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Babette's Feast | 
 enlarge | Director: Gabriel Axel
Actors: Stephane Audran, Bodil Kjer, Birgitte Federspiel, Jarl Kulle, Jean-philippe Lafont
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy New: $6.99
You Save: $7.99 (53%)
New (46) Used (12) Collectible (1) from $6.99
Rating:  146 reviews
Sales Rank: 1063
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: Danish (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), English (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: G (General Audience)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 102
Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.5
MPN: MGMD1001475D
ISBN: 079284839X
UPC: 027616857958
EAN: 9780792848394
ASIN: B000053VBK
Theatrical Release Date: March 4, 1988
Release Date: January 23, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new Factory Sealed DVDs ***100% GUARANTEED!!!***
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Product Description
Studio: Tcfhe/mgm Release Date: 07/24/2007 Run time: 103 minutes Rating: G
Amazon.com
Some movies can only be described as delicious. In Babette's Feast, a woman flees the French civil war and lands in a small seacoast village in Denmark, where she comes to work for two spinsters, devout daughters of a puritan minister. After many years, Babette unexpectedly wins a lottery, and decides to create a real French dinner--which leads the sisters to fear for their souls. Joining them for the meal will be a Danish general who, as a young soldier, courted one of the sisters, but she turned him away because of her religion. The village elders all resolve not to enjoy the meal, but can their moral fiber resist the sensual pleasure of Babette's cooking? Babette's Feast deservedly won the 1987 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. This lovely movie is impeccably simple, yet its slender narrative contains a wealth of humor, melancholy, and hope. --Bret Fetzer
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| Customer Reviews: Read 141 more reviews...
 great movie for believers and non-believers December 26, 2008
I highly recommend this movie. I remember seeing it many years ago and loved the story then and as a believer love the story even more.
 foolishness November 21, 2008
Out of boredom,I was changing from channel to channel when I tuned in to the MGM cinema and saw this scene, an austere but beautiful young woman was being taught a French song by an amorous French voice coach. The woman's voice was heavenly, the setting was in an drab cottage. It gripped my attention and I saw the whole film without knowing what it was. At the end credits, the principal actress was identified, Stephanie Audran, and the costumes were by Karl Lagerfield, so I realized that it must have been a big production rather than a never heard and forever obscure movie.
The story goes on to the young woman's delicately refusing the overtures of the coach and his advise for her to go to Paris to be the opera sensation of the city. For such a heavenly voice, it would have been logical that she accepts, but she goes to her father and sister and tells them that she wants to discontinue her studies. She is deeply commited to her religion and life in the bleak village.
After, a young French woman arives, with a letter of introduction from her former vocal coach, it is Babette and she is fleeing disturbances in France. She is willing to work as the cook sans wages for the 2 sisters, whose father, the Protestant minister has already died. She is accepted by the 2 spinsters and taught how to cook simple Nordic dishes. She is shown how to pick a dried fish from a rack, salt it, immerse it in water and boil it. Babette's face is inscrutable. Next, she is shown how to prepare the bread to thicken the soup by breaking stale pieces and boiling them in broth.
The next scene is 14 years after, and Babette hasn't aged, though the sisters have-placidly, I suppose due to their religious peace while Babette's preservation is due to her French style. Babette receives a notice that she has won a lottery in Paris and before she goes back, she asks the sisters if she could prepare a French dinner for the small community. At this time, the community is rife with strife, the usual small town bickerings. It would be Main st. if they didn't speak in Danish. The sisters are helpless in guiding them.
Babette comes back with crystals and porcelain, quails and a live turtle, herbs and sugar. The sisters are shocked, such extravagance for the senses can only be the devil's work. They tell the community about their fears and ask them, for Babette's sake to partake but to be silent. A social star, a retired Swedish general is accidentally invited. In this case, he is the food and wine critic of the movie. Babette is continuosly in the kitchen slaving for the guests who are bewildered by the dishes served. The general is amazed and when the quail comes pronounces it as something he tasted in the Cafe Anglais in Paris and was created by a woman chef. The dish's title, quail in a sarcophagus. Slowly, the congregation appreciates the feast and are warmed by the wine, amontillado, champagne. When the meal ends, the general is romantically nostalgic and the querulous congregation files out in harmony and beatifically.
