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Food on Film
Welcome to "Food on Film", some of our favorite cinematic foodie moments. This list was written and compiled by Rebecca L. Epstein, a PhD from the UCLA Dept. of Film, Television, and Digital Media. Her dissertation, entitled Crime and Nourishment, focused on the food and foodways of Hollywood gangster films.
Do you have a favorite food film not covered by this list?
Send us your suggestions to "webmaster (at) gastronomica.org". Be sure to include your name, the city you live in, and your e-mail address. Submissions should follow the same format as the film entries below.
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Entries will be reviewed by noted film producer Jim Stark. Jim has worked with Jim Jarmusch on several films, including Stranger Than Paradise (winner of the Camera D'Or in Cannes and the U.S. National Society of Film Critics' award as Best Picture of the year). He has also produced, co-written, and acted in many other critically acclaimed films, and he reviews films for Gastronomica. (view full bio)
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The Age of Innocence
(Cappa Production, Columbia Pictures, 1993)
Written by Jay Cocks and Martin Scorsese
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Based on the novel by Edith Wharton
"Sumptuous" doesn't do this film justice. Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Wharton's novel about 1870s high society and its discontents is so aesthetically stuffed, it's positively gushing, and that goes for the food, too, as the banquets brim with historically accurate cuisine. But it's the rigid social norms reflected in the precisely choreographed table manners that counter the seemingly joyous abundance and epitomize this story of agonized restraint.
American Beauty
(DreamWorks SKG, Jinks/Cohen Company, 1999)
Written by Alan Ball
Directed by Sam Mendes
A dark slide into a man's midlife crisis (Oscar-winning Kevin Spacey) includes him pitifully peddling fast food. There are also tense family dinners, at one of which the man finally shows his agency by throwing a plate of asparagus across the room. Plenty of sex and matters of appetite for every character, set in deliberate opposition to the picture-perfect surface of their lives.
American Pie
(Newmarket Capital Group LLC, Summit Entertainment, Universal Pictures, 1999)
Written by Adam Herz
Directed by Paul Weitz
Above-average teen sex comedy, in which warm apple pie satisfies a variety of cravings. Predictably but not lazily, the film gradually builds to its climax: a warm apple pie put to its suggested use.
American Psycho
(Edward R. Pressman Film Corp., Lions Gate Films, Muse Productions, P. P. S. Films, Quadra Entertainment, Universal Pictures, 2000)
Written by Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner
Directed by Mary Harron
Based on a novel by Bret Easton Ellis
A fair-to-decent film adaptation of Ellis's controversial novel, replete with the author's attraction and repulsion to materialism and self-indulgence. Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale) plays your basic homicidal maniac who works Wall Street by day and slices and dices acquaintances by night. He boasts a perfectly sculpted, seemingly invincible, fat-free body, which not only contrasts with the weakness of his victims but literally embodies the immaculate and strict appearances he values. This representation includes his food--either highly processed fitness formulas or highly precious nouvelle cuisine. The delicate yet devilish food styling in the opening credits is something to swoon over.
Ashani Sanket (a.k.a. Distant Thunder)
(Balaka Movies, 1973)
Written by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay and Satyajit Ray
Directed by Satyajit Ray
Based on the novel Ashani Sanket by Bibhutibhushan Banerjee
In Bengali with English subtitles
A rich and aching film that's set in Bengal during the man-made famine of 1943-44. With rice and other food products commandeered to feed the British armies in World War II, millions of East Indians died of starvation and epidemics; Ray's film recreates the era to suggest the behaviors people are capable of when deprived of basic needs. Along the way, he delivers a visually stunning work that also reveals a gender-based caste system and a sympathetic heroine (Ananga, played by Babita) whose raging sensuality becomes the conduit for the film's theme of desperation.
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!
(Four Square Productions, 1978)
Written by John De Bello, Costa Dillon, J. Stephen Peace, and Rick Rockwell
Directed by John De Bello
No study of paranoia films is complete without this comedic vision of the world being overrun by huge and angry tomatoes. Although loaded with sci-fi silliness and overall mediocrity, something about the image of sourpuss sour fruit touched a nerve, inspiring a range of offshoots from a TV series to sequels galore, including Killer Tomatoes Eat France! (1991). Mais oui!
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
(New Line Cinema, 1999)
Written by Mike Myers
Directed by Jay Roach
The best opening credits of the 1999 summer movie season belonged to this outrageous sequel, in which the titles flash while breads, meats, and produce are strategically placed in front of characters' naked physiques. This several-minute buffet of visual puns includes melons held in front of breasts, a male groin hidden by a salami, and a baked ham to mask the bum of cheeky Agent Powers (Mike Myers). Juvenile, certainly, but brilliantly styled and true to the tendency to analogize food with "naughty bit" body parts. Do I make you hungry, baby?
Babette's Feast (a.k.a. Babettes gæstebud)
(MGM/UA, 1987)
Written and directed by Gabriel Axel
Based on a short story by Isak Dinesen
In Danish, Swedish, and French with English subtitles
When a housekeeper (Stéphane Audran) in nineteenth-century Denmark comes into some money, she sets about preparing an elaborate meal for her employers to celebrate their late father's one-hundredth birthday. In the process, judgments are lifted, identities are revealed, and we all gasp at the unusual French delicacies of that time. One of the great food films that, like the dinner prepared within, slowly yet steadily unfolds, leaving you charmed and fully satisfied.
Big Night
(Columbia/Tristar, 1996)
Written by Joseph Tropiano and Stanley Tucci
Directed by Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci
Italian brothers Primo (Tony Shalhoub) and Secondo (Stanley Tucci) fight to save their New Jersey restaurant, and fight with each other about how to do it. Hearing that jazz great Louis Prima is coming to their town, they set about creating an authentic, multiple course Italian meal to impress him. Prima never shows, but the food orgy, which becomes the restaurant's last supper, carries on without him, and to near pornographic effect. This is the film that introduced audiences to Timpano, a layered pastry, meat, and pasta dish that takes two days to prepare. Less elaborate but just as rich is the final scene, which in one shot (and without dialogue) shows the brothers mending fences over a simple breakfast of eggs and bread.
The Bitter Aftertaste
(WORLDwrite U.K., 2005)
Written and directed by Philip Thompson
A 17-minute documentary made by students through the London-based educational charity WORLDwrite, which contradicts popular notions that farming will help eliminate poverty in underdeveloped countries. Using cocoa and coffee bean cultivation in Ghana as an example, the film reveals great failings in fair trade policies and takes a jab at high-minded consumers besides. (Viewable at http://www.worldwrite.org.uk)
Blood Diner (a.k.a. Blood Feast 2)
(PMS Filmworks, 1987)
Written by Michael Sonye
Directed by Jackie Kong
The splatter genre gets a rare woman's touch in Jackie Kong's bizarre stew. The plot revolves around two brothers (Rick Burks, Carl Crew) who run a diner and attempt to build some sort of effigy to a goddess with the body parts of women they dismember. The frugal gourmets then use the pieces left over to give "heft" to so-called vegetarian entrées served at the eatery. A not-so-scary gorefest with great sarcasm and self-awareness, but that doesn't mean it's not misogynistic or that women aren't viewed as threats. Consider, for instance, that one babe gets a deep-fryer shampoo, and the goddess has a toothed vagina (in her stomach!). The score covers everything from classical to punk, plus the crescendo of vomit hurled upon the diner in the end.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
(Jurow-Sheperd, Paramount, 1961)
Written by George Axelrod
Directed by Blake Edwards
Based on a novel by Truman Capote
You know about the fashion, but what about the food? The film that cemented Audrey Hepburn's image as Givenchy-dressed and seemingly air-fed also has a title that suggests (hello?!) eating. And that Holly Golightly does, although always in a context of emotional longing. The young woman who has champagne before breakfast and delights in drunken nights can't cook rice despite her deep domestic intentions, and when she nibbles on pastry and sips coffee in front of the famed jeweler's windows after a long night out, there is nothing but melancholy aspiration in her eyes. At least that's how the movie starts . . .
The Breakfast Club
(Universal, 1985)
Written and directed by John Hughes
A coming-of-age comedy about five high-school students in a Chicago suburb, brought together in Saturday detention. The kids are as different as they come, clique-wise, but after spending a day cooped up together, they get under each other's skins to reveal their common vulnerabilities and, ultimately, sweetness. The lunch scene--in which the kids unpack their brown bags (or sushi plate, or nothing at all)--succinctly defines the social stereotypes the characters eventually buck.
Cake in the Face
(Sweden, production n/a, 2005)
Directed by Katarina Hellberg
In 2001, a sixteen-year-old boy faced up to four years in prison for throwing a cake in the face of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. The teenager was expressing his distaste for authority, and apparently he's not alone in his approach. In Katarina Hellberg's short and humorous documentary, the deviant pie-throwing fantasies that defined Keystone Cop silents are the real deal for members of the international "pie-ing" movement. The idea is to plant the creamy concoction on the puss of politicians and influential agriculture figures, making the pastry-packed punch a bona fide form of activism. (See also Keystone Kop Films.)
