It has been too hot to cook.
Eating as a focus in the movies is a fairly recent development. The film, Julie & Julia, is an index to how far we have come, not only in our culinary evolution but in our cinematic one. It is hard to think of an American movie before the 1960s that concerned itself with food. Not until the 1960s did food begin to be directly represented in movies. Julia Child’s televised approach to cooking seems to have augured the change.
Follwing are two of my all time favourite eating scenes-
From the 1963 movie Tom Jones. Running for over three minutes, the characters say nothing whilst slurping and caressing their way through increasingly luscious, symbolically aphrodisiac food.
Compared to today's movies, it seems a bit tame, but hasn't lost its sex appeal. Any movie that can keep the audience's interest for nearly four minutes with no one speaking is worth a look. The prototype for food porn!
And the diner scene in Five Easy Pieces (1970) which satirizes the rigid menu policies ("No Substitutions") of a few decades ago - those days when the establishment was more important than its customers.
Of course, neither of the older movies is so postmodern a meta-movie as Julie & Julia - being as it is "quintupply " about food, learning about food, writing about food, learning about food through the original writing about food and writing about it. Just what I said - quintupply!
So Bon Appetit! Here's to food in the movies.
1. Babette’s Feast
2. Eat Drink Man Woman – The Opening Scene
3. Spanglish – The World’s Greatest Sandwich
4. Like Water for Chocolate – The wedding cake
5. Soul Food
6. Chocolat – The Chocolaterie
7. Waitress
8. Volver
9. Tampopo – The Noodlemaster
10. Big Night – The Big Feast
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