Movies with important scenes involving food

Cafe Society
1

I teach a film course at a culinary school. One of the major assignments in the class is to

I hope that’s clear enough. To further explain by example: Waiting is not a good choices; while it has food all around it, there is not really any dramatically significant moments involving food. Harold and Kumar go to White Castle is also not a good choice; yes, a lit major might tease out some insights from it, but my students are not lit majors.

On the other hand, Return of the King has a nice scene where Gollum catches two rabbits and offers them, raw, to Frodo; Sam snatches them away, saying “there’s *only one way * to eat coneys,” and makes a stew. There’s a lot there to discuss: Sam’s confident cultural chauvanism, the emotional impact that the rejection of his food has on Gollum, the connection of this scene to the later fight over the lembas bread, etc.

With the assignment, I give the students a list of movies that they might consider doing for their presentation.

Where you come in is that I I want help in making the list of suggested scenes longer, so that students will feel like they have more choices. (Of course, as it stands they can pick any movie ever made; in practice 90% pick a movie off the suggestion list, and if I have to sit through another analysis of the dinner scene in Shrek 2, I’m gonna scream.)

Scenes must be appropriate for classroom viewing (9 1/2 Weeks is out).

Most importantly, I’m looking for films that are easily accessible in all senses of the word. Generally speaking, my students got Cs and Ds in high school English, and are basically unfamiliar with the whole idea of looking beyond the plot in any narrative. Most of them have never seen a foreign film in their lives before my class. Many of them would consider The Fast and the Furious as the peak of cinematic excellence. Feel free to bring up obscure french cinema from the 1940s, but really, I’m looking for things that are obtainable at Blockbuster and that can be explicated by an average 19-year-old.
Following is the list of films I already have:

Big Night
Mostly Martha
Chocolat
What’s Cooking
Dinner Rush
Pieces of April
Eat Drink Man Woman / Tortilla Soup

Babette’s Feast
Like Water for Chocolate
Soul Food
_____ and the Chocolate Factory
The Breakfast Club
Woman on Top
Last Holiday
Simply Irresistable
Alive
Tampopo
Pirates of the Caribbean
Hook
His Secret Life
Patton
Diner
Under the Tuscan Sun
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
The Cookout
Goodfellas
Spanglish
Interview with the Vampire
The Wedding Banquet
Joy Luck Club
The Order
Frida
Talladega Nights
Shrek 2

2

Reservoir Dogs’s entire opening sequence takes place exclusively in a restaurant as they eat a meal. Damnit, it’s making me hungry just thinking about it!

3

Moonstruck. Gotta be on the list. SO many important things happen while people are dining.

4

When Harry Met Sally

What, you don’t think the food is the important part of that scene?? :smiley:

5

Yes, but what is the significance of the food? Does the food symbolize something? Does it tell us anything about the characters? My memory of it says no, but perhaps I’m forgetting…

Simply having food in it is not what I’m looking for – the food must be a vital part of the scene’s meaning.

Moonstruck is a possibility; I never saw it. Can anyone recall any specifics?

6

Well lets see, after a quick look through of my collection I found:

Once Upon a time in Mexico - What was that dish Johnny Depp was obsessed with?
Mystery Men - The egg salad speech is great.
Pleasantville - There are a bunch of options here. The cookie offering, the colour changes at the diner, I think there might be more but I haven’t watched it in a while.
Benny and Joon - I always thought that tapioca and raisins was creepy, and a part of me has always wanted to cook grilled cheese with an iron.

Oh and Hook. I love the food fight scene.

7

Just saw it today - “Pan’s Labyrinth”.

There is a scene where Ofelia must go into the home of the “pale man” (see the picture here) and steal a blade. She is told that there is a table full of food and that she must not eat any of it. Of course, she does eat some of it and the Pale Man awakens and almost kills her.

8

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

I remember a scene where Arthur is trying to get a machine to make him tea, but it doesn’t know what tea is and he tries to explain ‘tea’ to the beverage-maker.

Maybe showing how familiar food is comforting to people in unusual environments and such.

