Babette

[ba-bet]

Deutsch, Babette, 1895-1982, American poet, b. New York City. Her poems are noted for their technical virtuosity and wide range of tone and subject matter. Her best-known collections include Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (1954), Coming of Age (1959), and Collected Poems (1963 and 1969). She also wrote novels, including Mask of Silenus (1933), and numerous critical works, such as Poetry in Our Time (1954). She was married to Avrahm Yarmolinsky (1890-1975), the critic and scholar.

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Babette's Feast

Babette's Feast (Babettes gæstebud) is a 1987 Danish film written and directed by Gabriel Axel. The film is based on a story by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), who also wrote the story which inspired the 1985 Academy Award winning film Out of Africa. Produced by Just Betzer, Bo Christensen, and Benni Korzen with funding from the Danish Film Institute, Babette's Feast was the first Danish production of a Blixen story. It was also the first Danish film to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

Plot

Babette's Feast starts with a portrait of two elderly and pious Christian sisters. The sisters, Martina (named for Martin Luther) and Philippa (named for Luther's friend and biographer Philip Melanchthon), live in a small village on the remote and beautiful, but also barren and chilly, western coast of Jutland in the 19th century. Philippa (Bodil Kjer) and Martina (Birgitte Federspiel) are the daughters of a pastor who founded his own strict Christian sect, whose members over the years moved into his premises, which in turn evolved into what was for all practical purposes a charity retirement home. Though the pastor himself has long since died, and the sect draws no new converts, the aging sisters preside lovingly over their dwindling brood of white-haired, rural resident believers.

Next the film drops back in time to depict how each sister was, in her youth, a ravishing beauty. Each is courted by an impassioned suitor visiting Jutland: Martina by a charming but dissolute young officer of the Swedish cavalry, and Philippa by a melancholic star baritone from the Paris opera. Each suitor falls desperately in love, and develops grand plans both for himself and the "angel" he imagines by his side on the road to worldly renown. But each daughter eventually deflects her pursuer, choosing, instead, a life of quiet piety and Puritanical simplicity in their father's footsteps.

Many years later, when the sisters are in their fifties, Babette Hersant (Stéphane Audran) appears at their door. She carries only a letter from Philippa's former suitor, explaining that she is a refugee from revolutionary bloodshed in Paris, and recommending her as a housekeeper. The sisters take Babette in, and she spends fourteen years as their cook, a modest but benign figure who gradually eases their lives and the lives of many in the remote village. Her only link to her former life is a lottery ticket that a friend in Paris renews for her every year. One day, she wins the lottery and decides to use the money to prepare a delicious dinner for the sisters and their small congregation on the occasion of the founding pastor's hundredth birthday. More than just an epicurean delight, the feast is an outpouring of Babette's appreciation, an act of self-sacrifice with eucharistic echoes; though she doesn't tell anyone, Babette is spending her entire winnings on her gesture of gratitude.

The sisters agree to accept Babette's meal, and she sends for a sumptuous shopping list of ingredients (including a live sea turtle, quail, numerous wines, fine china and crystal) to her native France. But as they arrive, the sisters begin to worry that the meal will be, at best, a great sin of sensual luxury, and at worst some form of devilry or witchcraft. In a hasty conference, the sisters and the congregation agree to eat the meal, but to forego any pleasure in it, and to make no mention of the food during the entire dinner. The last and most relevant part of the film is the preparation of the meal itself, and the serving of an extraordinary banquet of royal dimensions lavishly deployed in the unpainted austerity of the sisters' rustic home. The film, previously showing mainly winterly whites and grays, gradually picks up more and more colours, focusing on the various and delectable dishes, a feast for the spectator as well. Although the celebrants do their best to reject the earthly pleasures of the food and drink, Babette's extraordinary gifts as a Chef de Cuisine and a true connoisseur, so characteristically French, breaks their distrust and superstitions, elevating them not only physically but spiritually. Old wrongs are forgotten, ancient loves are rekindled, and a mystical redemption of the human spirit settles over the table — thanks to the general elation nurtured by the consumption of so many fine culinary delicacies and spirits. The eucharistic, albeit mundane celebration around the table shadows the "infinite grace… [that] had been alloted to them, and they did not even wonder at the fact, for it had been but the fulfillment of an ever-present hope.

Cast

Actor	Role
Ghita Nørby	Narrator
Stéphane Audran	Babette Hersant
Bodil Kjer	Filippa
Hanne Stensgaard	Filippa (as girl)
Birgitte Federspiel	Martine
Vibeke Hastrup	Martine (as girl)
Jean-Philippe Lafont	Achille Papin
Jarl Kulle	General Lorens Löwenhielm
Gudmar Wivesson	Lorens Löwenhielm (as young man)
Bibi Andersson	Swedish Court Lady
Bendt Rothe	Old Nielsen
Lisbeth Movin	The Widow
Preben Lerdorff Rye	The Captain
Cay Kristiansen	Poul
Axel Strøbye	The Driver
Erik Petersen	Erik, the boy
Ebbe Rode	Christopher
Ebba With	General's aunt
Pouel Kern	The Sister's father
Else Petersen	Solveig
Finn Nielsen	The Store manager
Holger Perfort	Karlsen
Asta Esper Andersen	Anna
Therese Højgaard Christensen	Martha, young girl
Lars Lohmann	Fisherman
Tine Miehe-Renard	The General's wife
Thomas Antoni	Swedish Lieutenant
Gert Bastian	Poor Man
Viggo Bentzon	Boatman
Tina Kiberg	Filippa's song voice

Awards

Babette's Feast won the 1988 Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards; the other nominees were Asignatura aprobada of Spain, Au revoir, les enfants of France, La Famiglia of Italy and Ofelas of Norway. It also won a BAFTA Film Award for Best Film Not in the English Language and was nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Language Film. It won both the Bodil and Robert awards for Best Danish Film of the Year.