Strangely enough, there aren't many scenes in movies that actually focus on food. There are plenty of classic food-related lines, like, ""Leave the body, take the cannoli"" in ""The Godfather,"" and, ""I'll have what she's having"" from ""When Harry Met Sally.""
Classic scenes involving food easily come to mind: Charlie Chaplin making dinner rolls for Charleston in ""The Gold Rush"" or the spaghetti noodle kiss in ""Lady and the Tramp.""
And even though scenes at the dinner table, a fancy restaurant or in a diner abound in American cinema, these scenes never actually focus on food. This is probably because eating is a pretty basic activity so watching someone eat doesn't gel with ideals of Hollywood glamour or indie cool.
A shot of Kurt Russell chowing on nachos supreme in the recently released ""Grindhouse"" testifies to this reality—a close-up of someone's mouth eating greasy food is not an appealing thing to watch on a big screen.
Nevertheless, there are a number of brilliant scenes in films that do fixate around food. Here they are for your consideration.
The film ""Big Night"" is entirely about food. It centers around two Italian brothers who run an authentic Italian restaurant competing with an Americanized Italian restaurant. The brothers go for an all-or-nothing ""big night"" where they hope to dazzle the town with the sublime beauty of their menu. The camera slowly goes over glorious looking lasagna, tortellini and salads, until one character declares, ""This is probably the best meal I'll ever eat in my life."" She utters the line with a sense of bittersweet satisfaction because everyone there knows the authentic Italian restaurant isn't going to last. This film is a document of the way delicious cuisine is lost to the melting pot.
David Lynch's debut film ""Eraserhead"" also shows how aspects of everyday life are inherently disturbing, and the dinner scene is one of the sickest scenes in the film. As Henry Spencer joins his girlfriend for a meet-the-parents dinner, he is asked to carve up the small dinner turkeys. Spencer begins to carve a fist-sized roasted turkey, which responds by whimpering, twitching its legs and spewing out what appears to be some sort of cottage cheese-snot combination.
Like ""Intolerance"" from 1916, the film ""Marie Antoinette"" fixates upon the French ruling class gormandizing itself on lavish feasts. But Sofia Coppola isn't so much interested in showing us how bad poor folk have it as she is in showing us how gluttony can interfere with baby-making. The great montage that cuts between King Louis XVI digging into three-course breakfasts and Marie Antoinette trying to get all-up-on him later at night, only to be brushed off daily, is not only hilarious but educational. How can you have any energy for sex when you're getting really fat?
Honorable mention should be given to the stupidest use of food in a movie. Yes, I'm talking to you Morgan Spurlock. ""Supersize Me"" could have been great—there's plenty to criticize about McDonald's and a society where fattening food is frequently the most available option for single parents who don't have the time or money for something healthier.
Instead of focusing on relevant social issues, Spurlock films himself eating McDonald's three times a day. He then asks us to hold it against Ronald that this practice makes him fat and sickly. Not to mention the fact that he was eating vegetarian food the year prior to his month-long tryst with the Golden Arches. Thank you, Morgan: I never realized fast food was so unhealthy. You opened my eyes to the truth and closed my mouth to McNuggets.
Share your favorite food scene with Joe. Send him an e-mail at jblynch@wisc.edu.
