regular peanut oil: you want a finishing oil like La Tourangelle that punches you in the nose with the smell of roasted peanuts when you open it)

1. Cook the bacon in a skillet until crisp. Remove to a paper towel-lined plate using a slotted spoon.
2. Strain 4 1/2 ounces of bacon fat into a large saucepan. Warm over medium high heat, adjusting temperature downward as necessary to keep it from smoking.
3. Put three or four popcorn kernels into the pot and wait for them to pop. Remove them to a large bowl with a slotted spoon when they do.
4. Add the rest of the kernels to the pot in an even layer, remove from heat, and cover.
5. Count to 30 slowly, then return the pan to the heat until nearly all the kernels have popped, gently moving the pan back and forth over the burner to prevent burning.
6. Remove the popped corn to a large bowl.
7. Immediately add salted butter to the still-hot pan you cooked the popcorn in and melt it. A little browning is a good thing–it adds flavor! Once the butter is melted, add the peanut oil. Set aside.
8. Toss the popped corn, melted butter/peanut oil mixture, crispy bacon, and remaining ingredients in a very large bowl or plastic bag (see below). Season with additional salt as necessary and serve.

I mentioned a bag in the instructions above: part of the reason we went this route was because we didn’t know quite what kind of kitchen we’d be cooking in. At home we have a HUGE metal mixing bowl which works great for this, but down in Florida we found a plastic bag to be the best tool available:

The young man in this picture is my nephew Pete, who kindly offered to help us out with this part. Although we only finished in fifth place, we’re quite proud of our handiwork! Here’s a photo of Lucy and me with the finished product:

It seemed like a waste not to turn this into another bonus Drink & a Movie post, so I selected a drink to pair with the movie and snack, the Halekulani Cocktail from Martin and Rebecca Cate’s Smuggler’s Cove book about their legendary San Francisco rum bar. Here’s how to make it:

1/2 oz. lemon juice
1/2 oz. orange juice
1/2 oz. pineapple juice
1/2 oz. demerara syrup
1/2 teaspoon grenadine
1 1/2 ozs. bourbon (Hudson Whiskey Bright Lights, Big Bourbon)
1 dash Angostura bitters

Combine all ingredients and shake with ice. Strain into a chilled coupe or Nick and Nora glass. Garnish with an edible orchid flower if you have one handy, or leave the drink unadorned like we do here:

We made this with Smuggler’s Cove’s house demerara syrup (which is thicker than most of the ones I’m familiar with) and grenadine, recipes for both of which can be found in the book, but I feel like any ones you like would work fine here. The Cates explain that this drink originated at the House Without a Key lounge in Waikiki Beach in the 1930s and call for it to be made with bourbon, but decline to recommend a specific brand. I first tried one of my go-tos, Elijah Craig Small Batch, but felt that the result, although extremely well-balanced, lacked character. Then I read a Punch article by Chloe Frechette which notes that the Halekulani Cocktail would originally have been made with “[t]he only native spirit of Hawaii, okolehao, commonly known as oke, [which] is, in essence, Hawaiian moonshine,” and realized that New York’s own Hudson Whiskey’s Bright Lights, Big Bourbon would work perfectly here. Despite the fact that it’s aged for a minimum of three years, it still tastes a bit on the young side to me, but that’s a feature, not a bug in this particular application and many others–whereas the Elijah Craig just sort of disappeared into the drink, the taste of this spirit shines through.

For anyone not familiar with the film, an alien on the run from the Galactic Federation voiced by director Chris Sanders crash lands on the island of Kaua’i, where he masquerades as a stray dog to avoid being recaptured. He is adopted by a little girl named Lilo (voiced by Daveigh Chase) who names him Stitch. In an effort to turn him into a “model citizen,” she encourages him to emulate Elvis Presley:

Hurricane Popcorn is a popular Hawaiian snack, Hurricane Elvis is the popular name of a severe storm that hit Memphis, Tennessee in 2003, and the Halekulani is a famous Hawaiian hotel with more than a century of history. So that’s how everything connects. I actually don’t have a heck of a lot to say about Lilo & Stitch that wasn’t covered in Bilge Ebiri’s recent definitive oral history of the film, but to echo a few points made there, the film contains absolutely gorgeous watercolor backgrounds of a sort that literally had not been seen in a Disney movie in sixty years:

The interactions between Lilo and her sister-turned-guardian Nani (voiced by native Hawaiian Tia Carrere), capture both the extreme frustration:

And intimacy that can emerge from such a complicated relationship:

Art Director Ric Sluiter is 100% right that the pink sea foam in the surfing scenes looks incredible:

And designing a social worker around Marsellus Wallace and then actually casting Ving Rhames to voice him really was a stroke of genius:

I’ve also always loved Pudge the Fish who controls the weather:

And the scene in which Stitch builds a model of San Francisco just so that he can run amuck over it:

Goodness knows I don’t stand by my 22-year-old self’s writing style, but it’s nice to see some signs of the adult human being he would eventually grow into in his work. Now if I could just get my real-life daughters to actually *watch* Spirited Away. . . .

Cheers!

All original photographs in this post are by Marion Penning, aka my loving wife, except the one me and Lucy wearing pirate hats, which was taken by my mother. Other entries in this series can be found here.

Summer is a great time to live in Ithaca, New York. After the Cornell University and Ithaca College students leave at the end of the school year, there are literally half as many people contending for the same number of precious restaurant tables, parking spaces, and spots in line at Wegman’s. Although I’ve always thought of myself as an autumn person, I’ve also come to look forward to things like the reopening of the Cascadilla Gorge Trail (which accounts for nearly half of my walk to and from work when it isn’t closed for winter) and the appearance of ripe fruit on the black raspberry bush in my back yard as much as anything in my life. Considering that I’ve long thought of Yasujiro Ozu’s Early Summer as a favorite film, it therefore seemed like a obvious pick for this month’s Drink & a Movie post. Pictured here is the Criterion Collection DVD copy of it that I’ve owned for just about forever:

It’s still both in print and in stock there, and can also be streamed via the Criterion Channel and HBO Max with a subscription or Apple TV for a rental or purchase fee. The drink I’m selecting to pair with it is another understated masterpiece, the whisky highball:

1.5 oz. Suntory Toki Whisky
4.5 oz. Fever-Tree Club Soda

Chill whisky, then add to a chilled rocks glass which contains one large ice cub. Stir just once with a bar spoon and garnish with a twist of grapefruit.

Although the majority of the tips and tricks highlighted in the decidedly un-Ozu-like videos on the “Rituals” section of Suntory Whisky’s Toki website are beyond the reach of most home bartenders (e.g. hand carve your ice to perfectly fit the glass that the drink will be served in), they do include two suggestions that I fully endorse: 1) chilling both the glass and all of the ingredients prior to mixing makes for a better drink, and 2) a grapefruit or other citrus twist is a great addition. I also agree with Julia Black of Bon Appétit that it’s worth splurging on high-carbonation club sodas like Fever Tree. My recipe may not measure up to the custom machine-dispensed concoctions (which: wowzers, do I want to try one of those!) describe by Black, but it’s delightfully effervescent and just the thing for a hot summer day.

For me, it also tastes like a specific moment in my life. I saw Early Summer for the first time as part of an Ozu retrospective which played Pittsburgh Filmmakers’ Melwood Screening Room (RIP) in 2005 and fell in love with it immediately. On Thursdays during that era, I could often be found at ’80s night at the dance venue Upstage (also RIP), where my drink of choice was a Scotch and soda. I have no idea how this tradition started, because I don’t think I consumed them anywhere else, which is presumably a big part of why I remembered this thing past when a poker buddy turned me on to Suntory Toki as a delicious and reasonably priced introduction to Japanese whisky a couple of years ago.

It’s so easy to make further connections between this drink and Ozu’s film that I don’t even think it’s worth the effort. Suffice to say that the former is a fine rendition of a Scottish spirit with a name that means “time,” while the latter tells the story of a multigenerational Japanese family navigating a transitional period in their country’s history when people might wear a kimono one day and a Western-style clothes the next.

