My favorites (movies):
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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. . .
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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. . .
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).
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.
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