A Chef in Love
(Les Films du Rivage, La Sept Cinéma, Studios Adam et Eve, Studio Babelsberg, Sotra, Innova Film, C.M.C., 1997)
Written by Irakli Kvirikadze, André Graill
Directed by Nana Dzhordzhadze
In French, Georgian, and Russian with English subtitles
In this Academy Award-nominated feature from the Republic of Georgia, an aging chef (Pierre Richard) goes in search of new tastes after World War I, only to find them in the form of a good princess (Nino Kirtadze) and bad Communist revolutionaries. The passion shared between the chef and the woman includes a passion for food, and he offers his recipes alongside his heart. Generally pleasing despite a non-linear storyline, under-developed characters, and a half-baked presentation of food.
Chicken Soup
(Carousel Film & Video, 1970)
Directed by Harry Hamburg
Fourteen black-and-white minutes boiling over with cultural color and generational flavor. This sweetly hilarious documentary short presents Anna, a vivacious, elderly German-Jewish immigrant living in the Bronx, who, in hopes of preserving a culinary tradition, demonstrates and kvells over her recipe for a "real Jewish" chicken soup.
Chinese Feast (a.k.a. Jin yu man tang)
(Film Workshop Ltd., 1995)
Written by Philip Cheng, Man Fai Ng, and Tsui Hark
Directed by Tsui Hark
In Cantonese with English subtitles
"The premise of this 'kung food' film is wonderfully clever; it applies the form of a classic martial arts film to a story about cooking," writes L.A.-based film critic Andy Klein. And indeed, Hark's fast-paced feature will have you panting for breath if not for the food that's created before your eyes. Don't expect Cashew Chicken in this tale of a debt collector-turned-chef (Leslie Cheung), who must suddenly lead to victory the cooks at the restaurant where he's apprenticing, in preparing the renowned Qing and Han Imperial Feast comprised of over one hundred dishes.
Chocolat
(Miramax, 2000)
Written by Robert Nelson Jacobs
Directed by Lasse Hallström
Based on a novel by Joanne Harris
A grossly overrated food film, in which a beguiling chocolatier and her daughter open a chocolate shop and turn an uptight French village into Love Central. Juliette Binoche stars as the good witch running the aphrodisiacal apothecary; Johnny Depp, in a rare embarrassing role, plays a scruffy bad-boy musician who's barely on screen long enough to become a love interest. Hokey and predictable, but perhaps, given the accolades, further proof of chocolate's amorous potency.
Chulas Fronteras
(Brazos Films, 1976)
Directed by Les Blank
Norteña music is the keystone to this documentary of Mexican-Americans living at the Texas-Mexico border in the mid-seventies. There, the bonding rituals and constant struggles to make ends meet are expressed communally through music and eating. Of course, food is not only a source of cultural and communal sustenance; it also brings pain and hardship, as field work keeps the population employed and transient with each crop season.
Comfort and Joy
(Kings Road Entertainment, Lake [Comfort and Joy] Limited, 1984)
Written and directed by Bill Forsyth
Inspired by real events in Glasgow, Scotland, Forsyth's film presents Alan Bird (Bill Paterson), a radio DJ whose breakup with his girlfriend leads him, in the most random way, right into the middle of the city's "ice cream wars." Replacing the pots and pans his ex took with her, Bird becomes intrigued with a woman in an ice cream van, and in the absurd high jinks that result, he finds the solace, sweetness, comfort, and joy that his previous domestic life offered. A quirky and quiet work.
Cool Hand Luke
(Jalem Productions, Warner Bros, 1967)
Written by Donn Pearce
Directed by Stuart Rosenberg
Based on a novel by Donn Pearce
Paul (hubba, hubba) Newman stars as convict Luke Jackson, an eternal anti-hero who spends his life in, escaping from, and getting bounced back to prison. His lawbreaking, combined with an unshakeable will to walk his own path, renders him a Christ-like figure, never clearer than in the crucifix pose he assumes after accomplishing the seemingly inhuman challenge of eating fifty hardboiled eggs. In 1976, Rocky Balboa (Rocky, 1976) sought similar redemption and empowerment via raw egg smoothies, but without a trace of Jackson's grace.
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
(Allarts Cook, Elsevira, Erato Films, Erbograph Co, Films Inc, Vendex, 1989)
Written and directed by Peter Greenaway
A gorgeous film that simmers with desire, anxiety, and desperation. Greenaway locates the bulk of the action in a restaurant and its kitchen, where a violent gourmand (the "Thief," played by Michael Gambon) commands a group of bandits and plays with excrement while his wife (Helen Mirren) takes another restaurant patron (Alan Howard) as her lover. What ensues are representations of greed, envy, hunger, and sadism that are as stunning (and as eating-and food-centered) as the characters' Jean-Paul Gaultier costumes.
Corner in Wheat
(n/a, 1909)
Written by D.W. Griffith, Frank Norris, and Frank E. Woods
Directed by D.W. Griffith
Based on the novel The Pit by Frank Norris
Perhaps the earliest in a long, long line of social consciousness films about the exploitation of agricultural workers within the U.S. capital economy. Included are a monopolistic, tyrannical "Wheat King" and others like him seeking full control of the market (hence the title) on the backs of the lower proletariat. Through strategic editing, Griffith adds to the diatribe by establishing a divide between rich and poor and condemning the former for the suffering of the latter.
Delicatessen
(Sofinergie Films, La Sofica Sofinergie 2, Investimage 2, Sofica Investimage 3, Fondation GAN pour le Cinéma, Constellation, Hachette Première, Union Générale Cinématographique (UGC), Victoires Productions, 1991)
Written by Gille Adrien, Marc Caro, Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet
In French with English subtitles
More like Dali-catessen in reference to the surrealist artist, this comedy, which Matt Ford of the BBC called a "bizarre, grotesque fantasy of an oddball dystopian future," tells of a French apartment superintendent (Dominique Pinon) who tries to avoid ending up like prior men in his post-served on (as opposed to sitting at) the dinner table. A weird and wonderful treat with hallucinatory imagery that acts as and represents a kind of filmic food poisoning, embellishing fears and dark fantasies about appetites, consumption, and cannibalism.
Diner
(MGM, 1982)
Written and directed by Barry Levinson
One of Levinson's most popular works, with his trademark adulation of the city of Baltimore and "coming of age" stories. Here, it's 1959, and five childhood male friends now in their twenties gather at Christmastime and contemplate their reluctant transition to adulthood. But it's at a local diner where their bonds and separations most clearly come to light, and where they eat plates of fries dunked in gravy (a classic for that time and place, presumably). Many great lines, including "You have, like, chunks of roast beef in your heart!" and some 'pecker'corn to make you laugh and squirm. In some ways the film reads like a tame (yes, very) antecedent to Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1991), which begins at a diner and also revolves around men evaluating their trust in one another while testing their own virility.
Dinner Rush
(Access Motion Picture Group, Giraldi-Suarez-DiGiaimo Productions, 2000)
Written by Rick Shaughnessy, Brian S. Kalata,
Directed by Bob Giraldi
In English and Italian with English subtitles
"Revenge is a dish best served cold," goes the tagline, and in this frantic, fluid narrative of an enormously popular New York City Italian restaurant, tension builds in the front of the house, the back of the house, and the dialogue between them. This independent feature features stellar food styling and a surprise ending, and is worth a second helping.
Dirty Rice
(n/a, 1997)
Written and directed by Pat Mire
Given the hurricanes that hit the southern U.S. in 2005, it's a good time to revisit Mire's tale of a rural Cajun community in South Louisiana (Mire himself is from Eunice, LA). When Raymond (Mark Krasnoff) returns to his hometown on the occasion of his father's death, he forsakes his life as a successful architect for his roots on a rice farm. Intermingled are music, Mardi Gras, and ethnic flavor far surpassing the spicy bowls of jambalaya.
Don't Be a Menace to South Central When You're Drinking Your Juice in the Hood
(Island Pictures, Ivory Way Productions, 1996)
Written by Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans and Phil Beauman
Directed by Paris Barclay
A parody of the spate of contemporary black urban ghetto films distributed in the late eighties and early nineties. The Wayans brothers tackle the elements of these films that became distracting clichés, such as the unhealthy, low-price food the characters eat. In one particularly extreme and repulsive scene (that also parodies 9-1/2 Weeks), the "crack mother" has a food fight/sexual encounter with her lover on her kitchen floor. They slather themselves with the refrigerator's contents, including huge bricks of orange cheddar cheese, packaged meat products, condiments, and beer.
Eat Drink Man Woman
(Central Motion Picture Corp., Good Machine, 1994)
Written by Ang Lee, James Schamus, Hui-Ling Wang
Directed by Ang Lee
In Mandarin with English subtitles
A widower and master chef (Sihung Lung) losing his sense of taste tries to keep family food traditions alive as his three grown and distinctly different daughters struggle to assert their independence. The dinner table becomes the site of conflict as well as of familial healing and growth, and the cinematography is finely tuned to present the Chinese delicacies in the most nurturing light. It's a sweet and scrumptious film, remade with less success as Tortilla Soup (Samuel Goldwyn Films, Starz! Encore Entertainment, 2001).