9

Oliver

Christmas Carol (any version)

Harry Potter has magic food

10

It’s a stretch, but in Goodfellas in the extended sequence entitled “Sunday, May 11th, 1980”, one of Henry Hill’s big anxieties is getting home to cook the big dinner (“beautiful cutlets that were cut just right that I was going to fry up as an appetizer,”) which functions as an apologue for all of the other, less savory activities going on in his life. (“Tell him to keep stirring the sauce,” “I’m stirring, I’m stirring,”); he has these grandious, out of control plans going on and he can’t fully trust anyone else to execute them. It’s also one of the best damn frenetic sequences ever filmed, and Scorsese and editor Thelma Schoonmaker clearly cribbed from, or at least studied in depth, French New Wave directors like Truffaut and Godard in order to juice the timing to perfection.

That’s the first oddball that comes to mine; other than that, I’d have recommended a bunch of films already on your list, especially Big Night and Bella Martha (which I’m sorry to say is being remade as some no-doubt shitty American rom-com starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart). There’s a signficant early scene in one of my favorite modern Russian films, Vozvrashcheniye (The Return). but the film is subtitled, slow moving, and highly allegorical, so probably not the thing for your class.

Stranger

11

Perfect: Alfred Hitchcock’s FRENZY – the detective’s wife has taken a course in fancy French cooking, and prepares these god-awful looking meals for him. One I remember is him cutting into a quail while telling his wife about his day’s activities in tracking the serial killer. (The murderer, too, is involved with food, fruits and vegetables.)

And, in terms of meals deferred, there’s Luis Bunuel’s THE DISCRETE CHARM OF THE BOURGEOUISIE – the entire movie, these characters try to gather for meals but never get a chance to eat.

12

The Birdcage (The dinner scene)
Artificial Intelligence (When David is trying to be human)
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Watching the starlet reacting to the different dishes - especially compared to the scene of the villagers feeding them)

The Pink Panther (the Steve Martin version) No, no, no; I’m serious. We had a french exchange student living with us. He had only ever eaten hamburgers in McDonalds or some (apparently worse) french chain. The first night he was here, I took him to a good burger joint. His reaction was exactly like Steve Martin’s. We didn’t see the movie until the end of his first month here, but when we did, I almost fell out of my chair laughing so hard. When I told him that that was him, he almost fell out of his chair!
-Oh, and I have to add: The Meaning of Life. :smiley:

13

Try the picnic scene of the 1963 version of Tom Jones. You want significance? You want symbolism? You got it.

14

How about “A Christmas Story” with the old mans obsession with the turkey dinner and then having to go to the Chinese restaurant for Christmas dinner.

15

The Legend of Zorro.

Fairly late in the movie, Catherine Zeta-Jones’s character sits down to dinner with the bad guy. Bad guy serves her a pigeon (I think). It is then revealed that the bird in question was the bird that she had used to send a message to someone else(probably Zorro, but I’m not certain). Some comment is made about this being how he handles traiters–with the clear implication that he has figured out that she is trying to use him.

16

Forgot this one – students have done it and it worked well.
Thanks to all for the suggestions. Keep 'em coming.

17

Bend It Like Beckham. All the scenes where Jess’ mom tries to teach her to cook rather than practice soccer, including one in which she enters bouncing a ball, and Mom takes it away and hands her a spatula. The title comes from a line Jess says to the David Beckham poster in her room:

At the end of the movie, the mother says something along the lines of “Well, at least I taught her to cook a full Indian dinner.”

18

In Amadeus, there’s a scene where Salieri offers Mozart’s wife a chocolate. She hesitates, then accepts at his urging. She wolfs the bonbon down; it’s obvious she is starving. And also obvious that she longs to participate in the luxury the chocolate represents.

I think I’m remembering that scene correctly. It’s been a while. Here’s a still of the scene.

19

A half-hour late, dammit. I can’t think of a scene that better exemplifies redirected lust.

How about Fried Green Tomatoes? “The secret’s in the sauce.”

20

What about The Last Supper? It’s from 94 or 95 I think. A group of four liberals start murdering right wingers and burying them in their tomato garden. Of course, corpses make great fertilizer and they invite subsequent victims to dinner, which all prominently feature tomatoes. [I swear it makes more sense when you watch it. It’s actually a pretty good movie.]