The other night while ironing a sharp crease into the legs of my wife’s work pants I had on Turner Classic Movies and caught 10 minutes or so of Mervyn LeRoy’s I WAS A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG (1932).  While watching Paul Muni choke down his first prison breakfast of lard, pig fat and sorghum, I began thinking of scenes in movies in which people sit down to a meal together.  There are, of course, a ton of them… but what a feast!

We all have our favorite eating scenes and mine, you’re probably not surprised to learn, is an eclectic lot.  I mean, sure, I love the classics – the robust repast as foreplay in TOM JONES (1963), Jimmy Stewart’s last dinner with his dad in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), the spaghetti scene in Disney’s LADY AND THE TRAMP (1955), the bittersweet breakfast at the end of THE DEER HUNTER (1978), the Thanksgiving dinners that bookend BROADWAY DANNY ROSE (1982), the whole last reel of BABETTE’S FEAST (1987) - but there are other scenes I hold near and dear, movie moments less likely to make anybody’s Top 10 lists.  I’m always a little touched by Norman Bates’ gift of a simple dinner (“Nothing special, just sandwiches and milk”) to Marion Crane around the 30 minute mark in PSYCHO (1960).  If you can forget what happens next and just enjoy this particular moment, this particular exchange (“It’s all for you”), I think you’ll find a sweetness in the bonding of  strangers over food and a moment of awkward grace before everything goes down the drain.

Cinema has a lot of great gustatory four-handers for us to enjoy.  Among my many favorites are big time movie director Robert Armstrong treating a down-on-her-luck Fay Wray to her first meal in forever in KING KONG (1933), O. P. Heggie’s Blind Hermit breaking bread with Boris Karloff’s Undying Monster in THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935)’s classic monster communion (“Bread… goood!”), the ad hoc lunch Lewis Fiander cobbles together for pregnant wife Prunella Ransom in an eerily abandoned island cantina in WHO CAN KILL A CHILD? (1976), the dinner of tripe with Zeffie Tilbury’s Mrs. Moncaster and Ethel Griffies’ Mrs. Whack in WEREWOLF OF LONDON (1935), the soul-fortifying soup and wine shared by rattled village priest Fred Johnson and vampire killer Peter Cushing in THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960), the  bomb shelter smorgasbord shared by End of the World’s Best Dad Viggo Mortensen and son Kodi Smit-McPhee in THE ROAD (2009) and a thematically similar scene in SOYLENT GREEN (1973), in which postapocalyptic detective Charlton Heston treats pensioner Edward G. Robinson to the best meal he’s had (“Love apple!”) since nobody remembers.  I’m not religious but I love the fellowship of these scenes, one person feeding another, taking care of them.  They represent humanity at its best.  And then there’s the scene in the cat loft in Dario Argento’s THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE (1969) or the end of Ridley Scott’s HANNIBAL (2001), which has Anthony Hopkins’ globetrotting anthrophage giving a budding acolyte a piece of Ray Liotta’s mind.

Add a couple more people and you’ve got a dinner party, a proper gathering.  I made a reference to communion above and a lot of movies do trade on our shared fund of Biblical imagery in their dinner scenes – think Luis Bunuel’s VIRIDIANA (1962), Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970) and Ted Gershuny’s SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT (1970), all of which stage scenes of eating and drinking as allusions to The Last Supper.  I like dinner scenes in movies of action or horror for the break they provide the characters from the battle.  In THE HAUNTING (1963), the protagonists attempting to suss out the supernatural secrets of Hill House share an early meal that allows each to put his or her cards on the dinner table, setting them and us up for the manifest terrors to come; even given this obvious mechanism, the scene charms because these characters are good company.  In Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s 28 WEEKS LATER (2007), survivors of the biochemical plague of “Rage,” which has ankled the United Kingdom and chased the normals into hiding, bond in a barricaded farm house with a peasant lunch of Whatever’s Left; moments later, their world ends somewhere between a bang and a whimper.  Despite the afternoon concluding in a welter of violence and horror, the scene charms because the director and actors sell it so well; even at the potential cost of your life, you want a chair at that table.

In this unpalatable vein, there are some great movie scenes about dinners that go horribly wrong.  The king of this kind of setpiece is probably the scene in Ridley Scott’s ALIEN (1979) where astrotrucker John Hurt is received back in the society of his deep space comrades after an extended alien-induced coma only to suffer pains in his chestal area and a result that puts everyone off their food.  Another classic is the dinner scene in David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD (1977), which will probably scare you away from Cornish game hens for the rest of your life.  I also like the bit in Jack Hill’s SPIDER BABY (1964), where sweaty family retainer Lon Chaney, Jr. serves an “austere” board of fare to the extended Merrye Family and invited guests.  Of course, this humorous sidebar is the grandpappy of all Horrific Dinner Scenes, a genre subclassification that probably reached its apotheosis (or nadir, depending on how you look at it) with the grisly family sit-down of Tobe Hooper’s THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974), in which hapless hippie Marilyn Burns finds herself caught at a cannibal catch-as-catch-can.  Shared meals don’t have to get more awful than this and yet filmmakers keep trying to outdo it and outgross us.

In this company who could forget the wedding dinner from Tod Browning’s immortal FREAKS (1932), in which marcelled swindler Olga Baclanova is so, er, freaked out by the merriment of her fellow circus performers that she kinda-sorta spills the beans about marrying sideshow midget Harry Earles strictly for his money.   You may find this scene disturbing but keep in mind – the beautiful people are the bad guys here.  Every time I watch this scene I fall more in love with Angelo Rossitto’s little Tevye strut down the center of the table at the 1m 20s mark.  [To view this scene, the link provided to "Watch on YouTube."]  Gooble gobble!

One of my favorite food scenes in any movie occurs in LIFEBOAT (1944), among characters who have no food.  Adrift in the mid-Atlantic after their ship has been torpedoed by a German U-boat, the stringy dramatis personae talk, argue, flirt and make and break a number of intradinghy alliances while trying not to think about food.  Ultimately, though, the cocktail of boredom and exhaustion lead to shared recollections of favorite eating places around the world, with each participant trying to outdo his fellows with the superiority of his eaterie’s menu.

RITT:  In the old days, there was a place in Boston.  Young’s Hotel.  Had the best restaurant in the world.

KOVAC:  Bet it wasn’t any better than Henrici’s Coffee House in Chicago.  Or Bookbinder’s in Philly – that was food for you.

WILLY:  … In Munich there is a place called Lorber’s.  Their specialty is pot roast.

RITT:  (Dismissively)  Pot roast.  Young’s used to have a menu 150 pages long.  Yes sir, 150 pages of solid eatments and oh boy what eatments!

KOVAC:  Ever eat in Antoine’s in New Orleans?

RITT:  (Scoffs) Can’t compare with Young’s.  You never tasted such food in your life.  Especially seafood.  Steamed clams dripping with melted butter … lobsters, lobsters a la Newberg with a special white wine sauce.

CONNIE PORTER:  Ritt, shut up!

RITT:  What’s wrong?

CONNIE PORTER:  Stop jabbering about food!

Leave it to Hitchcock – he not only knew where we lived but where we ate out!

If you celebrated Thanksgiving this week (and to our Canadian readers, last month), maybe you flashed back on some of these scenes or some of your own favorites while sitting down with loved ones for a big to-do.  And if you’re one of those angry holiday refusniks, then, hey, cue up THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and bon appétit!