(See also Soul Food)
Eating Raoul
(Bartel, Films Incorporated, Quartet, 1982)
Written by Paul Bartel and Richard Blackburn
Directed by Paul Bartel
Wannabe restaurateurs become swingers and murderers in this dark comedy by Paul Bartel. The murder weapon of choice is a frying pan, the bodies are disposed of in garbage bags, and the sex is as outrageous and off-kilter as the dialogue. A cult classic about primal hungers and curiously dim wits.
A Feast at Midnight
(Kwai River Productions, 1994)
Written by Justin Hardy and Yoshi Nishio
Directed by Justin Hardy
Going down easy is this family movie about an English schoolboy who creates a secret society of chefs (self-proclaimed "Scoffers," derived from Escoffier) out of socially awkward students like himself. Even though the kids are young, director Hardy sees to it that they look like pros and shows the preparation of their midnight meals with the kind of care generally found in far more sophisticated films. Food gags against grown-ups are plentiful but smartly restrained.
Five Easy Pieces
(BBS Productions, Columbia Pictures, Raybert Productions, 1970)
Written by Carole Eastman and Bob Rafelson
Directed by Bob Rafelson
An exceptional film celebrated for its penetrating character study of an oil rigger (Jack Nicholson) who returns home to confront his dying father and a former career as a classical pianist. On the way, the individualist rigger eats at truck stops, chats with waitresses, and asks for a menu substitution that would make a chicken blush.
The Fly
(20th Century Fox, 1986)
Written by David Cronenberg, George Langelaan, and Charles Edward Pogue
Directed by David Cronenberg
A head-buzzing remake of the 1956 sci-fi thriller in which a scientist (Seth Brundle, played by Jeff Goldblum) develops matter-transporting "telepods" and accidentally takes a housefly along for a test ride. Slowly, Seth starts transforming into the insect that has become part of his DNA, and it's a terrifying process to watch (the film won an Oscar for Best Makeup). Among the changes that occur early is his sudden insatiable appetite for sweets. Flyman's inhalation of ice cream and candy is frantic, chaotic, and launches the film's heart-racing horror.
Food
(Jan Svankmajer-Jasomir Kallista Creative Group, 1993)
Written and directed by Jan Svankmajer
In a 2002 interview, Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer spoke about the persistent food theme in his films, stating, "The ways people deal with food and eating can be quite good at reflecting our civilization." Food, one of several works he's made reflecting on the topic, is a fourteen-minute, dialogue-free three-course meal that moves through breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with three different scenarios depicting increasing hunger (physical, social, and sexual) and decreasing civility. Breakfast features machine-like binging; lunch introduces restaurant patrons who, dismissed by their waiter, eat their highly valued table setting; and, finally, there's dinner, in which a gourmet establishment serves the most deplorable of meats: human.
The Food of the Gods
(American International Pictures, 1976)
Written and directed by Bert I. Gordon
Based on the novel by H.G. Wells
It's Darwin's theory told another way in this entertaining, campy, and sometimes truly creepy adaptation of Wells' sci-fi story about overgrown rats ready and able to devour the human race. While some of the film's aspects are outlandish, others are both contemporary and prescient, such as the closing scene that spotlights the multiple dangers of modern agricultural and waste management practices, and the relationship between the two.
Frenzy
(Universal Pictures, 1972)
Written by Anthony Shaffer
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Based on a novel by Arthur La Bern
Hitchcock's second-to-last film, generally regarded as limping through a routine: mistaken identity, a killer on the loose, and a female blonde. But adding to this story of a London sex killer is a little bit of spice in the form of food: Much of the film takes place in an outdoor market and in pubs, and the suspected killer (but not the actual one) is constantly avoiding his wife's inedible gourmet meals while he himself tries to find the "Necktie Murderer." And the body that incriminates the killer is stuffed in a sack of potatoes, and it's in a stack of them that a final wrestling match ensues. Sex, food, death-Hitch merely simplified things.
The Freshman
(TriStar, 1990)
Written and directed by Andrew Bergman
The best and most hilarious homage to The Godfather, starring Marlon Brando himself as Jimmy "the Toucan" Sabatini with a deliberately Vito-like countenance. The family business this time around, however, lies in amassing endangered animals under the pretense of serving them to an exclusive dining club. Clark (Matthew Broderick) is the NYU freshman who falls down this Kafkaesque culinary rabbit hole and meets up on the way down not only with Brando but with Bert Parks and a komodo dragon, among other strange and unusual creatures.
Fried Green Tomatoes (a.k.a. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café)
(Act III Communications, Avnet/Kerner, Electric Shadow, Fried Green Tomatoes Productions, Universal, 1991)
Written by Fannie Flagg
Directed by Jon Avnet
Based on a novel by Fannie Flagg
A story told in flashback about lasting female friendship and the specifically unusual food the main characters serve while running a café together. A slice of southern culture, with plenty of heartbreak and cultural oddities, that revolves around the preparation, serving, and consumption of food. Based on the novel by Flagg and the Ironside Café in Birmingham, Alabama, where fried green tomatoes are a menu staple and the secret, apparently, "is in the sauce."
The Future of Food
(Cinema Libre Distribution, 2004)
Written and directed by Deborah Koons
A stomach-churning documentary about genetically engineered foods and their insidious entry into our stores and mouths. Koons reveals a network of participants--in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico--and comes down hard on large-scale industrial agriculture methods and multinational corporations. While the forces are multifaceted, these entities, she argues, are effectively wiping out sustainable farming and ultimately jeopardizing millions of peoples' livelihoods and health. A must see.
Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers
(Flowers, Films & Video, 1981)
Directed by Les Blank
Blank, a master of documentaries about marginalized social groups and subcultures, here celebrates the "stinking rose." He interviews chefs, historians, and garlic lovers, attends fairs and festival, and offers a lively, folksy glimpse of stigmas against, as well as passions for, the pungent, bulbous herb.
Gas Food Lodging
(Cineville, 1992)
Written and directed by Allison Anders
Based on a novel by Richard Peck
An indie film with that gritty, sand-in-your-mouth indie feel. And you can almost taste exactly that, as a single mother (Brooke Adams) and her two teenage daughters (Fairuza Balk, Ione Skye) mope through their lives in a dusty and economically depressed New Mexico town. Mom is a diner waitress, Shade (Balk) is a dreamer, and Trudi (Skye) is a snarling rebel. Together they take meals at the diner and try to defy the truck-stop quality of their existence.
Gefilte Fish
(First Run/Icarus Films, 1984)
Directed by Karen Silverstein
A documentary short in which three yentas comprising three generations share their recipes, approaches, and recollections concerning gefilte fish, the famous (or is it infamous?) Eastern European poached fish balls. This is a fourteen-minute foray into food history, culture, and traditions, and how things change (or, in this case, don't) with each iteration.
Get Shorty
(Jersey Films, MGM, 1995)
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
Based on a novel by Elmore Leonard
Two thumbs up for this tickly good riff on Hollywood pretension in which John Travolta plays Chili Palmer, an affable gangster who suddenly finds himself a Hollywood player. Much of the film takes place in restaurants--many actual "industry" hot-spots where deals are made and power relations made clear. Amid the cast of characters Palmer encounters is Martin Weir (Danny DeVito), an A-list actor who, over lunch, throws his weight around by ordering for the table and off the menu, only to leave just as the specially-prepared carb-free, fat-free, delicious-free meal arrives.
Les glaneurs et la glaneuse (a.k.a. The Gleaners and I)
(Ciné Tamaris, 2000)
Written and directed by Agnès Varda
In French with English subtitles
A deep and riveting documentary about gleaners--people who sift through garbage and discard piles, sometimes by necessity but many times by choice. It isn't just the poor and destitute who find their food in the trash--it's also well-educated, salaried members of society who see gleaning as practical, environmentally conservative, and morally wise, and they wish others would join them. Even a chef finds gleaning for food an honorable activity, as it assures naturally- (not warehouse-) ripened fruits and vegetables and can be profoundly cost-effective.
The Godfather
(Paramount Pictures, 1972)
Written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Based on a novel by Mario Puzo
The entire Godfather trilogy boils over with food scenes and meaning, structurally (big banquets and ceremonies marking life transitions are interspliced with or followed by mass killings) as well as thematically. Aside from ethnicity, one of the most vivid food-enhanced themes is the tragic path of Michael (Al Pacino) from beloved son to abandoned Don: He learns how to make sauce for ten men in the first movie, lives ascetically in the second (1974), and cooks only for himself in the third (1990). The Godfather was also a pioneer in Hollywood's (now often) obsessive attention to culinary accuracy, thereby increasing the food value of American movies as a whole.
