In
others, it plays a hidden role, subtly illustrating a
particular age or social gathering. Take Martin
Scorseseâs THE AGE OF INNOCENCE (1993), a study of
prejudice in Americaâs repressed upper class society of
the late 19th century, in which the director utilises food
and etiquette to depict a social jungle.
Alternatively,
food can become ‘the star of the show,â
the centre of a ‘cinematographic
plate.â Film studies professor Ian Christie
goes even further: ‘Cinema itself is a kind of
consumption, hoovering up reality and feeding it to us in
bite-sized chunks.â
At
the opposite end of the spectrum, there are a rash of
‘anti-foodâ films based on a denial of food and
drink, such as in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
(1962), the DISCREET
CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE
(1972) or GANDHI (1982).
During
the XXth century, typically and traditionally, food or its
scarcity has been featured as a graphic metaphor
for poverty, wealth, greed, lust, sex, loss, death or even
contradiction.
Charlie
Chaplin fans will recall his 1925 American masterpiece,
THE GOLD RUSH, which centres around the hunger of its main
character, a tramp, and his fixation with food. Two
classic scenes – the one where he cooks and ‘eatsâ a
boot with laces as spaghetti, and another where he makes
two bread rolls dance in a play for a girl – draw
attention to his poverty and his need for sex.
If
‘famineâ marked the portrayal of food in the 1920s,
then in the UK, ‘feastâ was the theme of the next
decade. Alexander Kordaâs PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY V111
(1933) with its hedonistic, banqueting king representative
of a sentimentalised Merrie England is typical of the
genre.
During
the Second World War, film makers concentrated on the
populationâs pressing need to survive. With the development
of sound, the cinema became an essential educational
tool in disseminating messages about rationing, household economy and nutrition.
But
food can also be an expression
of religion, myth, ritual, ordinary life or even human
goals.
It
took till the 1980s for film makers to regard food as
important enough to
depict as an affirmation of life and celebrate
it for its own sake, as well of course, for the
creative skills of the cook.
Decades
previously, food had been depicted in the form of lavish
feasts served in court to the nobles and royalty, and
became a metaphor
for riches and wealth, from which the poor peasants
were excluded and could only look on in envy.
Director Gabriel Axelâs treatment in BABETTEâS FEAST
(1987) marked a dramatic departure.
By
showing that food
as pleasure is not
just the prerogative of the privileged, Axel reflected
the sociological drift away from the privileged classes
towards a meritocracy. Babetteâs banquet was classy but
classless – haute
cuisine that could be enjoyed for its own sake,
whoever you are.
Telling
scenes show the Count and the kitchen boy enjoying the
same priceless vintage wine.
More
recently, EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN (1994), BIG NIGHT (1996)
and SOUL
FOOD (1997) all feature food that ordinary
people recognise as everyday home fare and use that as
part of the cinema experience to make another statement.
In
these films, the meals are closely bound up with messages
about family unity or disunity and the striving for
perfection. But what they all have in common is that
the food depicted is no longer alien to them and is part
of their everyday lives. Directors for the first time are
putting food centre
stage as an actor in its own right.
Director
Ang Lee took 18 hours to get the food on the table on the
first dayâs shoot of EAT DRINK,
and the film boasted a cast of over 100 dishes.
Likewise
in BIG NIGHT, the piece de resistance was an 11 kilo
kettle drum pasta pie called a timpano, which took two people to carry. The food stylist had to
create over 30 of them.
Director
and actor Stanley Tucci was anxious to get away from
Italyâs portrayal as a nation of mafiosi.
So BIG NIGHT cherishes the ideal of the truly professional,
perfectionist chef and restaurateur
dedicated to his art and to introducing the best of
their homeland to the New World. That includes the way
their food should be served and eaten.
All
credit for its authenticity, due to its two co-stars who
trained for the cooking scenes for nearly a year in actual
restaurants. It is the perfect food film for the 1990s,
the era of chefs as
heroes.
The
ritual of the family meal is an essential cultural marker,
graphically and sometimes painfully illustrated in films
like Steven Spielbergâs SCHINDLERâS LIST (1994),
George Tillman Jrâs Afro-American SOUL FOOD
(1997), and
Martin Scorseseâs Italo-American GOODFELLAS(1990), where
it may be the only unifying and constant element available
to an immigrant clan trying to assert
their identity in a foreign culture.
But
in Scorseseâs gangster movie, it serves an additional
purpose; it is a sign
of status and ‘arrivalâ, the fruits of the good
life, and it expresses mastery. Hence the fastidious attention of the
mobsters to ensure culinary perfection. Even in prison,
they insist on a gourmet menu that includes fresh lobster,
the best wine and garlic sliced so fine “it liquefies in
the pan with just a little oil.”
Movies
connecting food
with sex are legion. Take that archetypal scene in
Tony Richardsonâs TOM JONES (1963), where a simple
tavern meal became the foreplay to a raunchy love-making
session and the food itself is merely a prop to express
their lust.
The
director pans back and forth between Albert Finney as Tom
and Joyce Redman as Mrs Waters as they feast on huge bowls
of soup, suck lobster meat suggestively from its shell,
dive into baked chicken in between a salacious lip-rubbing
wishbone come-on, gnaw on roasted lamb shanks and lewdly
slurp down that classic
aphrodisiac – oysters.
But
oysters arenât the only dish to spark lust on the silver
screen. The late Juzo Itami uses egg yolks in TAMPOPO
to
stage what must be cinemaâs
sexiest scene ever.
Letâs
end, appropriately, with food on film as a metaphor
for death, decay and excess, unforgettably portrayed
in Marco Ferreriâs LA GRANDE BOUFFE
(1973), known as
BLOW OUT in the UK.
The
story of four men and one woman who assemble to guzzle the
mother of all banquets in a frenzied orgy of debauch and
self-destruction, it has been epitomised as a perfect
specimen of the ‘cinema
of disgust, â a metaphysical rejection of
consumer society.
Similarly
in Peter Greenawayâs THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND
HER LOVER (1989). A restaurant dressed as the set for a
Jacobean tragedy and a cavernous hellâs kitchen are the
backdrop to a parade of the basest
aspects of human nature.
The
cook as artist and creator serves as a foil to the thief as ignorant
glutton, paralleling the feeling that many chefs must have
of sweating over a superb dish for customers
who have more money than taste.
Note
the prevalence of black
foods like caviar and truffles and the association of
this colour with death. The film climaxes with
cannibalism, the ultimate link with death, and the
dissolution of the meal
as order into chaos.
|