Any discussion of the greatest movie about food includes Babette’s Feast, a Danish film starring the French woman Stephane Audran adapted and directed by Gabriel Axel based on a story by Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen).

Gabriel Axel died yesterday. He was 95.

This trailer evokes just a soupçon of the sly pleasure the movie, which won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1987, delivers.

http://youtu.be/SvNifgj_dv4

Other candidates for greatest movie about food? I like Tampopo, A Noodle Western a lot, but Stanley Tucci’s Big Night is a wonderful movie.

Nikolaus Geyrhalter’s Our Daily Bread is a breathtaking documentary about harvesting and making food, as delightful and moving as a symphony.

There are many other examples of movies about food, but two of note because they are withering social satires that also celebrate the well-made dish are Marco Ferreri’s Le Grande Bouffe, in which four friends decide to gorge themselves to death, and Peter Greenaway ‘s The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover, a dazzlingly transgressive romance.