GoodFellas
(Warner Studios, 1990)
Written by Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Based on a book by Nicholas Pileggi
A tremendous modern gangster work--perfectly cast, with great music, and exceptionally witty food scenes. Among them, we learn that prison isn't so bad when you can make your own pasta (and slice the garlic paper thin), and being chased by the cops is no excuse for burning the Sunday sauce. A must-see, also for the appearance of the director's mother, who in real life cooked on many of Scorsese's sets. Here, she feeds several of the fellas late one night. And when one character, in between bites, cherishes her large knife in anticipation of the body butchering he's about to perform, the moment encapsulates the raw and the cooked, set before us like a twisted antipasto.
La grande bouffe (a.k.a. The Big Feast)
(Capitolina Productions, Franco London Films, Mara Films, NPF, 1973)
Written by Rafael Azcona, Francis Blanche, and Marco Ferreri
Directed by Marco Ferreri
In French with English subtitles
In Italian, "bouffe" recalls comic opera ("opera buffa"); in French, "bouffer" is slang for eating. These terms underlie Ferreri's legendary film about four middle-aged male friends (Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, Ugo Tognazzi) who embark on a suicidal bacchanal--eating, drinking, and sexing themselves to death. Disgusting? Provocative? Incredible? Still to this day.
Heartburn
(Paramount, 1986)
Written by Nora Ephron
Directed by Mike Nichols
Based on a novel by Nora Ephron
A comedic drama about a food writer, her tumultuous relationship with another journalist, and all the dinner parties in between. In Nichols's fashion, the film is cold and distant despite its seemingly convivial scenes. Rachel (Meryl Streep) is the film's focus, and although she offers her own citrus smack (The Public Enemy), hitting Mike (Jack Nicholson) with a Key Lime Pie, she, like the other characters, is minimally sympathetic. For all their eating, food, apparently, does not feed their souls.
Heavy
(Available Light, 1995)
Written and directed by James Mangold
A shy, ashamedly overweight man (Pruitt Taylor Vince) works as the cook in his widowed mother's tavern, but when a ray of sunshine in the form of a pretty college drop-out (Liv Tyler) becomes a waitress there, he falls in love-with her and his potential. A little film about big emotional and spiritual development.
Henry Jaglom's Eating
(Paramount, 1990)
Written and directed by Henry Jaglom
A mockumentary involving ten women who gather for a birthday party and, in their discussions about food (and throwing it up), reveal the complexity of their relationships with men, women, work, and themselves. More annoying whines than interesting lines, and while some have praised Jaglom's risk-taking style (let alone his willingness to address eating disorders), the film isn't terribly appealing, let alone appetizing.
How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (a.k.a. Como era gostoso o meu Francês)
(Condor Filmes, Luiz Carlos Barreto Produções Cinematográfica, 1971)
Written by Humberto Mauro and Nelson Pereira dos Santos
Directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos
In Portuguese, Tupi, and French with English subtitles
A Brazilian feature with modernist touches of the country's Cinea Novo movement (defined by Glauber Rochas' 1965 discussion of the "aesthetics of hunger"), this fictional yet ethnographically aspirational film steps back to the 1500s when the French and Portuguese battled over New World territory. When local Tupinamba Indians capture a French explorer, they set about preparing a ritualistic meal in which they will consume him, and thereby, according to legend, appropriate his strength. Cannibalism combats colonialism, although the historical accuracy of this practice within this tribe hasn't been verified. A charming work despite serious social and political themes.
The Hunger
(MGM, 1983)
Written by James Costigan, Ivan Davis, Whitley Strieber, and Michael Thomas
Directed by Tony Scott
Based on a novel by Whitley Strieber
This thriller, starring Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie, and Susan Sarandon, was perhaps the most ambitious of the modern vampire genre that ignited in the 1980s. Deneuve plays a 4000-year-old bloodsucker in New York City who enlists the helps of a research scientist (Sarandon) to help forestall the death of her lust-worthy mortal lover (Bowie). Neo-Gothic, gorgeous cheekbone-laden, and with special effects and a lesbian love scene remarkably sophisticated for Hollywood at the time, this movie makes up in consumptive carnality what it lacks in narrative coherence.
Hush, Hoggies, Hush: Tom Johnson's Praying Pigs
(Center for Southern Folklore, 1978/9)
Directed by Bill Ferris and Judy Peiser
This awe-striking tidy little documentary (it's only four minutes) introduces us to Tom Johnson, a Mississippi pig farmer who toiled for thirty-five years teaching his porkers to pray before dinner. A sociological study proving either the brilliance of Johnson and/or his pigs, or else man's ceaseless desire to control all things, the piece reminds us that even slop deserves a thank you, and just because you're a pig doesn't mean you have to act like one.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
(Lucasfilm Ltd, Paramount Pictures, 1984)
Written by George Lucas, Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz
Directed by Stephen Spielberg
A thrill-a-minute, high-spirited action film, which also happens to explore issues of dining etiquette and culinary xenophobia. Spielberg's family feature offers a menu of the grotesque that, seen in the context of Indy's (Harrison Ford) flight to cultural and emotional primitivism, is what scholar Andrew Gordon describes as a "preoedipal realm of oral terrors" (Foods of the Gods: Eating and the Eaten in Fantasy and Science Fiction [U Georgia P, 1996]). Eat your bugs.
In the Realm of the Senses
(Argos Films, Oshima Productions, Shibata Organization Inc., 1976)
Written and directed by Nagisha Oshima
An extraordinary film not for the faint of heart, Oshima's work tells of a Japanese whore, Sada (Eiko Matsuda), and a pimp, Kichizo (Tatsuya Fuji), who seek refuge in each other during World War II. Living at a small inn, the two try to die in each others' arms, consuming one another with endless lovemaking. The sex scenes (and they are countless) are explicit and exhausting but deep and never crass. So when Sada plays with an egg, swallowing it into her vagina, the image is funny, sad, beautiful, and deeply symbolic, as the acts, organs, and products of birth now become these lovers' route to death.
Jamón, Jamón (a.k.a. Ham, Ham)
(Lolafilms, Ovídeo TV, Sogepaq, 1992)
Written by Cuca Canals, Bigas Luna, and Quim Monzó
Directed by Bigas Luna
In Spanish with English subtitles
Also known as Ham, Ham, Salami, Salami and A Tale of Ham and Passion, this film by lusty Spanish director Luna tells the tale of an executive in an underwear factory (Jordi Molla) who impregnates one of his employees (Penélope Cruz). Fearing the girl, a bar owner's daughter, is simply after their son's fortune, his parents send in a dishy, well-endowed undie model and ham delivery man (Javier Bardem) to seduce and distract her (and behave, in fact, a bit like a pig). What ensues is a kinky and silly and somewhat disconcerting game of grab-ass and greed.
Keystone Kop Films
(Keystone Film Company, 1912-1917)
Produced by Mack Sennett
Ah, sweet anarchy! In this series of Sennett silents, social oppression, in the form of incompetent policemen, literally receives a cream pie in the face. These films may be juvenile on the surface, but their underlying social commentary on institutional law and order is outrageous to watch and delicious to contemplate.
Kitchen Stories
(BOB Film Sweden AB, Bulbul Films, Svenska Fiminstitutet, 2003)
Written by Jörgen Bergmark and Bent Hamer
Directed by Bent Hamer
In Norwegian and Swedish with English subtitles
When a team of social scientists descends upon Landstad, a Norwegian rural enclave, they have their eye on the kitchen habits of single men, which allegedly will unlock the mysteries of domestic "inefficiency." Set in the postwar era in which everything social was believed to be better understood in terms of the clinical, this comedy holds elements of charm and surprise. And despite the film's satirical play on the can-do optimism of the time, it's in fact optimism for our individuality and need for flexibility (in food preparation roles and otherwise) that ultimately shines through.
Knock on Any Door
(Columbia Pictures, Santana, 1949)
Written by John Monks, Jr. and Daniel Taradash
Directed by Nicholas Ray
Based on a novel by Willard Motley
One of director Ray's early works with all the bleakness found in his later ones. In this social problem film, John Derek plays Nick Romano, a man whose criminal behavior is allegedly the consequence of having grown up in city slums. His misfortune extends past his legal punishments to his romantic ones, represented to varying degrees by food. As Carlos Clarens writes in Crime Movies: An Illustrated History of the Gangster Genre from D.W. Griffith to Pulp Fiction (DaCapo Press, 1980), when Romano and his fiancée attend a wedding party, a "bad omen" occurs when the waiter serves crêpes flambées and "the newlyweds' hopes [go] symbolically up in flames." Indeed, shortly thereafter, the wife kills herself by putting her head in the oven, an appliance that references the earlier flames and symbolizes the couple's lack of domestic, physical, and emotional comforts, including meals.
Kramer vs. Kramer
(Columbia Pictures, 1979)
Written and directed by Robert Benton
Based on a novel by Avery Corman
A couple separates and a kid gets caught in the middle. The film is biased toward the dad, however, and we root for him as he heroically learns to clean the house, emotionally engage with his child, and, most significantly, make French toast "the way mom did." What's more, the kid learns to cook it with him. Who could split up this pair?