In an essay for the booklet included with the Criterion release of Early Summer, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch talks about finding the images he encountered even on his first visit to Japan “oddly familiar” thanks to Ozu. I had the same experience, but I don’t think it’s simply a matter of having seen them before. Ozu invites the viewer to study the spaces he depicts more than other filmmakers. One way he does this is by lingering on hallways and rooms for a few seconds after characters leave and cutting to them a beat or two before anyone enters:

When done in sequence, as in the shots above, this also allows audiences to construct mental maps of these same spaces. Of course, this wouldn’t be nearly so effective if the rooms Ozu’s characters inhabit weren’t so interesting to look at! This goes for his exteriors as well:

Ozu also connects spaces with camera movement, such as these two rooms in a now-empty theater where the Mamiyas just saw a play together, which are united by dolly shots:

The same technique is employed in the service of more symbolical ends elsewhere, as in the case of this tracking shot toward a loaf of bread (which we’ll come back to in a moment):

Which is immediately followed by one following the two little scamps (Minoru and Isamu Mamiya, played by Zen Murase and Isao Shirosawa respectively) who broke it:

Where characters are positioned in relation to one another matters a lot, too, such as in this shot of Noriko Mamiya (Setsuko Hara, who is terrific in this role) and her fellow single friend Aya (Chikage Awashima) on the left and their two married schoolmates Taka (Kuniko Igawa) and Mari (Matsuko Shige) on the right:

Where things really start to get nuts is when Ozu starts to create layers of meaning, such as when he cuts from this later shot of Noriko and Aya talking apart how their friend group is drifting apart and drinking soda:

To this one of Noriko’s parents Shukichi (Ichirô Sugai) and Shige (Chieko Higashiyama) eating food and having a conversation in which they ruminate on the fact that although they “could be happier” (a reference to their son Shoji, who went missing in action during World War II), this is probably the happiest their family has ever been:

During this conversation Shukichi says “we mustn’t want too much,” which is almost a thesis statement, as is another line of his later: “I wish we could live together forever, but that’s impossible.” But the tremendous power that these words have owes more to the many scenes which precede them and clearly establish that they refer to more than just the matter at hand than to their pithy wisdom.

Noriko’s relationship with Aya is another one of my favorite things about Early Summer. They aren’t just the last two single people in their peer group. Consider this exchange in which Aya attempts to convince Noriko that she has actually fallen in love with the man she has decided to marry:

NORIKO: It’s like when you look for something all over the place, and then you find it was right in front of you all along.

AYA: Mother’s always looking for her glasses when they’re right on her nose.

NORIKO: That’s how it was.

AYA: How so?

NORIKO: He was so close at hand I didn’t realize he was the one.

AYA: So you did love him.

NORIKO: No, it wasn’t like I was in love with him. I’d known him well since childhood, and I knew I could trust him.

AYA: That means you love him.

NORIKO: No, I just feel I can trust him with all my heart and be happy. Don’t you understand?

AYA: If that’s not being in love, what is?

NORIKO: No, it’s not.

AYA: Yes, it is. You’re in love. You’ve fallen in love with him.

NORIKO: Have I?

AYA: Yes, you have. Don’t make me hit you!

NORKIO: You better not. I know how you hit.

AYA: Here I come.

Aya then proceeds to chase Noriko around the table:

This scene is a good example of why the film gets better with subsequent viewings. A short while after this Noriko will give her sister-in-law an extremely cogent explanation for choosing this husband over the one her family had picked out for her: “Frankly, I felt I couldn’t trust a man who was still unattached and drifting around at 40. I think a man with a child is more trustworthy.” Aya, her friend, knows what we can’t in this moment, but will grow to appreciate if we spend enough time in their world, which is that this isn’t the whole story: Noriko seems to be making a solid decision whether you judge it by the standards of the head or the heart, and anyone who cares about her as much as Aya obviously does would want to make sure she realizes it.