Babette confesses that she can no longer go back to Paris for she has spent all her winnings for the feast. A dinner for 12 at the Cafe Anglais is 10,000 francs. She is the former chef. And so she remains, a drudge in a bleak Scandinavian village.
I though that it must have been taken from a short story by Guy de Maupassant. The simple tale, the bitter sweet ending. Weren't they all foolishness? The woman with the heavenly voice, wasted in the sarchopagus of the village, Babette forever toiling to a routine and preparing boiled fish.
Sheer delight November 10, 2008
I love this movie. One of my culinary school instructors recommended it, so I ordered it and within two days it was in my hands. Some people can't keep up with the slow start to the story, but when telling a good story it's not always necessary to jump right to the exciting part. You draw it out. Like cooking, storytelling is a craft that's quickly losing it's place in public eye. Both have been replaced by getting spoon-fed homogenous crap from a can.
At the end of the movie, when the sisters realize that Babette had given all of her money to prepare the meal, I identified with her, I felt a solidarity with her. She did it to feel like a human being again. There's such love. I only hope that someday I might perform like that. I've always looked at cooking as performance-art. My older sister is a singer, and I have a love for music, but my medium has always been in food, in feeding people and making it special. When I prepare meals for my family and friends, or as of late the students at school, I can sometimes hear an orchestra tuning up in my head. A feeling of "yes, now, begin". I got a sense of that from the movie, too. The spiritual experience of getting ready to prepare a wonderful meal, the care and patience that it takes.
I especially liked that the carriage-driver got to take part in the feast, too :-) In my current place in life as a lowly kitchen-rat, I appreciate that everyone gets fed.
There is unexpected comedy throughout the movie as well, that often goes overlooked. The villagers' shocked reactions, fearing for their very souls at the "witches' sabbath", futilly determined not to enjoy the meal. The dream sequence is nicely shot, and funny. Then to see one of the old ladies take a sip of water and then switch back to the wine. It brings a smile to my face every time.
Magic happens in the kitchen, I've always believed in that. When worked properly, at the dinner table, all quarrels are forgotten, harmony and jovality rule.
Babette's Feast October 6, 2008
This is the first time I've seen it without sub-titles....dubbed in English! Marvelous film that can be taken many ways....a nice story about using our gifts and talents to help others, and the love that can arise, all the way to the symbolism of Christ's sacrifices for others (the story's intent).
Very well packaged, and quick shipping.
Review without comment October 4, 2008
Lovely, delightful, charming re-telling of one of Karen Blixen's most characteristic stories. Huston's "The Dead" may have preceded and perhaps inspired it, but "Babette's Feast" is actually an even better, sweeter, more brilliantly acted, written and directed film. Personally, I lean more to Scandinavia than Ireland. I won't recount the plot, and I still can't understand why reviewers think that repeating the plot is a review: once is enough, please. Please. I can only make a few comments. First of all, the General's name is Lowenhielm, which means Lion Helmet, and he is not Danish in the slightest, even though he has a Danish aunt, but 100% Swedish. Jarl Kulle was one of Sweden's greatest actors. He died in 1997. Throughout the movie he is speaking in Swedish, which Danes can understand and vice versa. Not that it matters, but I would have thought that even an Amazon reviewer, although an American, would try to get things right. Secondly, this is a lovely and wonderful summing-up of life's traumas and vicissitudes. We have to face the slings and arrows that life hands us, and come out of it with chins up, still able to derive comfort from whatever fate delivers, whether it kills our spouse and child, or whether it suddenly offers us a winning ticket. There is a beauty and an artistry in giving to others, regardless of cost. We are all going to die, in the end. Why not give what we can, while we can?
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