Foodie Films [culinary movie]

125 Foodie Films [original link is dead, it can now be found here]

Erik M.

Great list (and longer than I would ever have thought possible).

Although I think the greatest food scene of all time is in a movie not otherwise concerned with food: Colonel Chabert, with Gerard Depardieu as a man thought dead in one of Napoleon's wars, who turns up like an unwanted reminder in the fat, rich society that left him for dead. At one point some lawyers are discussing the endless intricacies of his lawsuit against his now-remarried wife for his own estate, and he just sits in the corner, like a dead man returned briefly to the pleasures of the living, completely absorbed and satisfied by the sensation of eating warm bread.

Well, it is French bread...

I was anxious to see if you would reply.

Regards,
Erik M.

One movie that I didn't see on the list was Dinner Rush. It was a nice little gangster/foodie movie with a decent cast. Has anyone else seen it?

I would add Freida (Kahlo) to the list. I walked out of that film all charged up for a Mexican meal.

The recipes for Babette's Feast are from an article written by a local food writer. There is a chef in downstate Carbondale who cooked for the film. He is allowed to reproduce this dinner, which he has done for benefits.

Cathy2 wrote:He is allowed to reproduce this dinner, which he has done for benefits.

I'm just curious if there is any circumstance besides lack of ingredients or cooking apparatus that would preclude a chef from cooking any dinner he/she wants?? Why would this chef need permission to reproduce the dinner?

I would imagine you'd need to get permission to market it as the meal from Babette's Feast. If you don't get it, you can't describe it that way.

HI,

When Babette's Feast came out years ago, there were several restaurants in the Chicago area who reproduced this dinner with wine pairings for around $95.

The way I stated, "Permission to reproduce the meal," is how it has been stated to me. I would suggest it is like the old commercial line, "Often imitated but never duplicated." Maybe his having the gold seal of approval is getting recipes as-made for the movie. As we know, there are variations from cook to cook on the interpretation of a recipe.

In any case, if you have the Chef from the movie making the meal, then there are lots of opportunities to ask questions related to the movie's production. That you cannot get anywhere else but from the source.

It is on my to-do list to have this dinner by that Chef someday. I do bring it up here from time-to-time and never garnered any interest.

Regards,

A very comprehensive list to say the least. I had to check it to see if my fave was on there and sure enough it was. Not so much a movie about food as it is about people who eat, FATSO from 1980 with Dom DeLouise and Anne Bancroft. I find it hilarious.

I dont agree with the recommendation of Hot Dogs to go with it, I would say a fresh pot of tomato gravy and 2 loaves of gonella but thats just me.

Well, I am off to my Chubby Checkers meeting

bob

Two European films not on that list that I found reasonably entertaining are the Belgian film The Wall, which revolves around a fritkot and its owner, and the German film Mostly Martha, which managed to irritate me in ways but all in all it had some good things going for it too.

Antonius

Holy cow, I just noticed that they missed one of the greatest food films of all time. Especially for the fan of cured & hickory smoked meats, Motel Hell w/ Rory Calhoun from the mid 80's. Probably also the last of the great Drive In movies.

I am sure most of you have seen or heard of it, but if not it is about Farmer Vincent,his famous smoked meats, his sister and a motel that they operate. You can pretty much use your imagination from there.

I know if I ever get around to building that smokehouse, the whole operation will be reverse engineered from this movie.

Suggested Snack: chicharonnes thru a funnel


Bob

I think Charlie Chaplin's "The Gold Rush" should've been included for that wonderful scene where the tramp dines on his shoe while dreaming about other things to eat (including his friend) and "The Pope of Greenwich Village" for that hilarious scene where Eric Roberts' character spits out the white bread that Mickey Rourke's character gave him to eat as being too WASPY. I could never warm up to Babette's Feast. There was a restaurant near Sheffield and Belmont who use to put on "Big Night" dinners featuring the dinner from that movie. I loved the scene towards the end where the eggs are cooked in real time and how the brothers, even though they argued, did not stay mad at one another. Oh, and how about the food depicted in Pedro Almovodar's "La Flor De Mi Secreto"?Lots of gore and grade B films at this website--I think I got my fill of meat pies from "Sweeney Todd"!

Holy cow, I just noticed that they missed one of the greatest food films of all time. Especially for the fan of cured & hickory smoked meats, Motel Hell w/ Rory Calhoun from the mid 80's. Probably also the last of the great Drive In movies.

"It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent's fritters!"

I don't know why I find cannibal movies so funny....

"Eating Raoul" made me a Mary Woronov fan for life.

Giovanna

viaChgo wrote:One movie that I didn't see on the list was Dinner Rush. It was a nice little gangster/foodie movie with a decent cast. Has anyone else seen it?

Yes, this movie was favorably reviewed in The New Yorker, and that review (plus that fact that I've worked on a few projects with one of the two Chicago writers, Rich Shaughnessy), inspired me to see the movie. which was enjoyable (though as I recall, the plot was a little shaky in spots). As you say, it was a nice little movie.

