Last month in an entry called I said this:
If you show me, in a movie, how to do something or how something works, and if I find this knowledge interesting and useful, then I will recall the scene(s) in which this lesson is contained as pivotal to the way the film works, no matter how extraneous this lesson is to the plot.
I now find this unsatisfactory. Films show me how to do things all the time: just about every action film I see shows me how to load and fire a gun, or string a bow, or pick a lock.
Detective films show me how to dust for fingerprints, Westerns show me how to sit in a saddle, and Predator movies show me how to hide from and ambush extraterrestrial creatures that see in infrared.
There's a distinct difference between showing and telling. When a filmmaker tells me something, he or she takes me aside and says, "Now pay attention.
" These scenes are set apart from the rest of the film; they break from the narrative flow. They have an air of authority about them--the director implies that they are true.
The two examples I cited last month demonstrate the difference: shows us a newsroom in action.
, though, tells us how to make dinner in a scene set apart from the rest of the film in a number of ways.
Most obviously, this is the only scene shot in prison. The lighting is different: this is the only time I recall seeing dust in the air, for instance.
The scene, which lasts about three minutes, is given its own song: Bobby Darin's version of "Beyond the Sea."
Most interesting to me, though, and I'd argue most importantly, this scene is the first one in which our attention is directed towards food. Much of the film to this point has involved food--characters sit down to dinner, get sent champagne, eat.
But there are no shots of food. That changes here:
Note: These images are from a DVD borrowed from my local library. I didn't have as much time with it as I hoped I would and I didn't get all the screengrabs I wanted, but since I do have enough to begin discussing the film.
..
The first shot in this scene is an extreme close-up of Paulie (Paul Sorvino) slicing garlic.
This cuts to a close-up of Paulie's face:
Which cuts back to the garlic:
This pattern, food-person-food, will be repeated with the other two characters involved in making dinner. First, Vinnie (Charles Scorsese) and the sauce:
And then Johnny Dio (Frank Pellegrino) and the steak:
The effect is to associate each character with a particular foodstuff and a role in dinner preparation. This is the first time the film explicitly makes a connection between food and community.
Henry (Ray Liotta) tells us in voice-over as the scene begins, "In prison dinner was always a big thing," and it's significant that he's the one person here who does not have a role: it sets him apart from this community and foreshadows his impending break with his gangster "family."
There are two more aspects of this scene to which I'd like to draw attention. First, Henry in voice-over says in reference to Vinnie's sauce, "I felt he used too many onions, but it was still a good sauce.
" Immediately afterwards Paulie says, "Don't put in too many onions." The idea is, I think, that Henry's opinion is just a reflection of Paulie's. It's evidence of the extent to which Henry is emulating Paulie, and it's placed here to underscore how devastating it is to him when he can't obey Paulie's order to stop dealing drugs in subsequent scenes.
Second, dig this twenty second-long pan. We go from the boys cooking:
To Paulie waiting at the dinner table:
Note all the empty space. This pan will be echoed by a pan of identical length in the only other scene in the film to foreground food and food preparation.
It's part of the "Sunday, May 11" (the day on which Henry gets arrested by the DEA) sequence, and it goes from here:
To here:
Again, these two pans are of the exact same duration. But look how much more crowded, claustrophobic, and quick (blurry) the second one is. You can see the same contrast in just two shots, of the two different dinner tables:
Versus:
Spare, leisurely, relaxing vs.
crowded, frantic, smothering. In said:
Well, he's in prison, and one of the things he's most worried about is how much garlic is in the sauce. So I think that scene, and all the prison time around it, could be read as a sign of a charmed life: they're not playing by the same rules as the general population; they're living a much more comfortable life as a resu and some of the people in power are going along with it.
And of course it all comes crashing down at the end, which is also part of the point of the film.
He's absolutely right. What's important here is the contrast between these two scenes--they represent the dream that Henry's life was vs.
the nightmare that it is become. These two scenes are a fine example of how telling is different than showing, and of why examples of the former sort always stick in my mind: listen closely enough to the director who's telling you something and you'll realize that he or she is saying a lot more than the characters are..
.
* * *
I remember now where this ridiculous term "Roger Ebert effect" comes from, and it explains the apparent incongruency of as an example. I originally coined this term to describe films like A Heart in Winter that showed me small parts of my world that I'd never seen before.
Violin makers like Stephane (Daniel Auteuil) exist in my world, but before this film I'd never thought much about them. By making someone of this profession his protagonist Claude Sautet has opened a door for me, expanded my knowledge of my own universe. I appreciate that.
So I forgot, or rather I changed, the definition of my own term. But it matters not: I have little use for it now in either capacity and I'm going to stop using it.
* * *
The role that food and food preparation play in community and family identity is one of the themes of Marlon Riggs' , a film I heartily recommend to anyone interested in that idea.
Updated at 11:19p--Many thanks to for the screengrab of the prison dinner table!
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