Lady and the Tramp
(Walt Disney Pictures, 1955)
Written by Ward Greene, Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi, Ralph Wright, Don DaGradi
Directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson and Hamilton Luske
English and Spanish with English subtitles
Can you think of a more romantic scene than two dogs falling in love over a plate of spaghetti? Not after you've seen this one.
The Last Days of Chez Nous
(Australian Broadcasting, Australian Film Commission, Australian Film Finance Corp., Jan Chapman Productions, 1992)
Written by Helen Garner
Directed by Gillian Armstrong
Part of director Armstrong's oeuvre of woman-centered films, Last Days follows protagonist Beth (Lisa Harrow), a writer, mother, and wife who, along with a variety of neighbors and relatives, experiences the mutability of relationships (more specifically, ones that are ending). Throughout the film, food symbolizes and is used as a tool to instigate conflict between and within characters; i.e., Beth's self-serving (in two senses of the expression) slicing of her own homecoming cake before others can welcome her with it, and her cutting into her husband's special brie as a mode of revenge. Post feminist scholars, in particular, have found rich fodder in Armstrong's attention to food, domesticity, women's work, and women's agency.
The Last Supper
(Columbia Tristar, 1995)
Written by Dan Rosen
Directed by Stacy Title
A group of twisted graduate students (is there another kind?) decide their liberal ideals will be better realized if they simply kill off their political opponents. Inviting an array of unenlightened heathens to dinner, the group poisons their guests with each disagreeable remark, as if the declining quality of the food they serve doesn't already give away the self-righteous chefs' agenda. A reworking of Arsenic and Old Lace that will appeal if you like your black comedy sprinkled with cable news-style outrage.
Lemon
(n/a, 1969)
Directed by Hollis Frampton
Artist and avant-garde filmmaker Frampton plays with light and shadow, the earthly and the ethereal, in this 8-minute short in which a rotating light gradually moves up and over a single lemon, much like the sun affecting phases of the moon. Taken in a single shot, the film looks like a photograph and elegantly literalizes a story arc (curiosity, anxiety, excitement, relief) as it traces the fruit's shape (low end, high middle, low end). A witty and gorgeous piece.
Like Water for Chocolate
(Miramax, 1992)
Directed by Alfonso Arau
Written by Laura Esquivel
Based on a novel by Laura Esquivel
In Spanish with English subtitles
This Mexican feature is a mainstay in the canon of food films, as well as in academic scholarship about food in film. Based on the romantic and recipe-loaded novel by Esquivel, the story generally concerns a woman wooing her loved one with her cooking. The tale, however, is far from ordinary, and, in Arau's hands, the magical and sensual qualities of Esquivel's words translate beautifully to images on the screen.
Married to the Mob
(Mysterious Arts, Orion Pictures Corp., 1988)
Written by Barry Strugatz and Mark R. Burns
Directed by Jonathan Demme
The rare great spoof of the mafia genre that doesn't insult your intelligence. Angela (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a dissatisfied housewife of the "famiglia" kind, and when her husband ("Cucumber" Frank de Marco, played by Alec Baldwin) gets bumped, she heroically moves out of a life of big hair, leopard prints, and grandiose furnishings to a more modest life all her own. This new life includes working at a chicken shack and ditching all the culinary rituals of her previous New Jersey suburb. An outrageous supermarket showdown between Angela and the women smarting from her departure symbolizes her break, and when she tosses a milkshake at her sleazy employer's face, even "Grapefruit" Tom Powers would applaud Angela's inversion of the genre's misogynist modes. More of a makeunder than makeover film, but truly over-the-top with laughs.
Menace II Society
(New Line Cinema, 1993)
Written by Albert Hughes, Allen Hughes and Tyger Williams
Directed by Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes
Fast food, forty-ounce beers, and drugs provide the sustenance to characters living amid the non-nutritive landscape of this particularly potent "gangsta" film from the early nineties. Primary dining spaces are outdoors (barbecues, hamburger stands) and put people in the line of drive-by fire; kitchens and cookware are mostly used to make crack. Adding in brutal acts of bodily violence, the Hughes brothers created a wretched illustration of urban ghettos that are absent of nurturing and rampant with nihilism.
Merrily We Live
(MGM, 1938)
Written by Jack Jevne and Eddie Moran
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
A screwball comedy in the grand tradition about a society woman who takes in vagrants and ex-cons and turns them into hired help, with expected topsy-turvy consequences. The plot recalls the more widely known My Man Godfrey, but Billie Burke won an Oscar nomination for her performance as Mrs. Emily Kilbourne, the dingy, good-hearted gal who, despite others' protestations, believes dramatic makeovers are always possible. Especially charming, complex, and condemnatory of class prejudice is a dinner party in which novelist-mistaken-as-tramp Rawlins (Brian Aherne) takes on the role of a waiter, only to find himself an honored guest.
Mildred Pierce
(Warner Bros, 1945)
Written by Ronald MacDougall
Directed by Michael Curtiz
Based on a novel by James M. Cain
Joan Crawford won an Oscar for her performance in this noir-meets-women's-melodrama classic about a woman who, upon splitting from her cheating husband, makes it on her own by obsessively making pies, opening her own restaurant, and finding herself in a sweet-turning-very-sour relationship with a conniving playboy. Her daughter is also very mean and status-hungry, and jealousies run rampant (some analyses see an incestuous, lesbian relationship between the two females). The film's progressive depiction of a successful independent woman is undercut by its suggestion that ladies who neglect traditional domestic roles and experience sexual pleasure will endure a far worse punishment than a social pie in the face.
Modern Times
(Charles Chaplin Productions, United Artists, 1936)
Written and directed by Charles Chaplin
In all of Chaplin's films, the loveable tramp has lessons to learn and teach, especially about class and assimilation in America's industrial age. In The Immigrant (1917), we watch him slowly eat beans, so they'll tide him over for days, and then escape authority when he realizes he can't afford even these. And in Modern Times, the tramp's desire to participate in common social rituals means that if he's to eat dinner, he must make do with his shoe--a delicacy of both desperation and unrelenting pride, unlike with Werner Herzog, whose privileged position, plus the loss of a bet, led him to a similar meal (see Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe).
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
(Celandine Films, The Monty Python Partnership, Universal Pictures, 1983)
Written by Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin
Directed by Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam
The third film in the trilogy that includes Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Monty Python's Life of Brian and takes on just what its title implies, as told through various bizarre, sick, twisted, and mostly hilarious vignettes (often with song). From birth to middle age to death, no life stage goes without comment, whether crude, comedic, or both. Sex and fish turn up often, but it's the crew's appropriately over-indulgent critique of the obese, that really, er, explodes your expectations. Beware the thin mint.
Moonstruck
(MGM, 1987)
Written by John Patrick Shanley
Directed by Norman Jewison
A Cinderella story for the all-business woman, this lively romantic comedy shows the transformation of a middle-aged Italian-American (Cher) from a practical nurturer to a sensual free spirit with pretty makeup and dyed hair. The culprit? Love, of course! Before you can say mozzarella, Loretta finds herself in the arms of her fiancé's estranged brother (Nicholas Cage), only to discover that this lusty baker, compared to his mama's boy businessman elder (Danny Aiello), holds the passion, masculinity, and youthfulness she's been yearning for. Scattered throughout are jovial images of an American "Little Italy," with small groceries and eateries. The film opens in a neighborhood restaurant where Loretta accepts Johnny's proposal and ends in the family kitchen where she embraces Ronny instead. Cher and supporting player Olympia Dukakis both won Oscars for their performances.
Mostly Martha (a.k.a. Bella Martha)
(Bavaria Film, Kinowelt Filmproduktion, Palomar S.p.a., Pandora Filmproduktion GmbH, Prisma Film, Rai Cinemafiction, SRG SSR idée suisse, Schweizer Fernsehen DRS, S&uulm;dwestdeutscher Rundfunk (SWR), T&C Film AG, Teleclub AG, Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR), Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF), 2001)
Written and directed by Sandra Nettelbeck
In German and Italian with English subtitles
When director Nettelbeck set out to make a film about a female chef who didn't like to eat, she wanted to create food scenes that illustrated the heroine's inability to communicate--practically and emotionally--with her staff as well as her family. And this she did, showing the relationship between the nourishing of others and that of one's self. There's tragedy, personal struggle, and simmering romantic tension in this generally pleasing, aesthetically luscious tale of a successful Hamburg chef (Martina Gedeck) who comes to learn that passion isn't just the name of a fruit.
My Dinner with Andre
(Saga Productions Inc., The Andre Company, 1981)
Written by Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn
Directed by Louis Malle
Malle's innovative work that takes place at the dinner table shared by real-life stage director Gregory and actor Wallace, discussing art and life. The courses of the meal become the transitions and breaths of action in a film otherwise devoid of it. A thoughtful, satisfying, and timeless piece.
