FOOD ON THE BIG SCREEN
(and the small one, too!)
Babette’s Feast (1987)
Saturday Night Fever (1976)
FOOD LENDS ITSELF TO COMEDY
Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of
the Comic (1900) – Henri Bergson
Comedy derives from “ the fact that
the living body be[comes] rigid, like
a machine.
It seems that the body “ ought to be
the perfection of suppleness… but
this activity would really belong to
the soul rather than to the body.”
The principle at play in Chaplin and other slapstick comedians
is the notion of “ something mechanical encrusted upon the
living.”
Modern Times (1936)
I Love Lucy
Modern Times (1936)
THE GOLD RUSH (1924)
THE DONNER PARTY
Attempting a shortcut through the Sierra Nevadas, a group of
Illinois travelers never made it to CA. Cold and a lack of food
stranded them. When they were rescued on Feb 19, 1847,
almost half of the 81 were dead, including a cannibalized child.
The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
19th century whaling
ship that was rammed
by a giant whale,
forcing the crew to
abandon ship in the
middle of the sea 2,000 nautical miles
west of South America
in three tiny whale
boats.
Jack London
• “To Build a Fire” (1910)
• Call of the Wild (1903)
The Gold Rush (1925)
Dinner party scene
Chicken scene
Jurassic Park
Ernest Becker, Escape from Evil (1975)
• At its most elemental level the human organism, like crawling
life, has a mouth, digestive tract, and anus, a skin to keep it
intact, and appendages with which to acquire food. Existence,
for all organismic life, is a constant struggle to feed – a struggle
to incorporate whatever other organisms that can fit into their
mouths and press down their gullets without choking. Seen in
these stark terms, life in this planet is a gory spectacle, a
science-fiction nightmare in which digestive tracts fitted with
teeth at one end are tearing away at whatever flesh they can
reach, and at the other end are piling up the fuming waste
excrement as they move along in search of more flesh. I think
this is why the epoch of the dinosaurs exerts such a strong
fascination on us: it is an epic food orgy with king-size actors.
When does food start to take a leading
role in films?
Quail in coffins from Babette’s feast
Growing List of Documentaries about
Food
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Food, Inc. (2009)
Supersize Me (2004)
The Price of Sugar (2007)
King Corn (2007)
Food Fight (2008)
Vanishing of the Bees (200)
The Truth about Food (2013)
MORE FILMS WHERE FOOD
HAS THE STARRING ROLE:
STORIES OF COOKS, SET IN
RESTAURANTS
Iron Chef America
Where cuisine and sport meet
Cooking Takes Center Stage: The
Exposed Kitchen or the Chef’s Table
• minibar (Washington, DC)
• Catbird Seat (Nashville, TN)
Exhibition Kitchen
at Wolfgang Puck’s
Chinois Santa
Monica.
Works Consulted
• Becker, Ernest. Escape from Evil. (1975)
• Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. 1903.
• Boswell, Parley Ann. “Hungry in the Land of Plenty: Food in
Hollywood Films” in Louikides, Paul and Linda K Fuller, Beyond the
Stars III: The Material World in American Popular Film, Bowling Green
U Popular Press: 1993.
• Pearlman, Alison. Smart Casual: The Transformation of Gourmet
Restaurant Style in America. University of Chicago Press, 2013.
• Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the
Whaleship Essex. Penguin Publishing: 2001.
• Zimmerman, Steve. “Food in Films. A Star is Born.” Gastronomica:
Spring 2009.
• Journal of Sierra Nevada History & Biography “Charlie Chaplin and the
Gold Rush. Fall 2008. Vol I, No. 3.