Focus Features

This is a classic movie and food crops up throughout.  As viewers, we come to understand very early on that, apart from killing each other, food matters to these guys. After all, they’re Italian.  There’s the impressive Steadicam shot through the club kitchen where you see the bare bones of food production in a slick operation, Paulie’s razor-sliced garlic and  his cooking a meal in prison scene,  the diner scene, the one at Tommy’s mother’s house and more. In Goodfellas, food doesn’t try to dominate, but it is delicately intertwined and in, several instances, plays an excellent supporting role, propping up the very fabric of the plot.

I was tempted to go back and watch the whole thing again – just for research purposes, of course – but unfortunately I didn’t have time. I did however review the fridge scene, just to check if it was as good as I remembered. Having taken a hit for the team, I can say with authority that the film is undoubtedly a true child of the Eighties in all its camp, plastic glory, but it does communicate exceptionally well the tastes and textures of the food being applied so liberally to Kim Basinger over the course of the scene. My favourite part is actually at the start, before anything has really happened, when you hear the sounds of food preparation as part of the build-up to the flavours and sensations. Sound is an important part of cooking and eating, from the pop of a cork to the sizzle of a saucepan and the film captures that well. 9½ Weeks reminds us that eating is about the senses and to capture it convincingly on celluloid is an achievement worth noting. Other films, such as Perfume, have failed to translate a real understanding of sense to the screen.  Admittedly, with food you have a visual head start over scent, but nonetheless when Mickey Rourke puts a whole chilli in Kim Basinger’s mouth and she bites right into it, you really get a sense of what it would be like to be in her shoes – or socks, as the case may be.

I’m going to put The Silence of the Lambs, Delicatessen and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover into the same slot. They’re all films where food, as a lynchpin at the heart of our mortality and our senses, make it an ideal foil for the expression of horror, disgust and moral abomination. There’s a vital scene in Battleship Potemkin where the sailors being asked to eat rotten meat leads to their revolt. It demonstrates that, due to its necessity for survival, food – or the lack thereof – can become the bottom line. These movies explore what happens when you go beneath that line. The Silence of the Lambs isn’t about food really at all. Or at least that’s what you think – until Hannibal Lector’s famous line about the liver. Then you realise that that’s what it’s all about. The Silence of the Lambs horrifies in every way and dwells on the workings of the mind of a man who is compelled to behave in a way that goes beyond all moral codes. It doesn’t ram home the food connection, but that line is enough. Delicatessen explores the intricacies of a small community that has decided that eating human flesh is a necessary part of their continued survival. A bit like a Lord of the Flies Part Two, it plays darkly with the situation, imagining what the effect on normal human relationships such an extreme set of circumstances might have. Lush and quirky its otherworldliness lets us laugh and retch in equal amounts. The Cook the Thief, his Wife and her Lover takes us on a journey into the world of a man who feels unfettered by the whims of society, for whom other people are just playthings and lets it keep going until it reaches a logical conclusion. There is something darkly sensual in all of Greenaway’s films but in this one he really lets rip.

Down by Law This movie is hard to define. Its focus on character prevents it from being a straight prison break movie, and yet its scope is too small for it to be a road movie. Instead it is more of an extended vignette, both tender and gritty, and is one of my favourite films.  I went to see it with my mother in the cinema when it came out in 1986. I was 13 and adored it. It stars Tom Waits and I was so impressed with both him and the title music written by him, that I went out and bought one of his albums. I was looking for Rain Dogs but the one I got was Closing Time, his first album and very different indeed. It didn’t sound at all like I’d expected, but I’ve had a love affair with it ever since – I once made myself cry just by singing “Martha” to myself while working. The reason Down By Law is in my list is that it contains one of my favourite food-related scenes. Having been locked up for some time with his two sullen and mutually detesting companions, Roberto Benigni’s diminutive character starts off a chant of “I scream-a / You scream / We all scream for ice-cream” with a rich Italian accent which finally gets picked up by both of his cell-mates – played by Waits and John Lurie – and, before long, the entire cell block is yelling it out in unison. The guards finally break it all up and the film goes on, but his innocence and the accessibility of ice-cream as an archetypal foodstuff staple the moment down in your memory. I feel I’ve cheated here as this isn’t a real food film so to make up for it here’s a recipe for ice-cream:

This is a general ice-cream base recipe, and is designed to be used in an ice-cream machine. We normally add fruit purees or syrups to it. If the flavour device you’re adding is very high in sugar then you’ll need to add less to the base. This isn’t really vanilla ice-cream, even though it has a vanilla pod in it. If you want real vanilla ice cream than you’ll need to use more vanilla.

1 liter Milk
1 liter Cream
550g Sugar
20 Egg Yolks
1 vanilla pod

1. Whisk the eggs and sugar together until pale and fluffy

2. Place the milk and cream into a large saucepan, with vanilla pod, cut in half lengthwise and the seeds scraped into the milk. Bring the milk and cream to the boil then remove from the heat.

3. Pour a ladleful of the hot milk into the eggs, stir it in, then a bit more, stir and then the rest. Stir and then return to the pan and cook over a medium heat, stirring continuously, until it coats the back of a spoon. Transfer immediately to another container.

4. Chill, and remove the vanilla pod, before churning

This, for me, is the best food film of all. It came out in 1987, when I was 14 – a formative age, and I’m certain it contributed to my love of food and my understanding of its connection with our inner self. I mentioned earlier that there weren’t many genuine food films, but this is one of them. Two other very good ones are Big Night and Eat Drink Man Woman, but this is my favourite. I love The Celebration too, but in that film it is the act of eating, or rather the occasion of coming together to eat, which is the big plot device as opposed to the food itself, so I limit it to just a mention in this list. In Babette’s Feast, food is absolutely central to the plot and to the arcing expressions of character on which the film is based. Its portrayal of the process that starts as an urge and ends up as a feast is beautiful.  The love of food that underpins the movie means we even get to watch the assemblage of the ingredients as they arrive in Babette’s village and watch as she turns them into a sumptuous meal, the likes of which have never been seen there before. What is vitally important for any film to take on the mantle of “best food film” is that it is a great film.  And in this case it’s true – the acting is excellent, the plot is touching and well worked, and the photography is superb.  All round, it wins for me.