My Fair Lady
(Warner Bros, 1964)
Written by Alan Jay Lerner
Directed by George Cukor
Adapted from a musical by Alan Jay Lerner, which was based on the play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw
The celebrated musical based on Shaw's play in which Eliza Doolittle is plucked from the gutter and turned into a woman seemingly of high society. This includes instruction on how to enunciate words properly, wear funny hairdos and hats, and dining etiquette. The premier modern makeover film, which corresponds women's civility (at the table and otherwise) with their ability to attract men.
National Lampoon's Animal House
(Universal Pictures, 1978)
Written by Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney and Chris Miller
Directed by John Landis
Decadent, scatological, beer-and-women-worshipping, the Delta fraternity asks why be a "model" student when you can have a FOOD FIGHT! John Belushi stars as the hilarious (and perversely wise) head Neanderthal.
A Night at the Opera
(MGM, 1935)
Written by James Kevin McGuinness, et. al.
Directed by Sam Wood and Edmund Goulding (uncredited)
The Marx Brothers turn every custom into a carnival, and room service is no exception. While Duck Soup (1933) offers its own food peculiarities, in Night, the boys stow away on a luxury ship and order enough fried eggs to fill the cabin. The chaos in the ordering is hilarious in itself; the food's arrival--with endless stewards squeezing into the room and trying to balance their platters as the boat hits big waves--is another gas entirely.
Night of the Hunter
(Paul Gregory Productions, UA, 1955)
Written by James Agee
Directed by Charles Laughton
Based on a novel by Davis Grubb
Chillier than a Chicago winter is this noir tale of an itinerant preacher/serial killer/pedophile/money robber (Robert Mitchum) traversing a Midwestern agricultural landscape during the Depression. He bears a tattoo of the word "love" on one set of knuckles, "hate" on the other, and uses the feeding and nurturing of children to obscure his criminal behavior. Complex, terrifying, and filled with imagery of emotional and physical deprivation and desperation.
Night of the Living Dead
(Image Ten, Laurel Group, Market Square Productions, Off Color Films, 1968)
Written by John A. Russo and George A. Romero
Directed by George A. Romero
Something radioactive in the atmosphere causes the recently deceased to give life another spin-as flesh-eating zombies! In this creepy cannibal show, the only way to kill the enemy is to shoot them, or, as a stranded crew of potential victims hopes, burn them in a gasoline fireball. An allegory for wartime? A political statement about diverging beliefs and ideologies? Do we, too, taste "just like chicken"?
9-1/2 Weeks
(MGM/UA, 1986)
Written by Sarah Kernochan, Zalman King, Patricia Louisianna Knop
Directed by Adrian Lyne
Based on a novel by Elizabeth McNeill
There's food porn and then there's food porn. This trashy classic tells the story of an art gallery director (Kim Basinger), a businessman (Mickey Rourke), and the naughty games they play, including how much from their refrigerator they can take to bed.
Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's
(A la Carte Entertainment, Lobos Grande, Off the Menu LLC, 1997)
Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
A documentary about the venerable Beverly Hills eatery shot in the days before its closing. Sixty years of serving movies stars, presidents, and society folk couldn't save this institution known especially for its chili (Elizabeth Taylor had it flown to her in Italy while she was making Cleopatra). An honorable farewell with lots of weepy waiters who, through their recollections, reveal compelling social, cultural, and culinary histories.
Once Upon a Time in America
(Embassy International Pictures, PSO International, Rafran Cinematografica, Warner Bros, Wishbone, 1984)
Written by Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli, Franco Ferrini, Sergio Leone and Stuart Kaminsky
Directed by Sergio Leone
Based on a novel by Harry Grey
In English, Italian and French with English subtitles
Following a group of Jewish male hoodlums growing up in New York in the 1920s through the 1960s, this tale is less about unlawful acts than betrayals of the heart. Crammed with gritty urban excess, Leon's final, epic work also delivers an exceptionally sweet and sexually suggestive food moment. In it, one of the boys sits outside the apartment of a young whore, carrying with him a small charlotte russe topped with lots of whipped cream, just the way she likes it. But as he waits for her to appear, his simultaneous anxiety and excitement lead him to devour the pastry himself, first by gently licking the sides, then voraciously eating the mammary-like creation from the top down. Then he dashes off, embarrassed by his lack of discipline yet completely fulfilled and relieved.
Pink Flamingos
(Dreamland Productions, 1972)
Written and directed by John Waters
"An exercise in poor taste" is the decidedly euphemistic tagline for this cult classic starring Divine, Waters's infamous drag muse, as the matriarch of a redneck family doing battle with evil hippies to capture the crown of "Filthiest People Alive." Judging criteria include how they dress, speak, have sex, treat others, and the waste that functions as food. Yes, that really is fresh dog feces, and yes, Divine really does put it in her mouth. Indeed, Waters' insistence on authenticity demonstrates the kind of perverse integrity that's made him an auteur.
The Potato Hunter
(Atom Films, 1990)
Written and directed by Timothy Hittle
Seven minutes and thirty seconds of claymation about a man and his dog who feel hunger pangs just as a herd of potatoes rolls through town. Jay Clay has "eyes" only for the heftiest one, and somewhere between losing sight of the tuber and smoking some peyote, he manages to slay and serve the starchy beast. More Dali than Disney, this kooky little comedy by Oscar nominee Hittle is part of a three-part series including Canhead (1997)--in which food cans become monsters--and another work forthcoming.
Pretty Woman
(Silver Screen Partners IV, Touchstone Pictures, 1990)
Written by J. F. Lawton
Directed by Garry Marshall
A hooker with a heart of gold but the table manners and palate sophistication of a six-year-old, this Cinderella story, like many, includes gourmandizing and dining etiquette as part of the female domestication process. Here, Vivian (Julia Roberts) learns that in the upper class, strawberries are served with champagne and meant to be savored, not devoured, and a business lunch may involve strange foods and copious utensils. Still, in this fairy tale that celebrates respectability while decrying wealthy pretension, Vivian's fumbles make her exceedingly sympathetic and almost worthy of the worship.
(See also My Fair Lady)
The Public Enemy
(Warner Brothers, 1931)
Directed by William A. Wellman
Written by Kubec Glasmon and John Bright
A classic gangster film including a classic food scene. When Tom Powers pushes a grapefruit into his girlfriend's face over breakfast one morning, the astringency of the moment hits the audience in the eye. An early example of food use that illustrates misogyny within the genre, questions remain as to whether the scene was scripted or improvised (although the look on the actress's face suggests the latter). In addition, the movie was originally called Beer and Blood, and, like many gangster films to follow, it engages ideas surrounding food commerce, ethnicity, and respectability.
Pulp Fiction
(A Band Apart, Jersey Films, Miramax Films, 1994)
Written by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
From the "Le Big Mac" dialogue, to a five-dollar shake, to the opening and closing scenes at the same diner, Tarantino's timeless treasure is so packed with food it almost induces a coma. Everywhere there are edibles, and they're almost entirely of a non-ethnic American variety (burgers, eggs, cereal, Pop-Tarts). Indeed, the irony of tough guys eating "comfort" foods regularly emerges, as does the alternation of jovial, life-affirming eating scenes with ones of deadly violence and/or terrible bathroom timing. There are gender biases too, as women gravitate toward dairy products and men (save for a "saved" Jules [Samuel L. Jackson]) regularly choose meat. You know the deliberate references to other films, but did you catch how much Tarantino plays with his food?
Raise the Red Lantern (a.k.a. Da hong deng long gao gao gua)
(Orion Classics, 1991)
Directed by Yimou Zhang
Written by Ni Zhen
Based on a novel by Su Tong
In Mandarin with English subtitles
A rich and disturbing story set in China in the 1920s that follows the four wives of a wealthy merchant, each of whom tries to claim personal agency, sexual attention, and love despite their deeply misogynist and oppressive culture. As Ellen J. Fried points out in her essay in Reel Food (Routledge, 2004), it's the customs and rituals related to food that prove the women's greatest source of social control and manipulation within their domestic situation, from the quality of the meals they prepare to the dining rules they set. Such power, however, comes at a price...
Ravenous
(20th Century Fox, ETIC Film, Engulf & Devour Productions, Fox 2000 Pictures, Heyday Films, 1999)
Written by Ted Griffin
Directed by Antonia Bird
In English, Italian, Spanish and Washoe with English subtitles
Before he was a cop in L.A. Confidential and an amnesia victim in Memento, Guy Pearce played Captain John Boyd, a commander in the Mexican-American war who receives a "promotion" that involves residing where his small group of companions must escape the jaws of human-flesh-eating natives. Gore galore, but a worthy addition to a cannibalism film series.
Reality Bites
(Jersey Films, Universal Pictures, 1994)
Written by Helen Childress
Directed by Ben Stiller
The feature that helped cement the concept of a Generation X. Expressing apathy and borderline nihilism, Lelaina (Winona Ryder) plays a recent college graduate who was her class's valedictorian but, spoiled and disillusioned, ends up spending her first post-education year on the couch chatting with psychics. She also doesn't earn money or cook, instead living on snack food purchased at gas stations with her gas card (her only remaining tether to parental support). The lethargic kids' junk food spree is wretched; it is symbolic of the depleting, empty calories of modern culture that director Stiller seeks to convey.
