The main reason to watch Marcella, a new documentary about Marcella Hazan, the late Italian cook and teacher Julia Child once described as “my mentor in all things Italian,” may well be because we’re all craving the kind of lifestyle that still oozes from her beloved, bestselling cookbooks.
Italian cook Marcella Hazan in her Venice kitchen. She never needed to taste, sniffing was enough.
Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment
In the introduction to The Classic Italian Cookbook, first published in 1973, she describes the Italian art of eating as the way to make “art out of life,” and then goes on to clarify that for millions of hungry Italians, the best possible food is cooked at home, not in restaurants.
Marcella grew up in a fishing town on the Italian Adriatic Coast, 65 miles or so from Bologna, and when she moved to New York City in the 1950s with her new Italian-American husband, Victor Hazan, she had never really cooked. A scientist at heart, she’d gotten two PhDs, one in biology, the other in natural sciences and had become a teacher. In New York, Victor worked with his father but when he came home at lunchtime, he was hungry.
Marcella Hazan and Victor Hazan who would end up transcribing and writing her cookbooks.
Courtesy of Greenwich Entertainment
Even though Marcella had limited use of her right arm, the result of an injury sustained on a beach when she was six, she taught herself how to cook with what she found in their Queens neighborhood. Soon, she travelled to Manhattan’s Ninth Avenue seeking fresh mozzarella, Italian ham and eggplants. Suddenly, she was experimenting in the kitchen and the rest is history.
The film, written and directed by Emmy and Peabody Award-winner Peter Miller and released by Greenwich Entertainment, features interviews of Victor Hazan, who would become Marcella’s writing partner, and their son, Giuliano Hazan, a chef, teacher and author in his own right. Other celebrity friends recount the impact she had on their lives and include restaurateur Danny Meyer, former Town & Country editor Pamela Fiori, and Saveur co-founder and editor Dorothy Kalins.
“My wife and I had been cooking from her books since the 1980s,” said Miller. “And one night we wondered, ‘Has anybody made a documentary on Marcella?’” Without resources, it would take six years and 371 people through a crowd-funding campaign to get the film made.
Through clips drawn from home movies, we follow Marcella as she teaches a class, fries a fish, or shows off the cornucopia of produce at the Rialto market in Venice. Here and there, her raspy voice (she started smoking at 14 and never quit) paired with her killer smile, and the sharp intelligence that sparkles in her eyes, all create the illusion that she’s still with us, sniffing the pot ⸺ she never needed to taste, smelling was enough ⸺ and guiding us towards deliciousness.
Marcella Hazan at the supermarket
Marcella Hazan and Victor Hazan who would end up transcribing and writing her cookbooks.
Watching Marcella, we crave to spend some time (a year, perhaps?) living in Venice and shopping at the Rialto. We would happily follow her at the market in Milan or Rome, where the couple lived for a while. The sentence she used often, “Italian food is simple but it is not easy,” resonates. Perhaps most vividly, we watch Chef April Bloomfield, who now cooks at Sailor in Brooklyn, brown a sizzling veal shank with Marcella. It involves anchovies, onions, garlic, and white wine. “How much white wine, Marcella?” “Keep going,” she answers.
She was 90 at that point, but keep going, she did, until 2013. Today, food lovers throughout the country may remember her for her “greatest hits,” her fabulous pared-down tomato sauce, the chicken with two lemons so simple and good Glamour magazine called it “engagement chicken,” because it often preceded a marriage proposal, her braised artichoke with mortadella stuffing.
How timely it is, when so many of us are craving authenticity and comfort, that this film can now be screened in cinemas around the country and on your favorite platforms. Thank you Peter, and thank you Marcella!
