This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This time, the theme is "Over a Meal". Now, my first thought was of a certain memorable scene from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane:
But, I decided to go with three different films instead:
Come to Dinner (1934). Warner Bros. made this two-reeler which is a parody of MGM's 1933 hit Dinner at Eight. In making it, Warners used celebrity impersonators to impersonate the main stars of Dinner at Eight, with varying success, since it's nigh on impossible to duplicate Jean Harlow. (Billie Burke, on the other hand, is easy, and there's also an extra musical number added that includes a great ZaSu Pitts impersonator.) It also turns the original movie's plot on its head, as in the relationship between the John Barrymore actor character and the Lee Tracy agent. It's available as an extra on Dinner at Eight and if you know the original is highly worth a watch.
Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944). Anne Baxter and Charles Winninger play a poor family in Florida in World War II who take part in a program to provide a home-cooked meal for a soldier who's about to go off and fight. Things go wrong and they nearly don't get a soldier, but then all of a sudden sergeant John Hodiak shows up. He and Baxter wind up falling in love, despite the fact that he's going to be leaving for the war in short order.
Babette's Feast (1987). Stéphane Audran plays Babette, a Parisian chef who is forced to flee the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and winds up at a small village in northern Denmark where her opera-singer lover had a former lover decades earlier. That other lover and her sister never married, instead carrying on their late father's religious work, which isn't going well ever since Dad died. Babette changes the entire village's fortunes, until she wins the French lottery and she plans a special dinner for the old man's centenary, leading everybody to think she's going to leave.
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4 comments:
I don't know that first one but it sounds cute.
Sunday Dinner for a Soldier is quaint. It was of more interest for costarring Anne Baxter and John Hodiak since they met on the film and later married. Great supporting cast.
We match! Babette's Feast is a lovely film.
Beside out match I went with a couple, one from television, that are more recent.
Babette’s Feast (1987)-In the 1870s two deeply religious elderly sisters living in an isolated Danish village take in Babette a French refugee from the Franco-Prussian war who becomes their housekeeper working basically for room and board. A decade and a half later Babette wins a large amount of money in the lottery, which coincides with the 100th anniversary of the birth of the sisters' father, a devout Christian minister who had a great following in the village. Babette decides to throw an extravagant dinner for the remaining followers to honor the occasion. However the dinner will be French and once the ingredients start to arrive, the naïve villagers suspect that something unholy is about to take place. Winner of the Best Foreign Film Oscar and a feast for the eyes.
The Hundred Foot Journey (2014)-When his family and he are displaced from their native India Hassan Kadam (Manish Dayal), a very talented amateur chef settle in a small French village and decide to open an Indian restaurant. However, Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren), the proprietress of an acclaimed restaurant just 100 feet away, strongly objects. War erupts between the two establishments, until Mme. Mallory recognizes Kadam's impressive skill in the kitchen and takes him under her wing.
The Song of Lunch (2010)-An adaptation of Christopher Reid's narrative poem tells the story of book editor “He” (Alan Rickman), meeting ex-girlfriend “She” (Emma Thompson) a decade and a half after their initial break-up. She, now the society wife of a French writer residing in Paris and He a failed literary aesthete trapped in a mundane, unsatisfying publishing job who pines for the loss of their love affair meet at a chic SoHo restaurant that meant much to their relationship for a nostalgic lunch. All starts well but quickly becomes mired in recriminations. This one is a bit of a stretch since it premiered on Masterpiece Theatre but with Alan Rickman & Emma Thompson front and center it has a cast better than most films.
Whatever happened to Baby Jane is a brilliant pick! Can't believe I didn't think of that.
I'm 0 for 3 on your picks but wouldn't have been if you had made Baby Jane an official pick. Love that movie.
I haven't seen any but Babette's Feast is on my watchlist since always. Hopefully I'll get to see it soon.
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