Repulsion
(Compton Films, Tekli British Productions, 1965)
Written by Roman Polanski, Gérard Brach, David Stone
Directed by Roman Polanski
An early masterpiece by Polanski, in which a London manicurist (Catherine Deneuve) slips into schizophrenia when her sister, who shares her apartment, leaves town for a week. The young woman's paranoia and delusions mount as the film progresses, and while the ticking of a clock builds our anxiety, it's the rotting rabbit meat in the kitchen that best demarcates (as well as symbolizes) her descent, with more flies buzzing with each passing day.
The Road to Wellville
(Columbia Pictures, 1994)
Written and directed by Alan Parker
Based on a novel by T. Coraghessan Boyle
Director Alan Parker brings his trademark excess to this vulgar comedy about Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his mission to clean early twentieth-century America's collective colon. Derived from T.C. Boyle's novel about the health fanatic and cereal espouser (Boyle also novelized the life of controversial sex scientist Dr. Alfred Kinsey), Road, which stars Anthony Hopkins in the lead role, spends a lot of time examining basic bodily needs and functions (eating, defecating, fornicating) but very little time nourishing our brains.
Le sang des bêtes (a.k.a. Blood of the Beasts)
(Forces et voix de la France, 1949)
Written and directed by Georges Franju
In French with English subtitles
This 22-minute documentary established Franju as a formidable French filmmaker, and the slaughterhouse as a horror house within contemporary society. Here, a peaceful Paris suburb also yields an endless carnage of sheep, cattle, and horses, bludgeoned to feed meat-loving humans. Franju's work is viciously graphic and surrealistic, perfectly and simultaneously attractive and repulsive.
Scent of Green Papaya (a.k.a. Mùi du du xanh)
(First Look Pictures, 1993)
Written and directed by Anh Hung Tran
In Cantonese with English subtitles
Writer-director Tran's talent for resplendent cinematography is fully ripe in this romantic drama about a Vietnamese girl coming of age in Saigon in the 1950s. The social divide between Mui, a peasant, and the servant master with whom she falls in love parallels simultaneous dialectics between country and city, the native and the "civilized." Papayas, then, symbolize not only the girl's sexual and sensual awakening but serve as pastoral reminders of life before the chaos of modernity and oppressiveness of colonization took hold.
Se7en
(New Line Cinema, 1995)
Written by Andrew Kevin Walker
Directed by David Fincher
Director Fincher gave audiences an early taste of his noir machismo in this crime drama about two cops (Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt) in search of a killer who lets the Seven Deadly Sins be his guide. The first victim, in fact, represents gluttony: A dead obese man sits upright at his dining table, food hanging out of his mouth and stuffed into every orifice. One sin after another, Se7en (Seven) takes us on a hateful journey into the shadowy realms of the psyche, and, as if meant to send us all to confession, toward a supremely nauseating ending.
Sideways
(Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2004)
Written and directed by Alexander Payne
Based on a novel by Rex Pickett
There are Jell-O shots in Vegas strip clubs, and then there are wine-tasting vineyards along the California coast, where middle-aged Jack (Thomas Haden Church) decides to spend his last days of bachelorhood with his good pal Miles (Paul Giamatti). With each glass of wine, the odd couple also gulps up women and recognizes their shared despondency and fear about growing up and moving along. A big hit for its intellectual and emotional honesty combined with comedic absurdity, and a big boost for California Pinot Noir.
Silence of the Lambs
(Orion Pictures Corp., 1991)
Written by Ted Tally
Directed by Jonathan Demme
Based on a novel by Thomas Harris
Cannibalism shares the screen with fine cuisine in this Academy Award-winning thriller that puts a federal agent (Jodie Foster) on the case of a psychotic killer for which she seeks assistance from another killer already imprisoned (Anthony Hopkins). Hannibal Lecter not only ate his victims to prove his superiority (your basic revenge fantasy), he further diminished them and affirmed his own station by making a high-end meal with their parts. That includes, in one famous line, a census taker's liver that Lecter complemented with "some fava beans and a nice Chianti."
Sleeper
(Rollins-Joffe Productions, 1973)
Written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman
Directed by Woody Allen
Woody Allen incorporated hilarious food references into the majority of his early movies, including Annie Hall's ethnically confounding request for a corned beef sandwich with mayo (Annie Hall, 1977), to the hunt for the perfect egg salad dubbed into What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966). But in Sleeper, in which health food freak Miles Monroe (played by Allen) is put to sleep in 1973 and awakens two hundred years later, not only do giant vegetables become the enemy, but smoking and junk food have turned out to be good for you. A rollicking rant on the constraints and repressions of so-called civilization, and not to be missed.
Soul Food
(Edmonds Entertainment, Fox 2000 Pictures, 1997)
Written and directed by George Tillman Jr.
In many ways, a reinterpretation of Eat Drink Man Woman, although this time the family is African-American, the family chef is the mother, and rather than suffering from taste loss, she has diabetes. Again, Sunday dinners signal weekly confrontations, but the story here is orated by a child narrator, which enhances the generational bonds and the film's overall soulful appeal.
(See also Eat Drink Man Woman)
Soylent Green
(MGM, 1973)
Written by Stanley R. Greenberg
Directed by Richard Fleischer
Based on a novel by Harry Harrison
It's the year 2022, and the world is so toxic, the only thing that will save you is a superfood beverage allegedly made from soybeans and lentils. So, drink up, because the government says so and besides, it's all natural. But as Detective Thorne (Charlton Heston) learns, that doesn't mean it's vegan. . .
Stand By Me
(Act III, Columbia Pictures, The Body, 1986)
Written by Raynold Gideon and Bruce A. Evans
Directed by Rob Reiner
Based on the novella The Body by Stephen King
"Friends come in and out of our lives like busboys in restaurants," says the narrator of this charmer about a group of nearly adolescent boys who spend a strange, tragic, and wonderful summer together. Included in this coming-of-age film is a spectacular yarn about the town's fat kid (a.k.a. "Lardass") who becomes a hero by turning a pie-eating contest into "a complete and total barf-o-rama."
Starving Artists' Cookbook
(Eidia House, 1986-1991)
Directed by Paul Lamarre and Melissa P. Wolf
Based on the novella The Body by Stephen King
This documentary video project created over five years includes over ninety hours of videotape of interviews with artists from the U.S., Europe, and Russia, as they cook and converse about food. Filmmakers Lamarre and Wolf, themselves artists residing in New York's East Village at the time, sought to "capture the end of an era--the artist's lifestyle as exemplified by what he/she cooked and ate. [At the end of the 1980s] there was a breakdown of the art community in New York with the privatization of the art world and the birth of the 'art star'--we wanted to catch on tape the other side of this story." Available in a ten-hour "highlight" version.
Super Size Me
(Hart Sharp Video, 2004)
Written and directed by Morgan Spurlock
The groundbreaking, Academy Award-nominated documentary that stormed the golden arches and made us all lose our appetites. When it only takes thirty days worth of McDonald's meals to turn an energetic, lean man into a sleepy, big gut Big Mac addict, Ronald McDonald no longer seems like a kid's best friend. In addition to his morbid, self-made makeover, Spurlock discusses Mickey D's marketing tactics, the American cultural affection for fast food, as well as the lack of nutrition education and, indeed, nutritious food options in most American schools. A smart and, despite naysayers' cries, balanced feast for the mind.
Tampopo
(Fox Lorber, 1987)
Written and directed by Juzo Itami
In Japanese with English subtitles
Unlike many of its classic food film counterparts, this Japanese comedy is not based on a novel. It also has no cinematic match. A "noodle western" about a trucker who helps turn an inept cook (Tampopo) into a stellar ramen chef, the story is often interrupted by small, outrageous vignettes demonstrating the various passions that food evokes. Decadent, delirious, hilarious.
Thinner
(Paramount Pictures, 1996)
Written by Michael McDowell and Tom Holland
Directed by Tom Holland
Based by a novel by Stephen King
Another parable about the evils of consumer culture, this time with a Stephen King twist. An overweight lawyer (Robert John Burke) living the suburban good life accidentally hits and kills an old gypsy woman when his wife indulges him in a masturbatory interlude while driving. Considered a "model citizen," he's found innocent of reckless driving, but when an old gypsy man whispers "thinner" in his ear, the pounds start to drop. And drop. The only remedy is feeding someone else a "gypsy pie" made with the lawyer's own blood. Naturally, it gets into the wrong hands. More horror ensues.
37 Uses for a Dead Sheep
(Tigerlilly Films, 2005)
Written and directed by Ben Hopkins
In Turkish and English
Ben Hopkins and Pamir Kirghiz tribe members collaborated on this documentary that through the lens of ritual as well as modernity shares the history of this nomadic tribe over the past few centuries. Originating in Central Asia, the Pamir now live primarily in Eastern Turkey, and the film traverses the countless reconfigurations of their homeland (the area now known as the "Stans"), long coveted as a rich resource for salt, silk, and opium. Along the ethnographic way, however, we learn about yurts, yaks, and lots of yogurt-making (that is, dairy fermentation), which ultimately brings levity--lively "culture" that it is--to this otherwise captivating yet arduous tale.
