Eat, Drink and be Wary
Whether you eat the food or are the food, there is a veritable feast for the senses laid out for you this month at the BFI National Library which will leave you asking for more.
Being an essential part of life and culture, our film and TV screens are bursting with references to food and drink, from advertising to soaps, documentaries, and feature films. We have selected just some of our most memorable moments to highlight the depth and breadth of our collections.
So don't stand out there in the cold, come in and join us!
Victor Victoria (1982)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Sample menu
Just some of the information you can discover at the library.
Aperitif
You may be more familiar with a Martini, shaken not stirred, but how about a Cinzano? The Cinzano television campaign, running from 1978 to 1983 and featuring Leonard Rossiter as the bungling fool always throwing the drink over Joan Collins, was a great hit with the public winning ‘Favourite Commercial' in the TV Times Top Ten Awards for 1983.
Soup
'Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you'll duck soup the rest of your life.' - Groucho Marx in Duck Soup (1933)
Fish
Charlie Chaplin, as the starving Tramp in Gold Rush (1925), conjures up a meal by contributing his boot to the soup pot. At the end only the inedible sole remains on the plate, nails sticking up like fishbones.
Meat
The distributors of The Private Life of Henry VIII ((1933) encouraged cinema managers to publicise the film by holding eating contests in the Laughton style, where chickens would be consumed without knife or fork (see our pressbooks). No-one can throw a chicken bone like Charles Laughton and with the same breath lament the gracelessness of the age.
Fruit & Veg
Just the bare necessities you might say, but they're also known to make some damn fine pies. If in doubt see Mildred Pierce (1945), First Lady of Pies. And ask yourself, could you take 9 minutes to Eat (1964) a single mushroom?
Spoiler
Food and drink are not permitted in the Reading Room. Seriously.