Hammond

Though his films SURELY didn't make the list, there are two screenings coming up on the 6th and the 9thof films by Peter Kubelka.

Why do I bring up Peter Kubelka, an obscure experimental and highly structural Austrian filmmaker whose films are almost entirely unknown and unavailable, in the context of foodie films? As Fred Camper, art/film critic at the Chicago Reader says "Kubelka is a multi-lingual polymath, a musician and student of cooking across cultures and in history, who draws on a wide range of areas for inspiration, and whose lectures range widely across many areas of human culture."

I, for one, am interested to see how he brings together film, musical structures, ritual, and food.

rien

viaChgo wrote:

One movie that I didn't see on the list was Dinner Rush. It was a nice little gangster/foodie movie with a decent cast. Has anyone else seen it?

I saw it and thought it was great. The food made me hungry and the story wasn't bad. I always thought that Rocco's Place reality series on tv borrowed ideas from this movie.

Dinner Rush

One of my favorite films with an underlying food theme is Big Eden. The Native American man cooks wonderful meals for a dying neighbor and his artist grandson, but he makes them think the meals are prepared by someone else, partly because he's not quite ready to reveal his affection for the artist. A very touching, very sweet film.

HI,

I guess since it is man made, Soylent Green doesn't really count as a food movie? (Sorry, I could not resist)

Cathy2 wrote:HI,

I guess since it is man made, Soylent Green doesn't really count as a food movie? (Sorry, I could not resist)

It is on the list.

Regards,
Erik M.

I missed it!

Looking at the list again, they did miss some of my favorites - though they may only tangentially be about food:

In the Mood for Love - Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung looking beautiful and forlorn, often near noodle stalls.

Blood of the Beasts - An ultra-realist documentary look inside the abattoirs outside Paris. Somewhat of a horror film.

rien

Some more food scenes I especially admire:

Easy Living (1937)-- some comedy bits set in a Horn and Hardart-style automat, fascinating to see that kind of business in operation (the coffee spigot that comes, Cocteau-arm-like, out of the wall, with a nickel slot next to it).

Hardboiled-- Hong Kong action movie by John Woo with a famous opening shootout in a tea house.

The Happiness of the Katakuris and Dead or Alive-- two films by Japanese wild man director Takashi Miike. The first is a musical comedy about a plucky family trying to make a go of a rural B&B where, darn it, the guests keep dying; the opening sequence involves a claymation uvula that escapes from the back of someone's throat and among other things winds up in some soup. The second opens with a parody of a supertough John Woo type restaurant sequence whose high point is, when a gangster who's been slurping noodles gets blasted from behind, the noodles spray every where from his wound.

Actually, there's a LOT of Hong Kong movies about restaurants-- Aces Go Places, Chicken and Duck Talk, etc.

Mike G wrote:The second opens with a parody of a supertough John Woo type restaurant sequence whose high point is, when a gangster who's been slurping noodles gets blasted from behind, the noodles spray every where from his wound.

I'm trying to recall this scene - did the noodles spray everywhere or did they actually spell out the title of the film? Miike has a way with title sequences, Ichi the Killer being the high/low point. I'll spare those unfamiliar with the film the details ... but suggest that those with a dark
sense of humor check the film post haste.

rien

I'm glad they included Stephen Chow's God of Cookery in the list, but am disappointed that they missed Shaolin Soccer. It's not a food movie by any means, but it has a pair of beautiful scenes: in the first, the female team member is using her Shaolin skills to make noodles; in the second, we see her making noodles again, but now her tears (from rejection by chow's character) are dripping into the dough, making it salty and bitter.

A really wonderful moment in an otherwise silly and rambunctious (and incredibly fun) movie.

Antonius wrote:Two European films not on that list that I found reasonably entertaining are the Belgian film The Wall, which revolves around a fritkot and its owner, and the German film Mostly Martha, which managed to irritate me in ways but all in all it had some good things going for it too.

Antonius

I really enjoyed Mostly Martha; it should definitely be on there.

Also, how about Harold and Kumar go to White Castle?

HI,

There are food scenes in movies, though not food oriented enough to qualify as food movies:

I saw this movie once when I was about 12 or 13, The Beguiled with Clint Eastwood. It is set around the time of the Civil War. Toward the end of the movie, Clint Eastwood is served a dish of mushrooms. There is this realization that he is only one eating the mushrooms. It is then revealed they are poisonous mushrooms and he readily dies. Of course, mushroom poisonings are way more protracted than that, though it made a better story to just die!

Cool Hand Luke had Paul Newman participating in an egg eating competition.

Divine ate the dog poop in Pink Flamingos. I read later to achieve that scene, they followed the dog around until he did the deed, then promptly took a bite. Ugh.

Dirty Harry interrupts lunch to foil an armed robbery, then coolly asked his favorite question, "You might be thinking to yourself, did he fire five shots or six? You also have to ask this, Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?"

Has the site been taken down? I tried to access it just now, but got an error page

No, the original link in this thread. Their DNS server seems to have croaked.

Sorry, yes, I meant the original link to the list of movies. Did anyone happen to record a copy?

Courtesy of the Internet Archive: a mirror.