Eat, drink and...watch movies

With Thanksgiving looming on the horizon,  my head has been filled with visions of food...and film.

When the weather turned cooler a couple of weeks ago and Now, Voyager happened to be scheduled on TCM, I started thinking about my favorite recipe for gingerbread...and how a steaming cup of hot cocoa would go so well with a thick slice of gingerbread and that magnificent Bette Davis melodrama.

Last weekend, M.F.K. Fisher’s  “strengthening prescription” from her book, Alphabet for Gourmets, found its way into my thoughts. Fisher, considered the doyenne of American culinary writers during her lifetime, was also a screenwriter for Paramount Pictures in 1942, and this seemed to me to add to the rightness of pairing her simple menu (from the chapter "M is for Monastic") with a movie.

Her "Monastic Supper" was designed with the person alone in mind. I began to think of films one might watch alone and, even better, movies about loners.  Of course, film noir fills that bill. Something like Jules Dassin’s Night and the City (1950), with Richard Widmark scheming his way from small-time to big-time hood…or Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946), with Burt Lancaster as the anguished victim of Ava Gardner’s dazzling charms…

And yet, considering the actual fare (adapted  by me) -

One small loaf of crusty sourdough or French bread

One chunk of Gorgonzola or Bleu Cheese

One bottle of Chianti or (my suggestion) Zinfandel or its alter-ego, Primitivo

-  I couldn’t help but think of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and that famous phrase, “a jug of wine, a loaf of bread – and thou.”  Clearly M.FK. Fisher’s “Monastic Supper” could also be applied to on and off-screen togetherness.

A jug of wine, a loaf of bread (with cheese) and thou would work well with...Michael Curtiz's Casablanca (1942), that most beloved of all WWII romances starring memorably paired Bogart and Bergman…or Jean Cocteau’s unforgettably poetic, La belle et la bête (1946), “one of the screen’s great erotic tales” (Movieline Magazine) – no subtitles necessary!

I could go on, but will save more for another day...meanwhile, I'm open to suggestions.

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Posted by: Tukiyooo Eat, drink and...watch movies Updated at : 6:00 AM

Wednesday, November 24, 2010