Tom Jones
(Woodfall Film Productions, 1963)
Written by John Osborne
Directed by Tony Richardson
Based on a novel by Henry Fielding
One the most beloved marriages of food and sex is found in Richardson's Oscar-winning, innovatively styled comedy about a libidinous bastard (Albert Finney) trying to find his way in a rigid eighteenth-century world. Amid revolutionary quick cuts and direct address comes a reckless and jovial meal-time seduction between Tom and Mrs. Waters (Joyce Redman), in which every course is slurped, sucked, and devoured as if it was the other's tastiest limb. In addition to ushering in a new view of mainstream sexual innuendo, the film also fed and fertilized financial relations between the American and British cinema industries for years to come.
301/302
(Cheol-su Park Films, 1995)
Written by Suh-Goon Lee
Directed by Cheol-su Park
In Korean with English subtitles
This Korean thriller presents two women in adjoining apartments (named and numbered 301 and 302, respectively). 301 (Eun-jin Bang) is a masterful chef; 302 (Sin-Hye Hwang) is a writer and deeply affected anorexic. Together they are total opposites yet exactly alike, and their relationship deepens, darkens, and twists between served and rejected meals. When one of them goes missing, the key to her whereabouts lies in one woman's past and the other's present, or is it the other way around?
Tortilla Soup
(Samuel Goldwyn Films, Starz! Encore Entertainment, 2001)
Written by Ramón Menéndez, Tom Musca and Vera Blasi
Directed by María Ripoll
Based on a screenplay by Hui-Ling Wang and Ang Lee
In English and Spanish with English subtitles
An unimaginative remake of Eat Drink Man Woman, albeit with Latino characters and Mexican culinary treats. It features food styling by L.A. celebrity chefs and hosts of the TV show Two Hot Tamales, Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken
(See also Eat Drink Man Woman)
Waiting. . .
(Lions Gate Films, 2005)
Written and directed by Rob McKittrick
Destined to become a cult fave among the many of us who have slaved in restaurants, this gross-out, disaffected modern employee comedy (á la Office Space and Clerks) is set in a fictional but universally familiar chain restaurant called Shenanigan's, and that is exactly what takes place. Less about feeding the people than serving the Man, this movie still offers big laughs despite sophomoric pranks, lack of conflict resolution, and a limp-as-lettuce plot.
The Wedding Banquet (a.k.a. Hsi yen)
(Central Motion Pictures, Good Machine, 1993)
Written by Ang Lee, Neil Peng, James Schamus
Directed by Ang Lee
In Mandarin and English with English subtitles
A gay Taiwanese American, a Chinese girl in need of a green card, and two families who have no idea. I mean, they have no idea. Lee deftly handles the film's cross-culturalism, leavening it with ample humor while still taking seriously both generations and the desire to honor heartfelt traditions, plus the heart itself. But the film's real joy is in the banqueting itself, and how this elaborate ritual of food and ceremony plays out in a contemporary and topsy-turvy context.
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
(Altomedia Co., Flower Films, 1980)
Written by Werner Herzog
Directed by Les Blank
You can't say that he doesn't keep his word. When Werner Herzog bet fledgling documentary filmmaker Errol Morris that Morris wouldn't finish a film, Herzog vowed to eat his shoe should Morris prove him wrong. The rest is history, documented by Blank who rushed in to film the strange repast. The result is exactly as the title implies, plus plenty of conversation as Herzog dissects and devours his boiled footwear. Sole food, indeed.
What's Cooking?
(Trimark, 2000)
Written by Chadha and Paul Mayeda Berge
Directed by Gurinder Chada
In English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Yiddish
No turkey is this Thanksgiving fare, which shows four Los Angeles families of varied cultural backgrounds celebrating the holiday. Director Chada delivers many expected conventions--showcasing culinary differences among the Jewish, Vietnamese, African-American, and Hispanic households, playing up generational differences among family members--but she's to be commended for the film's fluidity despite its many cross-cuts and its spate of strong and sympathetic female characters, as is typical of her best work (Bhaji on the Beach (1993); Bend It Like Beckham (2002)).
What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
(J&M Entertainment, Paramount Pictures, 1993)
Written by Peter Hedges
Directed by Lasse Hallström
Based on a novel by Peter Hedges
A coming-of-age film that's brittle, tender, and wry. Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) is the hero of the small town of Endora, where he emotionally supports his stifled friends, his manic lover, and his family (which includes his mentally retarded brother and 500-pound agoraphobic mother). He works in a grocery store; the future promises career advancement by working in a burger joint. Gilbert's sole purpose seems to be nourishing others, emotionally and physically-that is, until a worldly young woman (Juliette Lewis) blows through town and Gilbert realizes that what's eating him is in fact his hunger for so much more.
When Do We Eat?
(ThinkFilm, 2006)
Written by Nina Davidovich and Salvador Litvak
Directed by Salvador Litvak
Add one more to the cultural-view-via-big-family-meal genre. Here, a Passover Seder is the device for gathering together a lovably eccentric family and their outsider guests. But the comedy isn't just based on the familiar for either the audience or the characters: When one of the boys decides to mess with the traditional ceremony and equally traditional tableside bickering, he slips his dad some Ecstasy, only to make the elder, who comes to think he's Moses, completely unbearable.
When Fish Fall in Love
(Next Adobe, 2005)
Written and directed by Ali Raffi
In Persian with English subtitles
Iranian theater director Ali Raffi's feature film debut about an Iranian political prisoner who returns home after twenty years to find that the lover he left behind has turned his home into a restaurant, which she runs with her daughters. While the kitchen is the expected pivot point of the action, the tender and glorious attention to each Persian dish (by the characters and camera crew) complements and integrates into a larger story of how passions (for food, politics, and love) change among generations.
When Harry Met Sally
(Castle Rock Entertainment, Nelson Entertainment, 1989)
Written by Nora Ephron
Directed by Rob Reiner
Reiner's hopelessly romantic comedy about a man (Billy Crystal) and woman (Meg Ryan) who can't stop running into each other and assessing their compatibility or lack thereof. Lots of dining and food-related events bring them into contact, including a deli where Sally famously fakes an orgasm, which not only relieves their denied sexual tension but endears her to a neighboring patron (played by director Reiner's mom).
Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?
(Aldrich Company, Bavaria Film, Geria Productions, Lorimar Producations, 1978)
Written by Peter Stone
Directed by Ted Kotcheff
Based on a novel by Ivan Lyons and Nan Lyons
A goofy but very good romantic comedy. The great chefs of Europe are being murdered off, and an American chef (Jaqueline Bisset) and her ex-husband (George Segal) solve the caper and fall back in love. The tension culminates in an exploding dessert contest ("La Bomba," of course).
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
(David L. Wolper Productions, 1971)
Directed by Mel Stuart
Based on a novel by Roald Dahl
The celebrated fable of five children who win a chance to visit a magical candy factory, where, faced with the sweetest temptations, they reveal their wretched characters and suffer hideous consequences. Only courteous, humble, and polite Charlie (Peter Ostrum) completes the tour, in the process winning the heart of the cantankerous Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder). Worth viewing for the now-iconic characters and their confectionary punishments, plus Wilder's kooky and slightly creepy performance. The film was remade as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 2005 by dark lord Tim Burton, offering more special-effect goo but much less sugar.
Wise Guys
(MGM, 1986)
Written by George Gallo and Norman Steinberg
Directed by Brian De Palma
If you didn't know De Palma did comedy, consider this mafia satire. Harry Valentini (Danny DeVito) and Moe Dickstein (Joe Piscopo) are two errand boys for the Mob who, in expected madcap fashion, bungle a payoff and are hired to kill one another as punishment. But no don can break up these best friends, who dream of merging their respective culinary cultures by opening "The First Italo-Judeo Italian Restaurant Deli." Sipping egg creams instead of beers, the men subvert the genre's machismo by eating the food of boys. In a related fashion, the film also plays up, conflates, and inadvertently questions stereotypes of feeding-obsessed Italian and Jewish mothers.
Woman on Top
(Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2000)
Written by Vera Blasi
Directed by Fina Torres
In this romantic comedy, Penelope Cruz stars as Isabella, a Brazilian chef whose terrible motion sickness affects the way she works, cooks, and loves. Even during sex she must be "on top," which sets in motion (as it were) the film's overarching study of gender relations and Isabella's unwillingness to sacrifice her spirit for the sake of her culture's male-dominant traditions. With Cruz in the "top" role, one could never call this an "ugly duckling" story, although a generic formula is indeed at the film's core. Still, its address of social and sexual relations vis-à-vis the female professional (that is, wage-earning) chef, is unusual and compelling.
to be continued...
Rebecca Epstein holds a PhD from the UCLA Dept. of Film, Television, and Digital Media. Her dissertation, entitled Crime and Nourishment, focused on the food and foodways of Hollywood gangster films.
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