Early Summer is a movie that I feel like I could study for a lifetime and never run out of new things to say about it. That’s not really the point of this particular series of blog posts, though, so instead let’s go back to that loaf of bread I mentioned! Here it is again:

Minoru looks so disappointed because he thought this package contained track for his model train set. Above I cited the film’s title as the main reason I decided to write about it now. Even if I hadn’t already made up my mind, though, I suspect I would have been tempted to change course when I opened up the May/June 2022 edition of Cook’s Illustrated and read their article on shokupan, or Japanese milk bread! Maybe it was just my previous lack of experience with Pullman pans, but Early Summer was the first thing I thought of. Anyway, for the second month in a row I have a bonus food pairing to recommend. First, here’s a picture of the loaf that my loving wife made recently using the magazine’s recipe, which is unfortunately only available to subscribers:

This was somehow even more delicious than it looks! Whether you bake milk bread yourself or buy it at the store, definitely make a point of using it to make Cook’s Illustrated‘s caramelly brown sugar toast, which happily is not behind a paywall. Here’s a photo of a slice I made:

This totally works as a sweet drinking snack! Just don’t kick it, is all.

Cheers!

All original photographs in this post are by Marion Penning, aka my loving wife. Other entries in this series can be found here.

The April showers represented by The Hole have turned to May flowers here at ye olde blog, specifically Roberto Rossellini’s The Flowers of St. Francis. Pictured here is the used DVD copy of the Criterion Collection release of the film that I bought off Amazon a month or two ago:

Not pictured are the helpful definitions of underlined words and phrases that the previous owner scribbled into the 36-page booklet which accompanies it (“neo: in a new way,” they wrote under “neorealism”). According to the Criterion Collection Store, this title is merely out of stock, not out of print, so new copies will hopefully be available soon. In the meantime, The Flowers of St. Francis can also be streamed via both the Criterion Channel and HBO Max with a subscription. Some people may have access to it through Kanopy via a license paid for by their local academic or public library as well.

The drink I chose to accompany it is an original (albeit HIGHLY derivative) concoction crying out for an upgrade from its working title, the Lilac-Elderflower Prosecco Cocktail. The idea for it began with a batch of lilac sugar that my loving wife made last year using flowers from the bush in our front yard. Although tasty, we weren’t able to find a ton of uses for it, and so had quite a bit left over. I mixed it with an equal amount of water by weight, brought it to a simmer over medium heat and whisked to combine, cooled it down, and then strained out the flowers to make lilac simple syrup.

For further inspiration, I next turned to my trusty copy of Amy Stewart’s The Drunken Botanist, where I found a recipe for a Lavender-Elderflower Champagne Cocktail. I cut back on the syrup and St-Germain elderflower liqueur and substituted Prosecco for the Champagne in a nod to the country that both Rossellini and St. Francis called home and lilac blossoms for the lavender spring garnish for reasons that I hope are obvious, and suddenly had a lovely, floral drink that felt like it would go beautifully with brunch. My final tweak was to switch out the Prosecco for Prosecco rosé, which is an actual official thing as of just a couple of years ago:

1/4 oz. lilac simple syrup
1/4 oz. St-Germain
4 oz. Prosecco rosé
Lilac blossoms

Add the syrup and St-German to a Champagne coupe and top with Prosecco rosé. Garnish with the lilac blossoms.

Although this drink isn’t quite as dry as I usually like, that seems like a virtue when we’re talking about pairing it with a movie about a man who, per the voiceover with which The Flowers of St. Francis begins, made himself contemptible and humble in order to vanquish the world by spreading the power of his meekness and “sweet love of peace.”

What stuck with me most from my first viewing of this film goodness knows how many years ago was the way Francis and his followers run everywhere they go, whether that be to:

Fro:

Or with bells on:

Much has been made of the fact that Francis himself is indistinguishable from his followers in many ways and arguably isn’t even the main character of the second half of the film. Which: I can dig it! Nazario Gerardi (who famously was an actual Franciscan monk, not a professional actor) definitely does turn in a memorable performance in the lead role, though. What I like most is his sense of humor, evident here in a scene in which he forbids Brother Ginepro (Severino Pisacane) from giving away his tunic to the poor (which he seems to do every time he goes into town) without permission. Note how Francis casts knowing glances at the brothers to his left:

Then his right:

And then smiles beatifically at Ginepro:

Gerardi’s acting and Rossellini’s direction turn a few seconds of screen time into an eloquent sermon about what it means to be meek.

I also love the scene in which Francis asks some birds to please quiet down so that he can pray, particularly the moment after one settles on his shoulder.

Gerardi reaches for it in what I assume was originally meant to be a single graceful gesture, but drops the poor thing and has to quickly grab it again.

At last he is successful and raises the bird in front his face so that he can address it:

I didn’t mention it in my February Drink & a Movie post, but there’s a scene in Downhill Racer where Gene Hackman trips over his words while lecturing Robert Redford that I like for the same reason as this one. Apparently Hackman was upset when he realized this made it into the film, but director Michael Ritchie thought it felt real, and I agree. Lists of the Best Kisses in Movie History and whatnot proliferate because one of the things film does for us is give us templates for what “perfect” moments look and sound like. When we get them right, our lives feel like a movie; it’s nice to also to have cinematic referents to reassure us that even when we inevitably screw up, we haven’t ruined anything.

My favorite part of The Flowers of St. Francis might be Brother Juniper’s visit to the camp of the tyrant Nicolaio (Aldo Fabrizi). First, you have to admire Severino Pisacane (who like Nazario Gerardi was a monk, not an actor) for being willing to let his body be used as a jump rope:

Next, praise be to Rossellini for giving us the pricelessly ridiculous image of a man who is practically lost inside armor much too big for him:

Best of all is Nicolaio’s subsequent confrontation with Brother Juniper in his tent, which begins with Nicolaio intending to kill him and ends with him abruptly deciding to lift his siege of the town of Viterbo. Critic Noel Vera has a wonderful theory to describe what happens:

And then, perhaps, it might have occurred to Nicolaio that watching his thumbs squeeze the man’s eyeballs out of their sockets and listening to the screams would have been pointless–that there is more to man, to this man at least, than mere meat and quivering jelly. And that the concept of immateriality–of an immortal spirit, a (dare we say it?) soul–was so startling to the brute that he decide to lift the siege and ponder it further. Viterbo he could always massacre later; this mystery demanded his complete and undivided attention.

Brilliant. As are the long shots which follow showing Brother Juniper wandering about gazing at the tremendous commotion his actions have caused:

Another thing I appreciate a lot more after spending time with this film is the way it ends with not one:

Not two:

But four consecutive shots of clouds:

The key to what Rossellini is doing her can be found much earlier in the film in the section titled “How Francis, praying one night in the woods, met the leper.” In a terrific close reading of this scene, film scholar Justin Ponder argues that a point-of-view shot near the beginning of the sequence establishes that Francis actually sees God in the sky:

And that this connection is solidified by the upward pan which ends this sequence:

What’s really exciting about this interpretation to me personally is that it offers a possible new way of looking at the beginning of another one of my favorite movies:

Last but not least, I have a bonus food suggestion to go along with this month’s drink and movie. Dave Kehr observes in a review collected in his book When Movies Mattered that “[t]he closest St. Francis comes to offering a genuine miracle is when Ginepro trundles off to borrow a large pot from a neighboring group of shepherds. Ginepro returns, running down the hillside, with the gigantic pot bouncing along at his heels like a faithful puppy.”

In my house we have very much been enjoying the spring herbs soup with fregola and pancetta that appeared in the May, 2021 issue of Food & Wine magazine lately. I mentioned previously that my Lilac-Elderflower Prosecco Cocktail seemed like a perfect accompaniment to brunch. Well, this is what you want to eat with it. The herbs stirred in at the end echo the “lots of greens” in Brother Ginepro’s soup, it contains chicken stock to also make your body humble like Ginepro’s hens, and the pancetta recalls the foot generously donated by Brother Pig. I definitely think it’s likewise “good for the brain” as well:

Throw in a nice hunk of bread and some good butter, and you’ve got the makings of a pretty wonderful spring Saturday or Sunday afternoon here.

Cheers!

All original photographs in this post are by Marion Penning, aka my loving wife. Other entries in this series can be found here.